26

There is a giant rectangle floating above me that says 2 things:

  1. Please answer this security question
  2. Security question hint: my first half is what it is my second half is half of what made it

And there are 8 blocks on the grounds I'm assuming I'm supposed to arrange into a word. I've got all the letters written down by block but nothing is jumping out at me. Any help?

Private Pansy
  • 13,384
  • 19
  • 88
  • 133
Jarrod
  • 261
  • 1
  • 3
  • 3
  • Might help if we knew what the blocks had on them. – Niro Apr 14 '12 at 03:50
  • It's just a bunch of letters. Here they are grouped by block:
    1. G M S A
    2. T N H B
    3. Z Q E X/K (not sure on this last letter)
    4. M S A G
    5. T N H B
    6. V O I C
    7. N H B T
    8. R L F Y
     – Jarrod Apr 14 '12 at 03:51
  • @Jarrod You can edit additional information into the body of your question by hitting the "Edit" link, located in the lower left of the question here. It'll make the additional info easier to see if it's there rather than in the comments. :) – FAE Apr 14 '12 at 12:47
  • Intriguing puzzle.. perhaps if you explained the rules for solving these, someone could help you. I can only make two words from the first half: STEM and AHEM. The second half half NITY? As in "ETER-NITY", or something. – TLP Apr 14 '12 at 14:48
  • I can't edit, but here's a link to an image of the room from another thread: http://i.imgur.com/S6Ydr.jpg – Wolf Apr 14 '12 at 21:54
  • 1
    The rules: there are eight cubes, each with a "letter" on all four visible sides (can't see top or bottom). Jarrod listed the sides of each cube. They need to be organized in a 3-D space to answer the two hints above. It's possible that the "halves" referenced mean that there is one eight-character word (made of two four-character halves), but it's also possible that the cubes need to spell another word when viewing from the side. – Wolf Apr 14 '12 at 22:00
  • I really want the answer to be metatron. Each time I try spelling it though - no dice. It would make sense, given that there's a Metatron's Cube, and meta could be a meaning for 'it is what it is'. Spelling spread out, packed in tight - either way it doesn't appear to solve it. –  Apr 14 '12 at 22:49
  • There are 2 cubes for "A G M S", 3 for "B H N T", 1 for "C I O U/V", 1 for "E K/Q X Z" and 1 for "F L R Y". We can rotate a cube by holding it and changing the perspective. I tried "NAMETRON" but it does nothing... >.< – Gimlao Apr 14 '12 at 21:55
  • There's also a thread on http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/961239-fez/62533971 for this puzzle. No dice yet. I'm wondering if the "halves" aren't even. 5 letter word, then 3 letter word or something? – skovacs1 Apr 14 '12 at 23:45
  • There are 8! arrangements of cubes with one set of 3 identical cubes and another set of 2 identical cubes so 8!/3!2! so 3360 different arrangements of cubes. Each of the 8 cubes can have one of 4 rotations so 4^8 = 65536 possible rotation arrangements so 65536*3360=220200960 possible answers if I remember my combinatorial math correctly. Brute forcing this one seems unpleasant especially when we can't rule out non-words or be guaranteed of how this breaks down – skovacs1 Apr 15 '12 at 01:46
  • Even throwing the possible letter sets into an anagram generator that does dictionary look-up against real words would still require 40960 separate entries into the anagram generator and then you'd have to sift through the results to find those that fit the hints and that assumes that we're looking for a real word/words here. – skovacs1 Apr 15 '12 at 01:54
  • I used a combination of egrep regular expressions and managed to get it down to 131 words, NONE of which was the actual answer! :o( Recipe: Find 8-character words with only the matching characters: egrep -i '\b[msagnhbtzkqexicuvoyrlf]{8}\b' /usr/share/dict/words Then pipe its output to a series of subtractive commands that remove words with too many duplicate letters (>1 of [zkqex]|[icuvo]|[yrlf], >2 of [msag], >3 of [nhbt]): …/words | egrep -iv '([^zkqex]*[zkqex]){2}[^zkqex]*' | … | egrep -iv '([^nhbt]*[nhbt]){4}[^nhbt]*' It sounds like talking to the owls was the clue I needed. Fun! – Bill Feth Apr 19 '22 at 05:53

4 Answers4

27

Move the blocks to spell out METATRON when read vertically (down) with your head tilted to the right. Do this within view of the entrance, and rotate the view to the back to finish the puzzle.

