A Search in the Basement

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When you do science, it gets written on the walls.

You will need the following diagrams (in no particular order):

1. Тетрис

You're playing Tetris with your old buddies... unfortunately, your screen is in black and white! How many possible arrangements of pieces could have produced the observed screen?

2. Exploring the Cosmos

You are an orbit explorer! You begin on the orbit in the bottom right corner that circles each center. After this orbit, you only care about orbits that are completely contained in the diagram. You start moving along the orbit clockwise, and whenever you encounter a new orbit for the first_time, you switch to it. You'll reach a point where there's a tiny gap later on, and you find your spaceship can jump across it just fine. How many orbits do you partially explore before you start spinning in circles?

3. Leaves Always Tell You Something

Blue = 0 and red = 1.

4. The Molecules of Life

VNV-HLD VNV-NPK NPK-HVD HVD-LDN

5. The Fish!

Every night, when you dream, you find yourself an intelligent cod fish that speaks with its owner. While you usually have a varied diet, today you feel very picky, and you decide to play a game to tell them what you want to eat.

  1. I do NOT want something that is alone in its own phylum.
  2. I do NOT want to eat anything that can fly.
  3. I do NOT want to eat anything that burrows into the ground.
  4. I do NOT want to eat anything that eats lots of jellyfish.
  5. My food should NOT have to scavenge to find its own shell.
  6. I do NOT want to eat things even resembling rodents OR spiders.
  7. There should NOT be a gesture with a name similar to my prey's name.
  8. I do NOT want my prey to be from the class with the most unique orders among what I usually eat.
  9. I do NOT want my prey to be from the same genus as another creature that I already eliminated.

I hope you give me the right prey! >:|

6. A Great School
Fourth came the Egyptian who taught about the One,
Fifth came the Roman with the geocentric model,
Sixth came he who wrote the Elements,
Seventh came the cynic, the son of the mintmaster,
Eighth came she who taught the masses and developed conic sections,
Ninth came the hedonist.


Each of the six have their own favorite integers that form a sequence. What number is next to follow them?

M. Putting It All Together
  1. -5 (A1Z26)
  2. +3 (A1Z26)
  3. MOD 26 (A1Z26)
  4. AS GIVEN
  5. (5)
  6. MOD 3 (A1Z26)

...are all a kind of what?