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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » ARG: Find the Lost Ring
[BLOG] Markus what's happened to him
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Weezel
Unfettered


Joined: 01 Sep 2006
Posts: 420
Location: National Park, NJ
Weezel wrote:
Elizabeth123 wrote:
Okay, duh. Thanks DavFlamerock.

I'm getting:
IOIN US AND IOIN MARKUS WE ARE THE UNINITIATED WE WELCOME NEOPANGAEA HELP US DESYNCRHONIZE WE SACRIFICE ON AUGUST WRITE MEMBERSOFTHEOATGMAIL.


Just wait until you hear the full story on this and the last hour we flipped around in the mud.. too f'ing funny...


Ok.. so funny story... several of us catch the Ariadne tweet regarding the new Markus blog entry and jump on it.

So RangerD and I both post the initial discovery, and we head off to IRC to work on it and discuss things.

We quickly deduce there is a LaSekto code in it, and tear into deciphering it... should be easy right?

It wasn't. Apparently there were several encoding errors. This lead to sometimes a single letter being wrong, and other times entirely the wrong letters for a 15-20 characters in a row. This is due to the delicate nature of the bacon cipher, and if you miss encoding one character, every subsequent letter is now encoded wrong.

For the next hour we bang away at it, finding where the errors are, and only being able to correct some of them. for example IXIN instead of IOIN (Join). Since the X and O are very similar in bacon, a single switch of an AB pair to BA changes the letter.

Chippy is going bonkers adding and deleting spaces trying to make sense of the middle of the message, we we hit upon parts of plaintext, but one single fix doesn't get it. At one point, we're thinking that there might be a second message layered inside the first.

So lehall took a break, and comes back and says "what do we have so far?". My notes were all over the place, and I had 4 tabs open with various versions of the source text and different spacings, and I realized that I should start over again.

So I go back and look at the source page, and it's changed. All the errors have been corrected, and the message is now easily found (except that it read on august, instead of in august).

When I say I gotta jet and give the kids a bath and this needs to be posted, drizjr says "Elizabeth123 has already posted the solve". She has? I didn't see her in IRC?

Then I realize that because of her initial delay in finding the message, that when she finally got to it, she saw the corrected version! So she had it decoded in minutes and had no idea that we were standing around with lumps on our heads from banging them against the wall.

Anyway.. that's the funny story. Very glad to see that the problem was monitored/identified quickly and resolved before too much time was wasted..

I'm going to update the LaSekto tool to be a little more 'gamey' now, since it might actually get visited by outsiders, and I don't want references to an 'ARG' or 'bad guys' etc.
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PostPosted: Tue May 06, 2008 10:10 pm
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sapagoo
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Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 1213
Location: Atlanta, GA

 		Re: [BLOG] Markus what's happened to him
Re: RedRune
Shad0 wrote:
The RedRune text on that map, beginning at the top left and proceeding clockwise:

If noone has mentioned it.
The map is of the German Empire (sometime between 1871-1918)

PostPosted: Tue May 06, 2008 10:28 pm
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chaobell
Boot


Joined: 28 Mar 2008
Posts: 57
Location: Houston, TX

 		Sacrifice?

Logical reaction: it's probably not a literal sacrifice of anything or anyone sentient. Probably.

Gut reaction: DO NOT WANT D:

PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 12:01 am
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Weezel
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Joined: 01 Sep 2006
Posts: 420
Location: National Park, NJ
chaobell wrote:
Sacrifice?

Logical reaction: it's probably not a literal sacrifice of anything or anyone sentient. Probably.

Gut reaction: DO NOT WANT D:


Umm.. How about sacrificing themselves? and all of us?

