Subject: (urth) Wolfe's Puzzles

From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2010 05:51:23 +0000

A number of years ago my brother asked me for something new to read
and I gave him BotNS. After he read it he told me he had "figured out
the secret". I was a little intrigued (though not too hopeful) with
what he'd come up with.  He told me he had figured out that Dorcas was
really Severian's grandmother.
 
Now I am no literary genius but, like some others, I thought that was 
pretty clear and not a puzzle. But since my brother is at least reasonably 
intelligent I must conclude that Dorcas'family status should be considered
one of the puzzles of BotNS though prehaps a relatively easy one. 
I felt the same about the "puzzle" which suggests incest between Agia and
Agilus though, again, I guess that wasn't obvious to everyone on first 
reading.
 
I think a somewhat harder one (pre-UotNS) is that Severian was the 
Conciliator. I did get that one...I think maybe on my second reading. 
But once I started searching online for answers I found there were many
mysteries I was unable to solve that others had. 
 
Notable among these is the Maid playing Holy Katharine identified as 
Severian's mother. I could never have gotten that on my own.  
There is nothing tangible in the text to "prove" this as fact but there
is an appealing literary leap of faith to it which allows most of us 
(I think) to accept it as a reasonable working possibility.
 
I like the puzzles where there are competing theories. Wolfe openly 
invites us to solve the mystery of Hethor's mirrors. Borski reasonably 
argues that any mirrors big enough to summon a giant slug would be too
big to carry around on a long journey, hence Hethor must be a shape-
shifter. Andre-Driussi counter-argues for the more parsimonious and
text-supported theory that the mirrors consisted of sail-scraps from the 
ship, so even large ones could be conveniently folded up and carried.
 
Both Borski and Andre-Driussi are smarter and more knowledgeable about
Wolfe and literature in general than me. Yet it took them some 20 years
of pondering before they came up with those theories.  I keep that in 
mind as I occassionally purvey my own feeble theories and mystery 
solutions.
 
Last year I participated in an online Wolfe book-of-the-month club; 
specifically each of the 12 Sun series books was read over the course of
a year. I was very pleased that Mantis (Andre-Driussi) participated and 
I took as full advantage as I could to pick his brain during the course of
it. A shame he (and Borski) don't participate here anymore  (that I know 
of). I saw Son O' Witz there but no others from here that I recognized. 
Is Roy C. Lackey now our eldest statesman? Maybe Tony Ellis or Dan'l?
 
Anyway, the group came to one puzzle that none of us could make heads nor
tails of, including Mantis, (at least I inferred that from his silence). It
regarded a series of numbers, arranged in a pattern which was found on the
Seal of Pas.
 
5553  8783  4223  9700  34
 
2221  0401  1101  7276  56
 
SEALED FOR THE MONARCH
 
I am no cryptographer type but I gamely gave the puzzle a few days of 
intense thought and effort. I mostly tried combinations of adding the
numbers together, since Silk makes the sign of addition over them 
(and various other things) I tried working in base 9 since that 
might be in use in Viron math. No luck. I could not come up with an answer.  
 
The best I could come up with is that it might be a cool solution if the
9 groups of 4 numbers could be be manipulated into letters to spell out
GENE WOLFE (since he often puts wolf[e]s into his stories. But I couldn't
find a way to do that. Perhaps someone else can or come up with some other
good solution.
 
I guess another 9 letter solution could be Typhon-Set, the evil, bisexual
Egyptian god of desert wind and drought, after whom the Greek multi-
headed monster Typhon was patterned. His Persian cognate is the god/demon
Pazuzu, which could be the source of the (nick)name "Pas".
 
(I reject the explanation of derivation from "Pan"and "pastoral" as a false,
too easily given clue. How is Typhon like a frolicking pipe-playing goat god?) 
 
Anyway, I also searched this Archive for solutions to the Seal of Pas but
didn't find anything.  Did I miss something? Is there a known solution out
there? I truly hope Wolfe has enough respect for his readers to not have made
this an unsolvable snipe hunt to make idiots like me play pointlessly with 
numbers and letters for hours upon hours.
 
