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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » Old News & Rumors
Deaddrop Puzzle Contest Puzzle Trail
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PlanB
Boot

Joined: 13 Feb 2005
Posts: 40
Location: Little Egypt

 		Probably obvious to you all, but...
I'm not in the game, but I swung by just to see and I'm pretty sure I know what that image is.

rot13 potential spoiler:

Guvf nccrnef gb or n pbybe-pbqrq QAN frdhrapr. V pna vasre gung gur pbybengvba jvyy yvxryl or fvtavsvpnag whqtvat sebz fbzr bs gur bgure pbzzragf va guvf guernq.

PlanB, HTH

PostPosted: Sun Feb 13, 2005 9:59 pm
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toenolla
Boot


Joined: 22 Aug 2004
Posts: 51

 		Well..
It's probably encoding something in the Universal Genetic Code, since it breaks down into codons. In the attached image, I've broken it apart into triplets and made it a little easier to read.

Now the only question is, which color goes with which nucleic acid?
codons.gif
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codons.gif

PostPosted: Sun Feb 13, 2005 10:06 pm
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Gestas
Veteran

Joined: 21 Sep 2004
Posts: 92
Location: Mostly away in Real Life (TM) at present

 		Well, right off the bat, it looks like the red:purple base pair is a C:G, and the blue:green is A:T, based on the fact that C:G base-pairing involves 3 hydrogen bonds, and A:T involves 2. This would seem to correspond to the extra squiggle linking the red:purple pair?

So this would mean
red/purple: either C or G
blue/green: either A or T.

(It could be the other way round, but this seems to make more sense to me - to have a simple sinusoidal link with 2 peaks for the A:T pairing, and three for the C:G pairing)
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Oh freddled gruntbuggly, thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.

PostPosted: Sun Feb 13, 2005 10:33 pm
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toenolla
Boot


Joined: 22 Aug 2004
Posts: 51

 		Color Coding
Red = G makes more sense to me, since if Red=C, four of the first five codons would all encode the same thing.

So we've got
Red = G
Purple = C
Green/Blue = A/T

PostPosted: Sun Feb 13, 2005 10:43 pm
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hungrygaijin
Boot


Joined: 13 Sep 2004
Posts: 48
Location: Brooklyn
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
The dna puzzle was group solved by number coding the colors, big ups to catherwood who figured most of it out, it lead to: /secretdna.php

this was in turn solved by me opening the image from secretdna in notepad (a-duh) which led to: /absolution.php

absolution has an mp3 of piano being...played...for lack of a better word

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 13, 2005 10:44 pm
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Caterpillar
Unfictologist


Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 1887
Location: cem's otherbody

 		The last part sounds like a really bad partial rendition of:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Jesus Loves Me (which I guess sort of fits with Absolution)


PostPosted: Sun Feb 13, 2005 11:46 pm
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BrianEnigma
Entrenched


Joined: 05 Oct 2003
Posts: 1199
Location: Pacific Northwest

 		The music file sounds like it might have a (comparatively quiet) primer at the beginning--perhaps the quiet notes at the start of the file help decode the louder ones near the end? I do not really have an ear for music (nor do I have GarageBand installed anymore, which would allow me to pluck away at a virtual keyboard) so I am not quite sure what those notes may be. The loud notes at the end sound like bad chords. Maybe the combination of keys is important?

Loading the file in an ID3 tag editor shows nothing of real interest--the embedded song title is "Absolution" and no other data seems to exist (or, rather, the fields are blank). Running MP3 Stego against the file reveals nothing for a blank password, nor does it reveal anything for a variety of my password attempts (absolution, Absolution, secret, contest, deaddrop, etc.)

Grrrr... why does all the fun stuff have to start at the beginning of a weekend?
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 3:53 am
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Kender
Decorated


Joined: 09 Aug 2004
Posts: 264
Location: The Netherlands

 		Sorry to intrude upon the new puzzle but I just wanted to post the real solution to Bill's Amazing Journey:

Quote:
Solution:
"The first letter is an L, the second letter is an A, the third letter is a B, the fourth letter is an Y, the fifth letter is an R, the sixth letter is an I, the seventh letter is an N, the eight letter is an T, the ninth letter is a H."

Steps to get here:
1. Check the source, there is a comment at the bottom (From a reliable source: Bill's Amazing Journey)
2. Decode the block using a Railfence Cipher (Time was running out, so he jumped over the fence to get on the southwest tracks.)
3. Replace all capitals with walls to get a maze. Start at the bottom left (southwest) and find the exit. (He followed these tracks for a long time, without even getting lost once!)
4. Use a Playfair decoder to decode the found string of letters using the codeword 'prejudice' (At the end of the tracks he found a place where they have very strict rules, so he decided to play with prejudice.)
5. Translate the result from Dutch to English (So Bill got a ticket from RTM and headed back home to the USA. (RTM is the international airport code for Rotterdam airport in the Netherlands))
6. You solved it! (There he lived happily ever after.)