If they desynchronize us, then we return to Neopangaea and we all die. So by keeping us unsynch'd on purposed, they are offering themselves as a sacrifice to the greater good, whatever secret sect bullcrap that might be. Smile
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PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 12:13 am
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DavFlamerock
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Joined: 11 Oct 2006
Posts: 937
Location: H2Oville, ME, USA

 		Yay sacrifice! I CALL THE CTHULHU STATUETTE

Hahaha just kidding. Good job on the crazy solving issues guys :p

PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 1:46 am
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AUZ505
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Joined: 07 Mar 2008
Posts: 1599
Location: Germany

 		[quote="Weezel"]
Weezel wrote:

...Then I realize that because of her initial delay in finding the message, that when she finally got to it, she saw the corrected version! So she had it decoded in minutes and had no idea that we were standing around with lumps on our heads from banging them against the wall...


Many people belive that
"The early bird catches the worm"
but as alsways this was true:
"The second mouse gets the cheese" Smile

PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 2:00 am
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Shad0
I Have No Life


Joined: 20 Jun 2004
Posts: 2180
Location: Southern California, USA

 		Re: [BLOG] Markus what's happened to him
Re: Bacon
I figured that someone else would have solved it by now, but I wasn't expecting the PMs to propagate a corrected version. For archival purposes, here's what I attempted (unsuccessfully, thanks to my finicky 'net connection) to post about five hours ago, before it was corrected:

----+----+----+----+----

Decoded it by hand, and I think I've tracked down the problems. First, the number of spaces following periods is confusing the hell out of the poor encoder -- sometimes there are three spaces, and sometimes there are two spaces that ought to be treated as two separate single spaces. Second, there are a couple of plain old typos -- for example, there's no such letter as BBAAA, and there's a comma with no spaces after it (which, from context, ought to have two). Try this:

Quote:
JOIN US AND JOIN MARKUS WE ARE THE UNINITIATED WE WELCOME NEOPANGAIA WE SACRIFICE ON AUGUST MEMBERSOFTHEO AT GMAIL

Creeeepy.
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These were the puzzles that would take a day, these were puzzles that would take a week, and these puzzles they'd probably never figure out until we broke down and gave them the answers. ... The Cloudmakers solved all of these puzzles on the first day.

PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 3:27 am
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Elizabeth123
Decorated


Joined: 15 Mar 2008
Posts: 285
Weezel wrote:

...Then I realize that because of her initial delay in finding the message, that when she finally got to it, she saw the corrected version! So she had it decoded in minutes and had no idea that we were standing around with lumps on our heads from banging them against the wall...


Yeah, I figured that's what happened! Sucks that you had to waste so much time trying to figure it out.

[META]Wonder if the PM's monitor IRC or uF, and that's how they realized they'd made mistakes and corrected the issue so quickly? It seems like they actually tried to correct it twice...

PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 10:42 am
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Weezel
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Joined: 01 Sep 2006
Posts: 420
Location: National Park, NJ
Elizabeth123 wrote:

[META]Wonder if the PM's monitor IRC or uF, and that's how they realized they'd made mistakes and corrected the issue so quickly? It seems like they actually tried to correct it twice...


It's been known to happen, and frankly, I'm very thankful for it. An hour wasted is much better than 2 days. That's why you always release puzzles during the day when they can be monitored by someone like that.

It's the best way for the PMs to see how things are progressing. Is something too hard, too easy, is the syntax slightly off etc. I know this is especially true when they monitor a puzzle which has web based interaction, and they can see what players are actually putting in.

I still think there is an error and that ON AUGUST should be IN AUGUST...but that's just me.. Smile
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PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 11:24 am
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krystyn
I Never Tire of My Own Voice


Joined: 26 Sep 2002
Posts: 3651
Location: Is not Chicago

 		LO STRING, MEMBERS OF THE OAT!!
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Stories and dreams, crossing my palm like silver.

xbl gamertag: krystyn

PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 11:34 am
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sapagoo
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Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 1213
Location: Atlanta, GA
Weezel wrote:
I still think there is an error and that ON AUGUST should be IN AUGUST...but that's just me.. Smile

Maybe they mistakenly put ON AUGUST 22 or some other number.

