Ever seen this? "The Arizona Wildcat May Day mystery."

[Minstrel Boy]

http://www.maydaymystery.org/mayday/

It's new to me:

On May 1st, 1995, I ran across the first Mayday page - in the Arizona Daily Wildcat, the student-run campus newspaper. The cryptic mix of languages, symbols, and mathematics intrigued me, but I chalked it up to an obscure campus organization, or some fraternity. Or drugs - I was, after all, a freshman.

One year later, on May 1st, 1996, I saw my second Mayday page. I knew something was up, but I did no research.

A year after that, in 1997, I saw the third Mayday page. By then I had gone to work for the Arizona Daily Wildcat - as their webmaster - and I had new resources available to me. I had back issues, and the Internet.

I entered the Game.

After a two-week frenzy of digging through dusty back issues, hunting down obscure sources, chasing leads, and rejoicing in the sheer mystery of what I had found, I assessed the situation:

I had discovered a very local, very obscure mystery with roots reaching back into the 1970's

Someone, somewhere, is spending a decent amount of money to propagate a complex logic puzzle

The complexity of the puzzles was mindboggling, encompassing cryptic historical references, symbology, languages and mathematical calculations. Someone is spending a great deal of time and brainpower to construct these mysteries

Lastly, much to my delight, the Game is still afoot. The Mayday Pages continue!

I have unraveled the Mayday pages as far as I can, and I am far from the goal. I need help.

I need your help.


UPDATE: 2.1.99
Myself and a few others have been contacted by the people(?) behind the pages. Their emails make a few things very clear, so in the name of not pissing them off any further than I already have, I make a few clarifications:

They say it is not a game
They say it has some sort of 'cause'
They say it is not necessarily Tucson-centric
They say we're getting there, but pointed out some large errors and missing portions, clarified a few wrong assumptions
And, yeah, I spelled 'Lamas' wrong in about nine million different places. Sheesh....
I told you it was weird...

[AZCat]

1. Uhhh... It's news to me, and I go there!

I've never seen one of these "May Day Pages", although I'm not usually sane at that point in the semester.

Is it possible the site is a prank? :shrug:

[Minstrel Boy]

2. Even if it's a hoax, it's pretty amazing.

There's an index here of the "May Day" pages going back to 1981:

http://www.maydaymystery.org/mayday/texts/index.html

[AZCat]

3. Here's the archive site for the Daily Wildcat

Arizona Daily Wildcat - Archives

May Day Issues:

2004 - No May Day issue
May 1, 2003
May 1, 2002
May 1, 2001
May 1, 2000
1999 - No May Day issue
May 1, 1998
May 1, 1997
May 1, 1996
1995 - No May Day issue
1994 - No May Day issue

That's as far back as the archives go.

[AZCat]

4. Nevermind, it does not appear they carry ad archives

Maybe the campus library has the Daily Wildcat archived on microfiche.

[Minstrel Boy]

5. Thanks for your efforts anyway n/t

[AZCat]

6. No problem

I'll nip by the library on Wednesday and see if I can scrounge anything up.