Hidden by Design

Dream Theater arranged, in collaboration with the fan clubs and fan communities online, a treasure hunt culminating in the reveal of the album title and artwork for the new Dream Theater album “Distance Over Time”, for release in February 2019. See this linkfor the reveal! This is a series of several articles covering the entire process of solving the treasure hunt as released by Dream Theater and “Team Jacobi”. This is the fifth article, covering the final couple of puzzles. Stay tuned for the BONUS section!

Puzzle #16

The fifteen ‘puzzle pieces’ given by Freddy form a photograph:

The picture shows Dream Theater in the studio where they had written and recorded their new album from Monday, June 11, to Friday, September 14; the photograph was likely taken on the morning of Tuesday, July 10. (Judging by the video posted on that date on the band’s official Facebook page, in which they are wearing the same clothes.) The writing on the big, yellow notepad to the left was previously seen on Wednesday, July 11, in a picture posted on the band’s official Facebook page:

From Saturday 20 to Friday 25, Freddy tweeted six kinematics-related questions:

Freddy then proceeded to ‘like’ over 40 replies consisting of correct answers:

#	Answer	Reason
1		The result of dividing the distance the silent man needs to walk by his speed.
2		The result –in meters– of multiplying the sparrow’s speed by the duration of its flight. (With ‘hour’ converted into ‘second’, or vice versa, or both to a common unit.)
3		The result of multiplying our speed, which is equivalent to the speed of light, by the time we travel out of control, which is equivalent to 3 years.
4		The result of multiplying the dog’s speed by one hour, which is the time it takes for Freddy’s friend to catch up with him. (The fashion in which the dog runs is irrelevant.)
5		The number that went to market for certain; the cats and sheep probably moved in the opposite direction, the alligators might have been sleeping and, for all we know, the legs of the other animals were amputated.
6		The number of times that the train speed is higher than the walking speed. (The distance walked and time spent are irrelevant.)

On Friday, November 2, Freddy tweeted one last question:

Of course, the answer is 90.

Put together chronologically, the seven answers to Freddy’s questions form the telephone number (585) 310-2390, which –according to the area code– corresponds to a client in western New York.

Those who called the number heard a ‘tick-tock’-type sound followed by:

Close your eyes and begin to relax…

The above is the very first thing that listeners experience when playing Metropolis pt.2: Scenes from a memory, Dream Theater’s fifth studio album; this hints at where to go next: https://vailrenovations84552723.wordpress.com/1-51, the URL of the solved page for the seventh puzzle, titled after that album. (See Puzzle #7.)

When re-entering the page, two differences can be found: there is a hidden message underneath the previous last line, and the final dot is clickable.

The dot redirects to another password-protected entry at Vail Renovations site. By inputting Syme2018 as password, the entry is accessed.

The filled table is:

A small, black upper-case letter is hidden in each of the fifteen puzzle pieces:

Puzzle	#1	#2	#3
Letter	‘D’	‘S’	‘Y’
Puzzle	#4	#5	#6
Letter	‘R’	‘F’	‘R’
Puzzle	#7	#8	#9
Letter	‘O’	‘G’	‘T’
Puzzle	#10	#11	#12
Letter	‘P’	‘L’	‘A’
Puzzle	#13	#14	#15
Letter	‘N’	‘K’	‘V’

Ordered from left to right and top to bottom, the fifteen letters are:

T Y S P N K V A O D R L R G F

These are assigned to the fifteen small pictures at the top of Freddy’s entry – and, therefore, to the corresponding words in the table:

Letter	T	Y	S	P	N
Picture
Letter	K	V	A	O	D
Picture
Letter	R	L	R	G	F
Picture

In a similar fashion to previous puzzles, small marks in some cells indicate numbers of positions the letters are to be shifted in the basic, 26-letter Latin alphabet, either to the right (‘+2’) or to the left (every other mark); this way, ‘G’ becomes ‘I’, ‘P’ becomes ‘C’, and so on. After applying all shifts, and adding an ‘E’ to the end (as Freddy ordered), the resulting letters are:

D I S T A N C E O V E R T I M E

The ‘head over here’ line in Freddy’s entry links to the final website in the hunt.

By inputting DISTANCEOVERTIME as password, the treasure appears.