Sunday, October 2, 2011

Sean Maher and the Nonary Game


999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors is one of my favorite games, and I’m currently running through my fourth (and so far, best) ending. For the unknowing, it’s a somewhat obscure survival horror puzzle game/visual novel for the DS. If that sentence didn’t make any sense, here’s a hint: it’s a dark and engaging story with parts about screwdrivers.
The big gimmick of 999’s setup is that everything is based around the mathematical concept called a “digital root.” Add up each digit in a number until you’re down to a single digit, and that’s the digital root. An example:
48 -> 4 + 8 = 12 -> 1 + 2 = 3
The digital root of 48 is 3. Anyway, you’ll soon be thinking of everything in terms of digital roots while playing 999, as is the case with Sean Maher’s (of Firefly fame, as the handsome doctor Simon Tam) coming out. Wait, what?
Here are a few things related to Sean Maher and the number nine:
  • He has been in a relationship with a man for nine years
  • “Sean Maher” has nine letters in his name (and if you took each name’s length - 4 and 5 - for the number 45, that is a multiple of 9 and has a digital root of 9)
  • He came out to Entertainment Weekly in September, the ninth month (“September” also has nine letters)
  • He is 36 years old - a multiple of 9 (and all multiples of 9 have 9 as their digital root)
  • It has been nine years since Firefly, the (terrific) show that put him in his best-known role, Simon Tam (fun fact: Firefly first aired in September)
Just sayin’.

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