Bump, Bump, Bump. Stormseeker said you are near to the answer. Any updates?
We’re heading into a dead end , i think.
I have started work on composing an actual narrative-esque storyline as it came to my attention that the wiki “Storyline” page was more of a summary of clues than an actual story. That said, I will be posting the story within the wiki as well as the blog.
Don’t give up, folks. We’re close.
EDIT: And here it is, my take on the Pizza Code Mystery plot.
Has anyone figured out what “the pizza is a lie” means? Why is the pizza a lie?
I was snooping around in Wikipedia reading about lies and w/e else I think is relevant to this ARG in hopes of shedding some light on the subject and I came across this…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrication_%28science%29
I also read that Halos was a Greek city that was destroyed by an earthquake and left abandoned.
@toxyn: It doesn’t have to have a meaning. It could be just a reference to the “the cake is a lie” phrase from Portal.
Wasn’t the point of “The Pizza Is A Lie” that Dr. Horn was conducting some kind of secret research, and that he was disguising the costs of the research as excessive pizza delivery?
Has anyone ever brought up that map from Questionable Ethics? 70 pages is a lot to go through, soo…
The bullet marks seem to be around:
New Mexico (Black Mesa, HL)*
Poland / Slovakia (Eastern Europe, HL2)
Saudi Arabia / Iraq (???)
Mozambique / Malawi (???)
*This location is marked by a metallic bullet hole, unlike the others.
Where in QE is this map? I don’t remember seeing it.
On another note, assuming people are still trying, has anyone made any progress on cracking the HALOS file cipher? I’d take a shot at it, but I don’t even know where to start with this kind of thing.
I’m aware of what the message on the first post means. All the same, considering that we’re supposedly close to an answer of some sort, I don’t think we need to wait for Xen to keep making progress, for now at least.
I seem to remember someone suggesting earlier that the “BENALOHPAILLIER” password was a hint towards a Cascade cipher of some sort. Has anyone who understands cryptography looked into this? All I’m really good for here is brainstorming, haha.
One thing I’ve been thinking of… Is it possible that the “Subject Analysis: Tenacious” thing is a hint, as well as a reference to Portal/Portal 2? Perhaps as a hint to check around the teleportation labs in Lambda Core? I’m assuming that’s already been done, and yes, I’m grasping at straws, I know, but I can’t help but wonder about it all the same.
That map is located in a conference room. From the lobby, go down the first hallway, it’s on your left right before the high security checkpoint.
Clue 5 says:
[…] I have programmed HALOS to send in level seven cases[…]
While clue 6 says:
[[ProxyhoSt@-84-9-I23-345.dslgb.com//closed.proxy.accepTEd//?OTR,3,4,?OTR:[INCOMING TRANSMISSION]ThEpIzZaIsaLiE…HALOS[Transmission Ends]]
Count the number of capital letters in “ThEpIzZaIsaLiE”: 7. Coincidence, or part of solving the clue?
TEIZILE is not a user login with BENALOHPAILLIER… so no luck yet.
hmm, how about PSTETEIZILE? (capital letters, excluding 2x"OTR" and “INCOMING TRANSMISSION”)
Wait, user login? For what?
PSTEOTR is also 7 cases
I think that might just be coincidence, really.
What else do we know about the “sites”? Who was checking them out? Welsh? What does Horseshoe Pizza have to do with anything?
Are these sites the actual sites, or are they really “sites” like bmrf.us is a site?
What do we know about the other scientists? Dr Stone? Dr Montero?
I just noticed that the Proxyhost part of the last IRC clue is different than the others.
ProxyhoSt@-84-9-I23-345.dslgb.com
Note the capitalized S in proxyhost, the I instead of 1 in -I23-, and the final part of the pseudo-IP/hostname is 345, which is outside of the range of legal IP numbers.
So with this in mind:
All out of place capital letters are: SITE TEIZILE
Hmm… Maybe “SITE”'s hinting at us to check the websites we’ve got for something we might have missed…?
Yeah, I dunno.
I’m like, 150% sure this is grasping at straws, but for what it’s worth… “TEI ZILE” is one character away from being Romanian for “THREE DAYS”. I doubt it means anything though, considering that the capitalized letters that part of the message are just alternating… For the most part.
(although thinking about it, Half-Life takes place over three days, doesn’t it?)
I just realized that we are re-hashing older stuff.
SITE: thepizzaisalie/HALOS
On to the next bit 
Does the taco shack fit in at all? Or is that purely an easter egg? What have we compiled on that?
I don’t know if there’s anything relevant there. I’ll go take a look in-game, be a few minutes…
EDIT: Nope, doesn’t seem to be anything… There are a few documents on the clipboard that I noticed, but I don’t think they’re related. What was the command to see material info? I might take a look at the source .VTF’s and see if there’s anything there.