Would the Bacon Maker have discarded the date, and just given you a code for ON AUGUST?

PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 11:34 am
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Weezel
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Joined: 01 Sep 2006
Posts: 420
Location: National Park, NJ
sapagoo wrote:
Weezel wrote:
I still think there is an error and that ON AUGUST should be IN AUGUST...but that's just me.. Smile

Maybe they mistakenly put ON AUGUST 22 or some other number.

Would the Bacon Maker have discarded the date, and just given you a code for ON AUGUST?


Ah yes, that's entirely possible and makes sense too. I redid the entire tool page with a whole explanation of how it works, and it specifically says that it strips every character out except A-Z. So the numbers would have gotten dumped.

I'm thinking about making another modification to it that displays the encoded stripped text, not just the final results.

Right now, you see your secret message, and the result, but you don't know what the result is unless you immediately 'decode' the encoded text.

This would just skip that step, and change your secret text message into SECRETTEXTMESSAGE so you see what was actually stegged into the message.

I guess I can make that a checkbox option and turn it on by default.

Maybe we should check the source page again now or in another day to see if there are any other tweaks to it. Smile
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PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 11:47 am
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Shad0
I Have No Life


Joined: 20 Jun 2004
Posts: 2180
Location: Southern California, USA
sapagoo wrote:
Weezel wrote:
I still think there is an error and that ON AUGUST should be IN AUGUST...but that's just me.. Smile

Maybe they mistakenly put ON AUGUST 22 or some other number.

AUGUST 24, anyone?

(The fact that Theo corrected all of the other errors but did not change "ON" to "IN" leads me to infer that "ON" is not a typo.)
_________________
These were the puzzles that would take a day, these were puzzles that would take a week, and these puzzles they'd probably never figure out until we broke down and gave them the answers. ... The Cloudmakers solved all of these puzzles on the first day.

PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 12:27 pm
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Elizabeth123
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Joined: 15 Mar 2008
Posts: 285

 		[META]You'd-a thought Ariadne would give Theo Weezel's tool, so he didn't have to work this out (and mess it up) on his own...Maybe somebody should remind her.

Are we supposed to tell Ariadne that we've been in touch with Theo? Maybe someone could write to her and let her know we've found a message. And that there were mistakes in it, and it's too bad he doesn't have access to the (hint, hint) tool.

PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 12:47 pm
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Weezel
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Joined: 01 Sep 2006
Posts: 420
Location: National Park, NJ
Elizabeth123 wrote:
[META]You'd-a thought Ariadne would give Theo Weezel's tool, so he didn't have to work this out (and mess it up) on his own...Maybe somebody should remind her.

Are we supposed to tell Ariadne that we've been in touch with Theo? Maybe someone could write to her and let her know we've found a message. And that there were mistakes in it, and it's too bad he doesn't have access to the (hint, hint) tool.


I thought someone did contact Ariadne?

I would guess that they are aware of it now, and it's filtering through the 'who needs to use it'. Specifically because my tool returns the stegged text as a single line (so it's *really* wide). It's kinda obvious when it's used, as a single line of HTML text is not the norm when using an editor.. it's just a byproduct of the tool. It looks fine on the page, just not in the source code.

So, given that info, when we see the corrected text on a single line, it kinda infers that they used the tool. But as Shad0 and sapagoo have spec'd, they may not have remembered to spell out the words.

I made a note on the tool page which specifically discusses this 'one line' identifier, and that you can break it into multiple lines after the fact (just to test it), but it's a) a bit down the page and b) wasn't added until after I saw the results on the blog and realized that they may want to hide it a bit more.

I tried redoing the page to make it as in-game plausible as possible, so that if a link was provided to it, by players to characters, it could be used. Granted these would be *theo* players talking to *theo* characters, as obviously, none of us on the straight and narrow even know that the page exists... *whistles innocently*
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PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 1:02 pm
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