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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Art of the Heist » The Art of the Heist: Puzzles
[Puzzle] The_Future area
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addlepated
Unfictologist


Joined: 17 Aug 2003
Posts: 1885
Location: Austin, Texas

 		[Puzzle] The_Future area
If you look in the source for http://www.virgilkingofcode.com/the_future/no_whispering.html you'll see that the background is supposed to be http://www.virgilkingofcode.com/696E6E657220636972636C6500/L3_bg_target.jpg .

It comes back as a 404. If you decode '696E6E657220636972636C6500' from hex to ascii, you get "inner circle".

PostPosted: Mon Jun 13, 2005 11:06 pm
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jlandgr
Boot

Joined: 27 May 2005
Posts: 67
Location: Münster, Germany

 		Also, has somebody decoded the binary visible at the bottom of the image
http://www.virgilkingofcode.com/the_future/doubt.jpg ?
Also, do the numbers that get used for the map decode to something?
Code:
<img src="doubt.jpg" alt="" width="680" height="269" usemap="#doubtbeae4a27" border="0"><map name="doubtbeae4a27"><area shape="circle" coords="499,70,13" href="mailto:vtatum@virgilkingofcode.com" alt=""><area shape="rect" coords="238,145,241,148" alt=""><area shape="poly" coords="565,8,564,9,564,18,564,28,563,32,566,54,566,64,562,77,565,
89,565,99,569,114,576,127,580,139,583,148,567,150,552,151,537,167,
498,199,481,210,467,217,465,227,473,241,491,253,502,255,510,254,514,
253,528,259,541,261,671,258,672,8,566,8" href="me/index.html" alt="" target="_top"><area shape="poly" coords="93,6,104,61,107,73,117,117,130,141,144,156,158,168,167,176,
168,185,166,191,158,195,148,197,132,195,121,193,106,188,85,183,72,
177,57,175,43,180,42,193,46,209,34,204,29,210,21,231,17,228,22,208,
16,200,12,188,7,172,7,8" href="me/index.html" alt="" target="_top"><area shape="poly" coords="104,3,113,75,118,99,136,139,151,156,172,173,174,182,172,190,
163,198,148,203,116,203,109,222,114,249,120,260,265,266,291,188,298,
174,284,137,285,129,301,112,305,107,318,82,321,67,317,35,315,23,311,
4,300,2,179,3,103,1,177,74" href="her/index.html"


PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 8:34 am
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jlandgr
Boot

Joined: 27 May 2005
Posts: 67
Location: Münster, Germany

 		Re: [Puzzle] The_Future area
addlepated wrote:

It comes back as a 404. If you decode '696E6E657220636972636C6500' from hex to ascii, you get "inner circle".

Hmmm, the mailto-Link in the map is defined as a circle area, coincidence?
Or are we supposed to send a mail to the vtatum-adress? But do we need some more info before doing that?

PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 8:44 am
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jlandgr
Boot

Joined: 27 May 2005
Posts: 67
Location: Münster, Germany

 		OK, the first line of binary + the first 4 binary digits of the second line decode to:
"She stole my heart,"
Continuing ...

PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 10:03 am
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jlandgr
Boot

Joined: 27 May 2005
Posts: 67
Location: Münster, Germany

 		So far: "She stole my heart,\\just as I sto" (probably: as I stole ...)
Will we have a confession? Is Virgil "Loser"/an art thief? Or is the message more trivial?
So, stay tuned ...
edit: well, not directly, but still intriguing:
The binary decodes to:
She stole my heart,\\just as I stole minds so many years ago...

The binary is:
01010011 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110011 01110100 01101111 01101100 01100101 00100000

01101101 01111001 00100000 01101000 01100101 01100001 01110010 01110100 00101100 01011100

01011100 01101010 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01100001 01110011 00100000 01001001

00100000 01110011 01110100 01101111 01101100 01100101 00100000 01101101 01101001 01101110

01100100 01110011 00100000 01110011 01101111 00100000 01101101 01100001 01101110 01111001

00100000 01111001 01100101 01100001 01110010 01110011 00100000 01100001 01100111 01101111

00101110 00101110 00101110

PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 10:57 am
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nivra - not logged in
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 		Re: [Puzzle] The_Future area
addlepated wrote:

It comes back as a 404. If you decode '696E6E657220636972636C6500' from hex to ascii, you get "inner circle".


Comes back fine for me. It's a generic dark, mysterious virgil background.

PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 12:42 pm
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rowan
Unfictologist

Joined: 12 Apr 2004
Posts: 1966

 		It definitely wasn't there yesterday - I remember when looking through all of the twists and turns of that directory that there wasn't a background behind the text, and now there is. Obviously even Virgil is prone to making tiny errors in his html Wink
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 12:48 pm
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jlandgr
Boot

Joined: 27 May 2005
Posts: 67
Location: Münster, Germany

 		... or maybe he is telling us, subtly and after we noticed that the file was absent, that the file is steged, now that he put it up. Who knows Wink
It isn't any obvious steganography such as "Camouflage" (which puts the data at the end of the file in JPEGs, tools exist to retrieve the password), but there are of course more subtle steg programs. Has Virgil already used a steg program/ have we had success destegging a JPEG with any of the other steg programs yet?

PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 12:53 pm
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helper
Boot

Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 29

 		Something else puzzling, if not a puzzle...
There is another thing about "the future" page that's at least curious, though it may not be a solvable puzzle...

Creepy though he is, I do admire the little flash movies that Virgil makes. The one on "the_future" page is even busier and cooler than the last. Is the person looking over the city from the ledge new?

Why I'm really writing, though, is another new feature: V-Koc's latest Mystery Meat Navigation: the little symbols that swirl around near the middle of the flash until you mouse near them.

If you zoom in on them (or have better eyesight than mine), you'll notice that each symbol is a weird little shape. Also, when you point directly at one symbol, it and two or three other symbols brighten, and some words appear (elsewhere in the flash) identifying the public page on Virgil's website where a click will send you.

I don't know if there is really a puzzle here, but there are a few odd things about the way this was done (duh!). First, the symbols look as though they were constructed using one or more characters from the old "enhanced ASCII" character set. That is what we used to do PC "graphics" way back when all we had was Text Mode.

Those days are long gone, but since backwards compatibility is everything, you can still use most of those "Enhanced ASCII" characters even in Windows. In Notepad, just hold an ALT key while you enter the decimal value of the symbol you want on the keypad. When you release the Alt key, your character is inserted. If you want to try it, here's a reference to the character set:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vsintro7/html/_pluslang_ASCII_Character_Codes_Chart_2.asp

Or you can just poke around and see for yourself how it works. If nothing looks right on your screen, check your font. Courier New works for me.

I was curious if I still remembered how it all worked, so I went ahead and mocked up the symbols just that way. The results are in the attached Unicode file. I doubt that these hacks match whatever Virgil intends. For one thing, the scale is all over the place. Some symbols map directly to single Enhanced ASCII characters, while others are much bigger, having to be built up from multiple characters.

Also, some (but not all) of Virgil's symbols "flicker" - briefly change shape - as they light up. Maybe Virgil intends that as a hint about the scale of the symbols shown, by suggesting the size of the smallest piece that can be replaced. Or maybe not. It almost looks like the changing piece is a right triangle of some sort. I don't know where you would find a character set containing those.

The other odd thing is that two of the symbols seem to be completely inactive.. They are the only two symbols that are close together, don't light up, and don't link to anyplace else. As it happens, those two symbols each look like single characters in "Enhance ASCII". The up-side-down pyramid is decimal 31, and the north-bound dead-end street is decimal 203.

So what's the puzzle? Figure out what the symbols mean? Figure out why more than one goes to the same place? Figure out how they would have been implemented back in the day, and do something with the resulting character data? Figure out why the inactive symbols are there? None of the above? Beats me. But I thought it was curious, and thought I'd mention it to all you puzzle-happy folks.

--helper
MysteryMeat.txt
Description  Unicode file mocking up Virgil's Mystery Meat navigation symbols using Enhanced Ascii graphic characters. It's not very neatly done - sorry.
 txt

 Download 
Filename  MysteryMeat.txt 
Filesize  1.01KB 
Downloaded  444 Time(s) 

PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2005 12:57 am
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Vjeszczi
Boot

Joined: 26 May 2005
Posts: 18

 		I noticed the two symbols that don't light up either. Not reading too much into it, they look a lot like VT to me.

PostPosted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 12:58 pm
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helper
Boot

Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 29
Vjeszczi wrote:
I noticed the two symbols that don't light up either. Not reading too much into it, they look a lot like VT to me.


Sure, that makes sense. Thanks!

PostPosted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 1:28 pm
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HitsHerMark
Unfictologist


Joined: 22 Aug 2004
Posts: 1521
Location: Austin, TX

 		Non-Standard ascii (or "high ascii") characters are also available throught the "Character Map" if you have windows.

Start Menue
---> All Programs
---> Accessories
---> System Tools

In the Character Map ap (hehe), you can click on buttons with various non-standard ascii characters and not only see what the command for them is, but you can also just cut and paste them directly from the ap.
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GirlInFocus
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 3:09 pm
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HitsHerMark
Unfictologist


Joined: 22 Aug 2004
Posts: 1521
Location: Austin, TX

 		D'oh!

Double post, sorry.
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GirlInFocus
flickr

PostPosted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 3:09 pm
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Alc
Boot

Joined: 05 Jun 2005
Posts: 17
Location: SoBe

 		doubt.jpg Clues?
I opened the file in a text editor and found
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Ducky
in the header area near Adobe...
I don't have illustrator or photoshop so I can't see if its a property or something else that doesn't belong... I didn't see any other obvious words.
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 4:55 pm
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jlandgr
Boot

Joined: 27 May 2005
Posts: 67
Location: Münster, Germany

 		Ducky is normal for Photoshop files.

PostPosted: Thu Jun 16, 2005 6:17 pm
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