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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » GAME: Vanishing Point
[GENERAL] Original Puzzletrail Thread
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Ymgve
Guest


 		NEW LINK!

http://vanishingpointgame.com/biography/

I partially solved the Sudoku puzzle, and got the first letters. I got the idea from earlier in this thread, about the arrows being greater than/less than signs. If you completely remove the letters, and only contentrate on the greater than/lesser than, it's possible to recreate the Sudoku puzzle. When you've done that, you use the numbers in the lower right to "map" it to the puzzle.

To explain better, this is my sudoku grid after some a few tries:
Code:

292 ... .1.
.1. ... 92.
... 921 ...
           
.2. 1.. ..9
1.. ..9 2.2
..9 2.. ..1
           
2.. ..2 19.
..1 .9. ..2
9.2 .12 2..


Now, take the number in the lower right, which was 142966259 - out of the grid, I got b_og_____, and as I looked at the upper right corner, I realized that "biography" matched and had letters in all the correct sections.

PostPosted: Sat Dec 23, 2006 11:34 pm
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konamouse
Official uF Dietitian


Joined: 02 Dec 2002
Posts: 8010
Location: My own alternate reality

 		For archival purposes (cause it will all be gone in a year)
bio page wrote:
THE SET-UP

I was always smart. That was my first mistake.

My parents gave me everything: books, puzzles, games, tutors and tests. They quit their jobs and put me on game shows.

So I learned Chinese and English and Latin and Greek. I learned that music was a kind of astronomy and that pure light was infinite but invisible.

I figured out on my own that:
pic_04

Which brought me to:
pic_06

and the fact that small secrets govern the universe, and we approach them by vanishing. Most of all I learned to escape.

Vanishing Act

Once I realized I didn't have to give the right answer, even when I knew it, life got easier. Without prize money to pay tutors, I got to return to regular school. I could learn what I liked, instead of what other people told me to.

My parents went back to work.

I learned the trick of sliding by: did just well enough to get into an exclusive college and then kept my head down, graduating with a GPA of exactly 3.1415. That's harder to do than you might think.

One of my professors didn't buy my vanishing act. He called a friend in a certain large corporation. Now I have the job of giving stuff away to the smartest people on the planet.

When the countdown hits zero, we'll find out if you're one of them.

_________________
'squeek'
r u a Sammeeeee? I am Forever!

PostPosted: Sat Dec 23, 2006 11:40 pm
Last edited by konamouse on Sun Dec 24, 2006 12:55 am; edited 1 time in total
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SirQuady
Unfettered


Joined: 15 Jan 2006
Posts: 576

 		"The Set Up" appears to be related to the Fibbonaci Sequence. 1,1,2,3,5,8,13....

Plus, i see a refrence to Pi in his GPA in the "Vanishing Act" section.

EDIT: Also appears to include the Logarithmic Spiral
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logarithmic_spiral
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_sequence
_________________
There once was a [person] from [place]
Whose [body part] was [special case].
When [event] would occur,
It would cause [him or her]
To violate [law of time/space].

PostPosted: Sat Dec 23, 2006 11:47 pm
Last edited by SirQuady on Sun Dec 24, 2006 12:51 am; edited 1 time in total
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Ymgve
Guest


 		To explain a bit better what I did: First, ignore the letters. They are there just for the final word, and have nothing to do with the sudoku numbers.

What I did was to start with finding out where the numbers "1" and "9" in the sudoku grid could match. If you think about the arrows as less than/great than, you realize that one of the cells that only have arrows pointing inwards must be a "1", while one of the cells that only have arrows pointing outwards must be a "9". This leaves me with this grid:

Code:

191 19. .1.
919 ... 9..
..1 9.1 ...
           
919 1.. 919
1.. 9.9 19.
9.9 1.. 9.1
           
1.9 1.1 19.
..1 .9. ..1
9.. .1. 1.9


Now, for the elimination bit. Using the standard sudoku rules, I remove numbers that aren't valid, leaving a single number inside each section, like this:

Code:

.9. ... .1.
.1. ... 9..
... 9.1 ...
           
... 1.. ..9
1.. ..9 ...
..9 ... ..1
           
... ... 19.
..1 .9. ...
9.. .1. ...