I thought the playfair might give you some problems so I used a solution that would be guessed when you ran out of ideas Wink

I agree that I should have given the 'story' bit a bit more attention, it was just not clear enough Crying or Very sad

All in all I was very impressed at the way you tackled this one. Well done! Rock On

PostPosted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 4:31 am
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silverthistle
Veteran

Joined: 11 Nov 2004
Posts: 106

 		Attatched is my best effort at recreating the first half on my piano. It's G D E D E F# (aka G flat) A F.
GDEDEFsharpAF.wav
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Filename  GDEDEFsharpAF.wav 
Filesize  702.04KB 
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Corla
Playing .hack//fragmented_twilight II | Lurking in various others

PostPosted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 6:27 am
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hungrygaijin
Boot


Joined: 13 Sep 2004
Posts: 48
Location: Brooklyn
Quote:

5. Translate the result from Dutch to English (So Bill got a ticket from RTM and headed back home to the USA. (RTM is the international airport code for Rotterdam airport in the Netherlands))


Damn, I was right about the airport code after all. Nice puzzle Kender.
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 7:57 am
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Kender
Decorated


Joined: 09 Aug 2004
Posts: 264
Location: The Netherlands

 		joebrent recreated the first bit of the mp3 in midi. The results are:
http://www.josephbrent.com/deaddrop.pdf
and
http://www.josephbrent.com/deaddrop.mp3

Amazing guy that joe. Worshippy

Anyway, the notes used on the first bit are GADADEAF apparently.

PostPosted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:01 am
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Caterpillar
Unfictologist


Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 1887
Location: cem's otherbody

 		On the last part Braille looks to be coming up TO.....

but quickly turns to garble.

I so suck at these music puzzles.....

PostPosted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:21 am
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catherwood
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee

Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 4109
Location: Silicon Valley, CA
Kender wrote:
Solution:
...
4. Use a Playfair decoder to decode the found string of letters using the codeword 'prejudice' ...


Not just any playfair decoder, but one which allows both I and J in the keyword, AND eliminates the Q from the grid.

I was using the playfair applet on Simon Singh's website. I could not reproduce the solution at all. The step which creates diagraphs from the ciphertext eliminates all occurances of J, and it even took the J out of the grid where i forced it in.

As I told Kender in chat, it was a very good set up, but was perhaps too many layers deep. Without any clue about the non-standard playfair grid, we hit a brick wall. (I think I *might* have recognized the output as a foreign language had we not been producing garbled garbage instead.)

Dank je!

PostPosted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 12:48 pm
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rowan
Unfictologist

Joined: 12 Apr 2004
Posts: 1966

 		Two more puzzles down. Cather got the first:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
The absolution.mp3 solution is dreamer

<catherwood> if you look at the notes/chords visually, there are some which repeat
<catherwood> (in the noisy 2nd half, that is)
<catherwood> so, i labeled each "chord" and looked for a pattern
<catherwood> abcdecb is the pattern, where the 3rd and 6th letter match, and the 2nd and 7th match
<catherwood> i gave that patter to strifey to look up in a crypto dictionary he has
<catherwood> and then i tried all 19 words in the resulting list of words which match that pattern


Strifey got the 2nd solution:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
The answer is beanie.php

<strifey> still think this one looks like logowriter
<catherwood> LRFB left/right/front/back
<catherwood> f= forward, sorry
<strifey> letter pattern matching again
<strifey> im assuming its how you write the letters though
<strifey> B = up twice, right 3 times from that point
<strifey> back once
<Bill> did you assume that when you went back, you turned around?
<strifey> um, sorta no...i figured the first one to be B, the 5th to be I, then saw it that matched any patterns


Next up: a little riddle
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 3:29 pm
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Caterpillar
Unfictologist


Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 1887
Location: cem's otherbody
rowan72 wrote:
Strifey got the 2nd solution:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
The answer is beanie.php

<strifey> still think this one looks like logowriter
<catherwood> LRFB left/right/front/back
<catherwood> f= forward, sorry
<strifey> letter pattern matching again
<strifey> im assuming its how you write the letters though
<strifey> B = up twice, right 3 times from that point
<strifey> back once
<Bill> did you assume that when you went back, you turned around?
<strifey> um, sorta no...i figured the first one to be B, the 5th to be I, then saw it that matched any patterns


Is there more to this? Can you explain the solve? Or am I being dense?


PostPosted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 3:57 pm
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