With that assumption, my point (aside from random story telling) is that 
there are some easy puzzles in these stories but some really, really 
difficult ones also that take smart people many years to figure out (or 
are never figured out at all). But the mere presence of these complex 
puzzles and the occasional appearance of an interesting solution keeps
me inspired.
 
(FWIW, I think my own best, unique contribution is probably not this Father
Inire stuff, which I am still trying to refine, with help from y'all. 
I like best my ideas about time travel structures in BotN, which I've 
posted about at least a few times in the past.) 		 	   		  
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From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2010 06:09:52 +0000

> find a way to do that. Perhaps someone else can or come up with some other

Ouen is the Scottish form of Eugene. I just did a search and found out 
someone pointed this out 12 years ago.

> too easily given clue. How is Typhon like a frolicking pipe-playing goat god?)

Pan is the only god to die within historical time (see Plutarch's 
Lives), like Pas.

u+16b9

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From: brunians at brunians.org <brunians at brunians.org>
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2010 07:04:28 +0000

> tails of, including Mantis, (at least I inferred that from his silence).
> It regarded a series of numbers, arranged in a pattern which was found
> on the Seal of Pas.

> might be in use in Viron math. No luck. I could not come up with an

These are not random numbers.

I would be shocked if they did not solve to something.

What that is solution is, I have no idea.

Several of the numbers are qabalistically interesting: if I were to try
solving this puzzle I might start there.

.

---

From: Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie>
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2010 08:24:55 +0000

From: "Lee Berman" <severiansola at hotmail.com>
> really Severian's grandmother.

I can't honestly remember whether I figured that out, or picked it up from 
internet discussion.

> Agilus though, again, I guess that wasn't obvious to everyone on first

Surely Severian caught them in flagrante in Agilus's death cell?  That makes 
it about as much of a puzzle as whether Baldanders likes catamites.

> mysteries I was unable to solve that others had.

This one came immediately to me, I think.

> (I think) to accept it as a reasonable working possibility.

I have never seen any real reason to believe this.

> ship, so even large ones could be conveniently folded up and carried.

See also 'The Sister's Account' from 'Procreation', in which "a crumpled 
little mirror" is opened up until it is "as large and smooth as a pier 
glass".  The narrator uses it to travel between universes.  This story is 
copyright 1983-4, so approximately contemporaneous with _BotNS_.

> It

I take the view that it is essentially random.  It is a fundamental point of 
algorithmic information theory that almost all numbers are.  Why should this 
number, essentially a barcode for one not especially important storeroom, be 
special?

I don't see it as a 'trick' to make them random, because logically they 
should be random.  Of course I cannot tell whether they are in fact random. 
[There is also an important theorem that strings - or numbers - above a 
certain length cannot be *proven* to be random!]

> puzzles and the occasional appearance of an interesting solution keeps

Agreed.

- Gerry Quinn

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From: Thomas Bitterman <tom at bitterman.net>
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2010 12:52:29 +0000

> regarded a series of numbers, arranged in a pattern which was found on the

Some facts:
They are not SSCC-18 barcodes - the check digit is incorrect.
They are not credit card numbers - they fail the Luhn test.
The sum of the digits of all the 4 digit numbers and the sum of the digits
of all the 2 digit numbers is the same: 9.

Odd observations:
All 4-digit numbers have two digits that are the same.  That seems unlikely.
None of the digits in the two-digit numbers are doubled in the same row.
Each 4-digit number is larger than the one below it.
Subtracting the bottom 4-digit number from its corresponding top yields
another set of 4-digit numbers, all of which have doubled digits.

My guess is that the 4-digit groups are the "product" code, and the 2-digit
groups are checksums.  This is similar to how lots of different encoding
schemes work and makes sense in this context.  It only gives one-bit error
detection, so there may be another layer of checking I've missed.  Maybe
something having to do with the doubled digits.

As far as the product code itself goes, that might take a little more work.
Wolfe was an engineer and did some robotics work, so maybe Gray or Huffman
coding is being used.

> might be in use in Viron math. No luck. I could not come up with an answer.