METATRON

Afterwards...

another red "heart" cube piece will appear. (image)

Community
  • 1
Wolf
  • 35,831
  • 145
  • 296
  • 477
  • Confirmed multiple times @ http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/961239-fez/62544821. This is the answer. Upvote at your leisure. – skovacs1 Apr 15 '12 at 03:33
  • 5
    Where does Metatron come from? Are we just supposed to find the answer or is it found by translating some text somewhere? – Michel Billard Apr 15 '12 at 17:28
  • 2
    You need to translate the floating pillar. As per the hints in the question details, META "is what it is" and TRON "is half of what made it" (Polytron, the game dev). The trick was really reading the blocks vertically with your head tilted. – Wolf Apr 15 '12 at 17:39
  • I can confirm that this worked for me, but only if I made "METATRON" face the door. The picture shows that but it is not clear from the answer that that is required. – murgatroid99 Apr 16 '12 at 17:01
  • 1
    I cannot spell Metatron with the blocks i have, no matter which way I rotate my head. I do not have the same symbols that are shown above! – Thomas Thorogood May 20 '12 at 13:46
  • 9
    @TomThorogood You may have to rotate some of the blocks individually, by rotating the camera while holding a block. – Keaanu May 22 '12 at 03:45
  • 1
    Oh wow. I never would have thought of that! Nice. – Thomas Thorogood May 22 '12 at 07:33
  • 1
    Man, the input on this is so picky. I got Metatron on my own, and then realized that it needed to be right-to-left, but wouldn't have ever gotten vertical or spin-to-back-to-submit on my own… – Matchu May 07 '13 at 18:35
  • Solving this puzzle is so not gratifying. You need to rely on the internet to solve it. – wip Sep 30 '13 at 13:01
6

What this is=Meta

Second half is half of what made me=Tron (Half of Polytron)

badp
  • 56,684
  • 51
  • 238
  • 442
Gary
  • 61
  • 1
3

EDIT: Metatron is the correct answer, if it doesn't work right away, try rotating the screen.

I've tried both nametron and metatron without any luck (see pictures below).

Maybe there are several possible answer for this puzzle. I'll see if I can spell gametron next.

Nametron

Metatron

François Cassin
  • 704
  • 2
  • 6
  • 13
  • Turns out I had to rotate the screen and back to the answer for it to work. (Metatron is the right one) – François Cassin Apr 15 '12 at 15:26
  • 3
    If you use the "edit" button near the bottom left area of your answer you can edit it to reflect the fact that Metatron is the correct answer. As of now your post doesn't answer the question. – Wipqozn Apr 15 '12 at 20:04
2

You can actually find the awnser multiple ways. First is what @Sean said, the second way is to talk to all the owls. One of the owls says "the 64 bit god" and flys off. This was my thinking:

  • 64 bit god translates to metatron.
  • Obelisk looks like thing from 2001 space odesy.
  • Monkeys worshiped obelisk in 2001.
  • Obelisk = god
  • God = metatron

PUZZLE SOLVED.

badp
  • 56,684
  • 51
  • 238
  • 442
Curtisimo
  • 29
  • 1
  • 2
    Also, one of the owls sings something like "hexaedron, octaedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron", which in the end looks like to be a reference to Metatron's cube: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metatron%27s_Cube – Lloeki May 07 '12 at 16:39
  • 3
    How do you come up with "64 bit god translates to metatron"? –  Jun 24 '19 at 03:03