After this, I attempt placing the number "2" in the sections and so on, and through trial and failure I got the semi-usable grid I had in my previous post.

Then, for each digit in the lower right number, I looked at where that number was in the section, and what letter was in that cell. This gave me enough letters to guess the rest of the word.

PostPosted: Sat Dec 23, 2006 11:48 pm
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SirQuady
Unfettered


Joined: 15 Jan 2006
Posts: 576

 		Question. What 2 goes where in the final sudoku?
This is what i gots so far, it's just that i don't quite know what to do with the 2s in the bottom left, bottom middle, and top left sections
Code:

292 ... .1.
.1. ... 92.
... 921 ...
           
.2. 1.. ..9
1.. ..9 2..
..9 2.. ..1
           
2.. ..2 19.
..1 .9. ..2
9.2 .12 ...


Never Mind.
_________________
There once was a [person] from [place]
Whose [body part] was [special case].
When [event] would occur,
It would cause [him or her]
To violate [law of time/space].

PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 12:03 am
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Ymgve
Guest


 		Here's the final sudoku solution:

Code:

592 487 613
817 563 924
643 921 875
           
428 156 739
135 749 286
769 238 541
           
256 374 198
371 895 462
984 612 357


Also, the word in the first puzzle was "rpiiajsuy". Seems to be scrambled somehow.

PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 12:37 am
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SirQuady
Unfettered


Joined: 15 Jan 2006
Posts: 576

 		the old sudoku gives us "rpiiajsuy" (thanks, Ymgve!), which leads to http://vanishingpointgame.com/rpiiajsuy/

Which is the same as http://vanishingpointgame.com/biography


Word.
_________________
There once was a [person] from [place]
Whose [body part] was [special case].
When [event] would occur,
It would cause [him or her]
To violate [law of time/space].

PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 12:42 am
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WOW!!!
Guest
Quote:
Vanishing Act

Once I realized I didn't have to give the right answer, even when I knew it, life got easier. Without prize money to pay tutors, I got to return to regular school. I could learn what I liked, instead of what other people told me to.

My parents went back to work.

I learned the trick of sliding by: did just well enough to get into an exclusive college and then kept my head down, graduating with a GPA of exactly 3.1415. That's harder to do than you might think.

One of my professors didn't buy my vanishing act. He called a friend in a certain large corporation. Now I have the job of giving stuff away to the smartest people on the planet.


Konamouse is that all really true... Shocked
I am totally impressed....


theGambler

PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 12:46 am
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Ruuku
Unfettered


Joined: 15 Jun 2006
Posts: 373

 		Picture from the Flickr account
spaceballbah.JPG
 Description   
 Filesize   18.74KB
 Viewed   230 Time(s)

spaceballbah.JPG

PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 12:54 am
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konamouse
Official uF Dietitian


Joined: 02 Dec 2002
Posts: 8010
Location: My own alternate reality

 		Summary of the trail
Okay, to sum up what happened today:

TRAILHEAD
Interesting little picture posted in the news section on the right side of IE Blog
Vanishing%20Point%20Game_2

leading to a website with a counter and a box to input a KEY.
http://vanishingpointgame.com/

Neowin.net noticed and started discussing.

LOKI
lokivanishes posted a huge clue (on page 6 of the thread).
key2

This gives the first login code: wh0isl0ki.
The puzzle looks like suduko grid.VPgrid
It is modified a few hours later (just the letters and the numbers change, but the grid appears the same).
suduko

Neowin spec is that these are "<" and ">" symbols. And so they are.
Code:
592 487 613
817 563 924
643 921 875
           
428 156 739
135 749 286
769 238 541
           
256 374 198
371 895 462
984 612 357


Figure out the numbers then find the letters from the number below and you get "biography" http://vanishingpointgame.com/biography/
(If you solve the original, you get "rpiiajsuy" and that is the same page http://vanishingpointgame.com/rpiiajsuy/

W4NTTWIN
On http://halowars.heavengames.com/key "Zen" reported getting a package from Microsoft. Included is another keyboard.
key1