It shouldn't be base 9.  There is a 9 in the code, and base n doesn't use a
symbol for n.
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From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 01:16:34 +0000

Is there a link to "pastor"? Typhon-Pas does lead his flock off Urth.

James Wynn wrote:
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From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:44:53 +0000

> Is there a link to "pastor"? Typhon-Pas does lead his flock off Urth. 

Well, "Typhon *drives* his flock off of Urth" is more accurate I think. 
He also drives them off the Whorl.

It is Silk (indirectly) and Patera Quetzal (directly) who *leads* the 
flock off the Whorl.

u+169b

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From: Jack Smith <jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 20:56:13 +0000

Pan means "all",  as in pandemic.  Scylla says that her daddy was "to be the
god of everything--that's what his name meant."  (LotLS, ch. 11)

On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 11:44 AM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

>>> Pan is the only god to die within historical time (see Plutarch's Lives),
>>> like Pas.
>>>
>>
> Well, "Typhon *drives* his flock off of Urth" is more accurate I think. He
> also drives them off the Whorl.
>
> It is Silk (indirectly) and Patera Quetzal (directly) who *leads* the flock
> off the Whorl.
>
> u+169b
>
>
>

-- 
Best wishes,
Jack
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From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:27:33 +0000

He drives them off the Whorl using heat and drought. This was a big part
of my suggestion that the name Pas is derived from the Babylonian god/demon
Pazuzu as he and his Egyptian cognate, Typhon-Set, were gods of hot, dry 
desert storms, drought, crop failure etc. Pazuzu had a bird head and the
bird theme is quite prevalent in Long Sun.
 
But now that the connection between Inire and Pan/Pas has come to light I
am forced to reconsider the truth of the Typhon/Pan connection more strongly.

---

From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 01:40:26 +0000

Fair enough. Shepherds do both.

James Wynn wrote:
> Well, "Typhon *drives* his flock off of Urth" is more accurate I 
> think. He also drives them off the Whorl.
>
> Virus Database (VPS): 100714-0, 07/14/2010
> Tested on: 7/14/2010 7:43:41 PM

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From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:04:46 +0000

This is another old post come unstuck in the works:

On 7/10/2010 3:24 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
>> 5553 8783 4223 9700 34
>>
>> 2221 0401 1101 7276 56
>>
>> SEALED FOR THE MONARCH
>>
> I take the view that it is essentially random. It is a fundamental point
> of algorithmic information theory that almost all numbers are. Why
> should this number, essentially a barcode for one not especially
> important storeroom, be special?
>
> should be random. Of course I cannot tell whether they are in fact
> random. [There is also an important theorem that strings - or numbers -
> above a certain length cannot be *proven* to be random!]

Oh, no, there are huge amounts of correspondence here - you see how 
often the same digit appears in series, or in the same group? There are 
many parallels between the upper and lower lines, considerable amounts 
of consecutive digits and those separated by a single digit.

Overall, English has an entropy of just a little more than one bit per 
character; totally random digits have ln10/ln2 or about 3.2 bits per of 
entropy per character. This number stream (based on the difference 
between consecutive digits) has about 2 - almost certainly some kind of 
selection going on here.

Or at least, this is what I gather from having taken Intro to 
Information Theory; I'll see if I can ask my prof about it.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
IEEE Student Chapter Blog at
< http://ieeetamut.org >

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From: Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie>
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:40:53 +0000

From: "Jeff Wilson" <jwilson at io.com

> Oh, no, there are huge amounts of correspondence here - you see how often 
> the same digit appears in series, or in the same group? There are many 
> parallels between the upper and lower lines, considerable amounts of 
> consecutive digits and those separated by a single digit.
>
> entropy per character. This number stream (based on the difference between 
> consecutive digits) has about 2 - almost certainly some kind of selection 
> going on here.

You can't say "almost certainly" for such a short string without applying 
some kind of statistical test.

That aside, there is the strong likelihood that even if the digits were not 
selected randomly, they do not mean anything in particular.  Perhaps Wolfe 
felt that it would add verisimiltude to have a low entropy string, certain 
components of which would have from a restricted set indicating type or 
origin of items stored.  That doesn't mean he has thought about what exactly 
they represent in a given instance.

- Gerry Quinn