Last October, I posted about the San Jose Semaphore, a public art project that decorated the top of Adobe headquarters in San Jose that also happened to be a puzzle.  Little did I know that, at the time, the puzzle had already been solved.

It’s recently been revealed that the puzzle was solved by Bob Mayo and Mark Snesrud.  The answer: The semaphore cycles through the entire text of Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49.  It takes a few months for the semaphore to cycle through the whole thing.  There’s a great description of how the pair solved the puzzle in the San Jose Mercury News.

San Jose Semaphore is a permanent public artwork by artist Ben Rubin that sits atop Adobe Headquarters in San Jose (thanks to basement.org for the link.) It looks like four flathead screws that rotate every 7.2 seconds. There’s also a soundtrack on a low power radio broadcast that can be picked up within a few blocks of the tower on AM 1680.

Apperently, this is some kind of coded message which the public is encouraged to try to crack. For those who don’t live near San Jose, there’s also an online simulcast which should provide all that you need to break the code.

I found this article from the Monterey County Herald about puzzle designer Lee Krasnow (recently written about on boingboing.) Krasnow has an exhibit opening this week at the Pacific Grove (California) Art Center called “Pursuit of Perfection” that will showcase hardwood geometric interlocking puzzles.

The article is worth reading because Krasnow is an interesting person who can speak very eloquently about puzzles. From the article:

“My inspiration as an artist,” he said, “comes from the limitless complexity and beauty of mathematics that I see in the world around me. I strive to produce my artwork with as little flaw as possible because the closer it comes to geometric perfection, the more beautiful it is to look upon, and the more pleasing it is to hold and manipulate.

“My ultimate goal is to create things which beg to be played with — mechanisms which look simple enough yet hide complexity that is mysterious and fascinating.”

For those of us who live no where near this exhibit, we can see pictures of Krasnow’s work on his website: www.pacificpuzzleworks.com