11. Deciphering SOS

James told Rudran, “I can’t remember the dream Rudh. I stopped taking bed coffee without brushing from this New Year. I will catch you after brush and bath”

Rudran said “Ok James” and left the room.

They both had their breakfast. James switched on the modem and connected to the internet in his laptop. He opened the Internet Explorer and Google which was his homepage opened. He searched the term SOS. The first result he obtained was Wikipedia’s explanation on SOS. The content of the site was:

SOS is the commonly used description for the International Morse code distress signal (· · · — — — · · ·). This distress signal was first adopted by the German government in radio regulations effective April 1, 1905, and became the worldwide standard when it was included in the second International Radiotelegraphic Convention, which was signed on November 3, 1906, and became effective on July 1, 1908.

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In popular usage, SOS became associated with phrases such as "Save Our Ship", "Save Our Souls", "Save Our Skins", "Save Our Stuff", "Shoot Our Ship", "Shoot On Sight", "Sinking Our Ship", "Survivors On Shore", "Save Our Sluts", and "Signal On Sand". It is mostly known by "Save Our Ship" and/or "Save Our Souls". However, these phrases were a later development, most likely used to help remember the correct letters—something known as a backronym.

‘The word backronym means reverse acronym. So could SOS be a reverse acronym in the case of the murderer too. If so what did that mean?’, James was thinking all this. And he saw a hyperlink in the same page stating about SOS (game). He clicked on that and it took him to a page where the explanation about the SOS game was given. It read:

SOS is a (usually two-player) game played with paper and pencil, typically played by children. It is similar to tic-tac-toe but with more complexity.

Before play begins, a grid of n × n squares (with n being 3 or more) is drawn. The first player to move (which can be chosen by a coin toss or the roll of the dice) writes either S or O in one of the squares, whereupon it becomes the second player's turn. The second player has the option of writing an S or O in an empty square.

The object of the game is for each player to attempt to create (on their turn) the straight sequence S-O-S among connected squares (diagonally, horizontally, or vertically), and to create as many such sequences as they can.

If a player succeeds in creating an SOS, that player immediately takes another turn, and continues to do so until no SOS can be created on their turn. Otherwise turns alternate between players after each move.

Keeping track of who made which SOSs can be done by, e.g., one player circling their SOSs and the other player drawing a line through theirs.

Once the grid has been filled up, the winner is the player who made the most SOSs. If the grid is filled up and the number of SOSs for each player is the same, then the game is a draw. If the grid is filled up and no SOS has been made, then the game is again a draw.

‘Nice game’, thought James, he has never heard of this game. He has played tic-tac-toe. But SOS seemed to be far more interesting game. ‘And does the murderer have any connection with this game?’, James could not make up his mind. He switched on the TV so that he could spend some time relaxing. Making his mind free could make him think in a better way.

He did not stick to one particular channel. He was switching from one channel to the other continuously and finally he settled on the history channel. A program titled the beasts who ruled us was broadcasted. The program on that day was about Adolf Hitler. After around fifteen minutes of broadcast there was a commercial break. The first advertisement had a boy stealing cream biscuits and consuming them, it was some biscuit advertisement. The next advertisement was of Sprite drink, some actress was telling that it was her favorite drink. James’ OOBT worked at that instant, he remembered about the ellipse photo and the sprite bottle inside that ellipse. He thought whether this advertisement had any connection with the next murder.

James used Google as his companion once again. He searched the term Sprite TV commercials India. He got the result as Angelika. He searched about actress Angelika in Wikipedia. The information he got was shocking.