21 into 1

"21 into 1" is a hint given to us by Stormseeker. It was first discovered when it was posted on the bmrf.us wiki page on the 26th of August, 2014, accompanied by another hint "This unlocks at the start of the end". It was given to us by the same wiki contributor who gave us the hint about the philosopher's stone being a red herring. Later, on the 2nd of January, 2015, IRC chat users Krydar, Apdap, and TornadoAP, as well as forum user Manhacks, discovered another version of the hint: "21 goes into 1". It was found in the http://www.thestormseeker.com/js/ directory index of Stormseeker's Website, embedded inside a JavaScript comment block in all of the .js script files in that directory index. The JavaScript files were dated November 25, 2013, which predates the "21 into 1" hint posted on the wiki.

Content of JavaScript message
/*! *Oh hai there, someones bein a nosy bounder aren't they...  *Looking for ARG related stuffs? *I have a hint for you *21 goes into 1 *Don't trust anyone, it's not safe. */

A new clue in Xen
A new "21 into 1" hint was found on a whiteboard in Dr. Horn's Xen Lair.

As seen in the image to the right, it is in the form of a hand-drawn circle with "21 into ONE " written inside it. At the top, outside the circle, "WHAT IS THIS THING" and "WHY DOES IT CALL" is written.

At the center, there is a spiral shape or pattern which spirals inwards in a clockwise direction. 16 dots form a circle around the spiral. Outside the circle of dots, five triangular shapes have been placed in a symmetric but non-regular pentagonal pattern, where four of the sides appear to be of equal length and the side at the bottom is roughly half the length of the other sides. The pentagon shape has been placed so that it is pointing upwards. Incidentally, the 16 dots and the five triangular shapes add up to 21. Next to each of the triangular shapes are mysterious symbols, which have now been identified as being letters from the Asuran alphabet (see below). Between the triangular shapes there are arrows pointing in a circular clockwise direction around the spiral.

Inside the circle, we also find " 5 AXIS COORDS. → 2 MORE ".

Below the figure is a diagram of a coordinate system, which has been found to be a reference to Stargate. In Stargate, stargates typically use a seven-part coordinate system, where the six first parts describe the destination, and the seventh part indicates the point of origin. It is likely to be related to the mysterious gate found in the lair near the whiteboard, which was initially believed to be a Stargate, but later identified as an Asura gate from Guild Wars 2.

Also below, we find "ICOSIKAIHENAGON ??", "OR IS IT A HEXADECAGON ??". An icosikaihenagon is a 21-sided polygon, a hexadecagon is 16-sided.

To the top right, the word " SNAX?? " is written with a line drawn from it into the "21 into 1" circle.

Symbols that spell out 'MYONS'
On Aug 14, 2019 (UTC), player Flavrans discovered that the mysterious gate in Dr. Horn's Xen Lair looked remarkably similar to an Asura gate from Guildwars 2, it was quickly discovered that the script symbols were Asuran script. Starting with the top symbol, and reading the symbols in a clockwise direction as indicated by the arrows, the symbols spell out the word or name "MYONS".

Player Gunsrequiem then noted that he had found a forum post titled "Meet the Myons", on a forum for the guild, of which Stormseeker is a member. In this forum post, Stormseeker presented the Myons—a whole family of characters which Stormseeker (the puppetmaster) has created in the Guildwars 2 universe, one of which is his main playing character. It was also noted that Stormseeker has previously used his main Myon character as an avatar on the Black Mesa Community Forums.

Spiral pattern
After the link to the Guildwars 2 universe had been discovered, it was speculated that the spiral might be a reference to Morgan's Spiral, which is an area in Caledon forest in the Guildwars 2 universe. Stormseeker commented on this on Discord on November 14, 2019: ''morgans spiral is a good theory as to a potential destination, ironically it was the daily jumping puzzle for today, but I doubt its the answer. GW2 really isn't a part of the arg.''

Hints on Discord
In response to a discussion about the City of Dis (which is referenced on the conspiracy whiteboard), Stormseeker posted: "well i mean, its like they say, 21 is this a big number of people experimented on, no, of cities, yes" A user then asked "21 cities in hell?", to which Stormseeker replied: "iirc there is just one, beyond the stix", "interesting thing about hell, it tends to be a mirror".

A later post by a user that proposed the idea that the 21 are mirror versions of the 12 Myons, received a positive reaction emoji (:Myon:) from Stormseeker.

In April, 2020, Stormseeker changed his Discord status message to "12 into 1 into 21". Some time later, he switched the numbers around to read "21 into 1 into 12", and then back to "12 into 1 into 21". From other statements, we know that there are 12 Myons, which suggests that there is a link between the Myons and "21 into 1".

Theories

 * 21 into 1 is somehow related to the Myons.
 * It is somehow related to Dr Horn and HALOS.
 * The in-game pizza has 21 pepperonis in the outermost ring of pepperonis. There are four rings of pepperonis and one in the center: 21, 16, 10, 5, 1 (53 in total). The rings of 21 and 16 pepperonis could be related to the references to the icosikaihenagon and the hexadecagon.
 * 21 and 1 are both triangular numbers.
 * 21, 16 and 1, as well as 12 (12 Myons, 12 interlopers), 5 (5 axis coords) and 7 (5 axis coords + 2 more) are all part of a number sequence known as the Padovan sequence. This sequence became generally known after it was described by a mathematician named Ian Stewart, who went to Cambridge, has a PhD in Lie algebras, and is a popular-science and science fiction writer. He wrote a book called Flatterland, which is a book about dimensions in non-Euclidian geometry. The mention of Ian Stewart received a positive Myon reaction emoji from Stormseeker on Discord . The discovery was followed by a discussion about dimensions, as well as the fact that the game world is made up of triangular polygons where circles are not perfect (which also received a positive reaction ).

Past theories
Below are older theories and facts that have been debunked or no longer believed to be relevant or significant to the puzzle.
 * Forum user thewizard99 showed how both 1 and 21 were numbers in The Fibonacci sequence.
 * 21 goes into 1 is meant to be a hint to decipher the 752 Hex Code in some way.


 * It is somehow tied to the encryption.
 * 21 is 3*7, i.e. two multiplied prime numbers. This is quite often used in asymmetric crypto, like the Benaloh and Paillier ciphers.
 * 21 into 1 is a date, specifically the 21st of January. Suggested by forum user TornadoAP
 * 21 goes into 1 is related to the 21 amino acids that are the building blocks of all human proteins?
 * EP-0021 goes into the Anti-Mass Spectrometer.
 * The subject-verb agreement in "21 goes into 1" dictates that "21" be a singular object.
 * 21 into 1 could be another way of saying 1/21 which equals 0.047619047619..., which is an infinite repeating decimal with a repetend of 047619.
 * Forum user Gunsrequiem suggested it could be a reference to a game of laser duel from the Star Trek TNG episode s04e03 "Brothers" (transcript). This episode is referenced on a monitor in the open floor plan office in the QE chapter.
 * 21 into 1 could be referring to "clock math" where the hour hand is moved 20 hours back from 21:00 to 01:00. In other words, subtract 20 from a number. This could also mean doing modulo 20 arithmetic (taking the remainder of division by 20).
 * The numbers in "21 into 1" could be hex (base 16), where 21 in hex is 33 in decimal.