How to open the safe in the apartment in Chinatown Detective Agency – Cuneiform number translation guide
Time to bust out the calculator.
Jon Yelenic 
Screenshot by Gamepur
During Chinatown Detective Agency’s “A Cloven Pine” case, you’ll enter an apartment shortly after deciphering a stone tablet. Inside the apartment, you’ll find a safe that you’ll need a special code to access. This code can be found on the computer to the right of the safe, but there’s just one problem: It’s written in Sumerian, meaning you’ll have to translate it to open the safe. This guide will show you how to translate the code.
The code, as it appears on the computer, spells out four distinct values: 3, 51, 37, and 12. We determined these values by cross-referencing the symbols shown with a table showing the ancient numerals.
However, the code is not “3513712.” You’ll need to use the sexagesimal number system, which was used by ancient Sumerians, in order to get the code. In short, this means that you’ll have to multiply each deciphered value by a multiple of 60 (the sexagesimal system uses 60 as its base), and what that multiple is will depend on how many values are to the right of the value in question.
In this case, since there are three values to the right of the number “3,” you would multiply it by 60 to the third power, or 216,000. The next value, 51, would be multiplied by 60 to the second power, or 3,600, and so on.
Below are the calculations we did to get this code:
- 3 times 216,000: 648,000
- 51 times 3,600: 183,600
- 37 times 60: 2,220
- 12: 12 stays as is, as it is multiplied by 60 to the power of zero — which equals one.
- 648,000 + 183,600 + 2,220 + 12 = 833,832
833832 is the code you will need to unlock the safe. Interact with it, enter the code, and it’ll pop right open. Inside, you’ll find a slip of paper directing you to fly to New Delhi to meet a mysterious man named “Harry.”
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