Using the same method as before (from the code on IE Blog), the KEY is iw4nttwinyou. That gives you
Quote:
Check your sources to find THe STaNDaRD 800-736-9085.
The source code gives us PIN=5813. Someone at neowin spec'd that a 5 digit code was needed and just tried other numbers at the end or the beginning, ending up using "35813" (or maybe it was just an anagram and you only need "3581") to get a recorded message "good job, now go to the antipenultimate directory". http://vanishingpointgame.com/antepenultimate/

BTW, this looks like Zen's flickr page with the puzzle box from Microsoft. He also posted the contents of the box in neowin:
Quote:
You are now a decoder. There are only a few like you, but thousands more are looking for you. Find the other decoders before Zero Hour. Go to www.vanishingpointgame.com

A spectacular adventure is on the horizon.... can you find it before it disappears?
-L
P.S. I've hidden something in a puzzle box for you. Find the box, find a way to open it?

The header says "From the desk of Loki..."
The footer says "ENIGMA DIRECTOR."

The whole note looks like it was printed out of an inkjet printer.
The box it came in has a return address of
LOKI
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052


ESCAPE GRAVITY
Another key was posted at neowin based on the first post from lokivanishes (that was later removed and changed for the key above).
key4
3scap3grav1ty

This shows a picross puzzle. VPgrid2

picrosssolveddh2
The solve gave a quote "it was clearly over his head the monk who screwed up the transliteration samt ar-ras". Googling "samt ar-ras" and thinking about "over his head" got "zenith"
http://vanishingpointgame.com/zenith/
_________________
'squeek'
r u a Sammeeeee? I am Forever!

PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 12:54 am
Last edited by konamouse on Mon Dec 25, 2006 10:15 pm; edited 12 times in total
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aliendial
Unfictologist


Joined: 29 Sep 2002
Posts: 3438
Location: Far Far Away. Nowhere Near You. Really.

 		*signs on the dotted line*

Ymgve, you need to register. It's painless. There are no consequences except you start accumulating a post count here. Really. And welcome!
_________________
aliendial

PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 12:55 am
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konamouse
Official uF Dietitian


Joined: 02 Dec 2002
Posts: 8010
Location: My own alternate reality
theGambler wrote:
Konamouse is that all really true... Shocked


That is from the "biography" page. Just preserving it in uF cause when this game is over, these websites disappear.

And to echo aliendial: "theGambler, you need to register. It's painless. There are no consequences except you start accumulating a post count here. Really. And welcome!"

PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 12:56 am
Last edited by konamouse on Sun Dec 24, 2006 12:57 am; edited 1 time in total
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SirQuady
Unfettered


Joined: 15 Jan 2006
Posts: 576
konamouse wrote:
theGambler wrote:
Konamouse is that all really true... Shocked


That is from the "biography" page. Just preserving it in uF cause when this game is over, these websites disappear.


Allthough that would be very impressive, Kona. Smile Wink
_________________
There once was a [person] from [place]
Whose [body part] was [special case].
When [event] would occur,
It would cause [him or her]
To violate [law of time/space].

PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 12:57 am
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WJm0139
Greenhorn

Joined: 23 Dec 2006
Posts: 8

 		Holy crap.... I had no idea how many responses and how fast everyone would be figurng this out... Just to clear up the whole 42 Entertainment thing, the only thing that led me to believe that was wireshark/ethereal showed the swf communicating with stagessl.42entertainment.com

-b

PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 1:09 am
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EarlyWyrm
Veteran


Joined: 27 Nov 2006
Posts: 144
Location: Houston

 		Re: Summary of the trail
konamouse wrote:

Third key was posted at neowin without any good explanation that I can figure out (I'll come back and edit this if someone explains it).
3scap3grav1ty


This was solved by leejeffrey & emale_tart /spex04 based on the first key left by lokivanishing (which was edited and replaced by a different key an hour later):

novastar@eowin wrote:
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ XXXXXXXX _ _ _
XXXXXXXX_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
____________________________

letters: rot -4
even numbers: remove
odd numbers: keep the same


Works out to "3scap3 gravv1t" which emale_tart later concluded meant "escape gravity" - spex04 attempted "3scap3grav1ty" which brought up the picross puzzle.
_________________
Blind Mice Sit On Us

PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 1:13 am
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