Solution - The Lost Dream

by Craig Kasper

Answer: Click here to reveal

Each alphanumeric string presented in this puzzle is both incomplete and partly encoded, with the digits in each string standing in for letters. To simultaneously complete the string and provide the means to decode the digits, an internet top-level domain must be added to the end of each string. So, for example, adding the ".bar" top-level domain to the string "s2c3olum.", and using the second letter of "bar" for the 2 and the third for the 3 results in "sacrolum.bar", or "sacrolumbar". The complete list of words and phrases presented in this way is as follows:

sacrolum.bar

billlaim.beer

vegetativ.estate

chowc.how

kitchens.ink

sayp.lease

regi.men

oingoboi.ngo

bjornb.org

producersur.plus

undercur.rent

dewcla.wed


Note that the list of strings was presented in alphabetical order by TLD. Reordering the list to be alphabetized by the resulting words/phrases, then decoding the twelve digits underneath the puzzle (presented in TCP/IP format as a hint to what is happening within the puzzle) using the letter which that digit stands for in the respective top-level domain encoding, yields the answer BROWN NUMBERS.