I’ve been wanting to do a post about Boards of Canada for some time now. What better time to talk about Boards of Canada than now? Boards of Canada has left number clues all over the place allegedly hinting at a new album and/or who knows what else? The point is that BOC are playing mind games with their fans. Needless to say, this is extremely entertaining and fun for BOC’s fans. Many people are hard at work, as I speak, frantically trying to decipher BOCs code. There’s a lot of clever theories out there, but since we don’t have all the clues, everything is pretty much pure speculation.

Now, I have to hand it to BOC. What they’re doing is absolute genius. This is the most exciting and fun album promotion/campaign I’ve ever encountered. Not only that, but their code is so mysterious that, even with the internet aflame in hypothesis, no one’s been able to figure anything out with certainty. I really think BOC should receive a Grammy or some sort of special recognition from the music-loving community. I commend BOC for their mysterious genius.

The reason why I’m posting this is because I have a theory that I really think may be onto something. I tried to post it on Reddit, but it’s getting blocked by the spam filter, probably because its too long. I wanted to make sure I get this idea published for BOC fans, because I may need their help for this one.

Here’s the information we have so far: six slots, each containing six digit numbers. So far, four have been revealed along with their position in the the whole series. One number has been revealed but its position hasn’t (what’s being called the NPR number, because it was revealed on NPR). There are also a few different word clues which virtually no one has made sense of yet, so I’ll ignore them for now. Here’s what we have so far:

——/628315/717228/936557/——/519225

699742 (NPR number, which has no home yet)

Notice the differences between the numbers according to their position in the order of the sequence. Let me explain. Let’s assume, for now, that the NPR number is the 5th slot.

——/628315/717228/936557/699742/519225

Ignore, for now, whatever might be in the first slot. Take all the first digits of each number:

_67965

Take the differences in order. The difference between 6 and 7 is 1, the difference between 7 and 9 is 2, and so forth. You’ll get this:

_1231

Following so far? Okay, so apply the same rules to all the positions for each number, you’ll have something like

_1231

_1268

_1130

_1325

_1312

_3153

Notice that the second number (we can’t know the first ones since we don’t have that number yet) are all 1 except the last one, which is 3. Notice how the differences are generally pretty close together with a few exceptions. There does appear to possibly be some Fibonacci stuff going on here, considering that 1, 2, 3, and 5 are the most common numbers here, and there is one 8. So, the only non-Fibonnacci number is 6. Which… we all know by now BOC’s obsession with 6. There’s more 1s than any other number, which would make sense considering that 1 appears twice in the actual Fibonacci sequence: 0,1,1,3,5,8,13…

So here are the total patterns I’m noticing with this:

•Every second number is 1 except the last one

•All numbers are Fibonacci numbers except 1. That number is 6

•Some two-digit numbers appear more than once: 12 appears three times, 13 (which is a Fibonacci number) appears three times, 31 appears twice.

It seems to me there has to be some sort of pattern here. These things can’t just be a coincidence, right? I honestly think I might be on the right track here with this analysis, but it’s difficult to complete the picture without the next and final clue, which may help make sense of this.

It also should be noted that you can keep taking the differences and until it reduces down to binary. I don’t know if there’s any significance to this, but it may prove to be important at some point.

Let’s keep going here and apply the same system as we did before to the new numbers:

_12

_12

_13

_23

_21

_22

Notice that you have 12, 12, 13 in the first 3 numbers here, similar as before. Just an interesting observation that the same numbers keep popping up and patterns keep emerging that don’t seem to have much meaning. For example, the second digit in all these numbers are 111222, then the third is 223312.

Let’s keep going.

_1

_1

_2

_1

_1

_0

I’m going to guess that when we have the final clue, this could be reduced to binary. Like I said, this may not mean anything. I’m more interested in the Fibonacci numbers from earlier. I feel there might be a pattern there I’m overlooking. If there’s anyone out there interested in this and might be interested in helping me see any more patterns, let me know.

Boards of Canada is easily one of my favorite bands, and I really look forward to seeing how this all plays out. I really can’t wait for the new material!