Page 1 of 1
~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2023 8:16 pm
by The Snide Sniper
=t[h,e?@{ '.o+!\p)-<}E|N= ))';|)^+~[~c'&,~,,{`%]!h/;/u`--'n^!k/|^ >'{w:]>#i<l%[l`^ ,/#g(#|.-u:&{(i',d*e^`%;*";<+\: -%:y[o>u" (|\/<(t{\o><.# ~=w.<`h(-a\~/,t% [@y<}"o>(u||^ @/,`&s`-@e&!|e)#k~
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2023 1:27 pm
by heuristically_alone
Let the games begin.
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2023 1:45 pm
by ratammer
Certainty?
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2023 2:03 pm
by somitomi
!!!
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2023 4:31 pm
by Freddino18
There's lots of chinese unicode characters lol
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2023 12:19 am
by chridd
Spoiler (Show/Hide)
meow meow meow meow meow?
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2023 1:43 am
by moody7277
Madness!? This is RAMENCHEF!!
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2023 6:33 am
by Sean Quixote
staticy
edit:
Code: Select all
opE│
│N.?~i]]:┊t,+ [&m>│
│^;%a(&,]┊}?{y+: ~│
│)b%e;%"}┊ &c|-(,!│
│<#!^"'!}┊~o!m/;p#│
│+'/![=-]┊?=a~`r.{│
│\~`.(e}d┊&] &|-.}│
│)t&./-)]┊']|".%.!│
│?o>!.) '┊t/h'e.},│
│!})~ ~{-┊*]':}\%U│
│."?n=|p.┊r}e<d:i#│
│#&c%[^-@┊<+t~\\+[│
│a/b(l@*?┊}/{&e?"]│
│:/ ]c!\<┊'o?f.<#\│
│}f.e>=\&┊e+__29bd│
│9be08517┊cbc9p
?
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2023 9:06 pm
by The Snide Sniper
chridd wrote: ↑Sun Apr 02, 2023 12:19 am
Spoiler (Show/Hide)
meow meow meow meow meow?
(~y:]}:~&`o!'u({ [""h*a;|@~";"~}v;}%+}e`, !d,}u=^>+:)%`&g'? ,\s::`o" =[d;e@|\e|p{ ?{]:#=b({!#u*%:t= -</h+o]%=w~~-=`\ &d@/,#/o@ "y>+>*o<u"@\) [#k^"n"+:o.w*[( "t)h/a;t])) {y)o&"*'u` #,#'h%a`=]v\e@? |)f!+-@o`,];u{n&<d^-" <="t,/h'-/])e[|(+%*].&>`"` #b)o=t)t^o"m::
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2023 10:01 pm
by ratammer
I think we're gonna need some hints
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2023 10:05 pm
by The Snide Sniper
If a week goes by and noone figures it out, maybe.
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2023 9:10 am
by KidOfCubes
There's a png encoded with base64 in the file
removing the whitespace in it would probably do something
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Sat Apr 08, 2023 1:04 pm
by The Snide Sniper
Okay, hint #1:
unpredictable coffee = Java Random
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2023 12:51 am
by The Snide Sniper
Hint #2: since people didn't seem to figure this out, the base64-decoded file is already a valid PNG file.
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2023 6:09 am
by Freddino18
The Snide Sniper wrote: ↑Tue Apr 18, 2023 12:51 am
Hint #2: since people didn't seem to figure this out, the base64-decoded file is already a valid PNG file.
Tried both, but not at the same time lol
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Sat Apr 22, 2023 7:50 pm
by The Snide Sniper
Hint #3: the real image will appear if you swap the width and height. (although that's still not the bottom)
One more week and I'll probably just give the full solution.
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2023 8:07 am
by Sean Quixote
So, you mean like stretch it?
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2023 2:07 pm
by The Snide Sniper
Sean Quixote wrote: ↑Sun Apr 23, 2023 8:07 am
So, you mean like stretch it?
No, the same pixels in the same order, just with different-sized scanlines.
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2023 1:52 am
by Sean Quixote
You lost me...
Sorry, I'm too dumb and tired right now. Work, etc. =\
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2023 10:25 am
by Jplus
For those struggling with the scanlines, I think The Snide Sniper means the following.
Spoiler (Show/Hide)
Suppose we have a grid of letters instead of pixels.
The rows are scanlines. We have three scanlines of size four: ABCD, EFGH and IJKL. We could keep all letters in the same order, but put them in shorter scanlines, resulting in more scanlines. For example, if we reduce the scanlines to size three, we will have four scanlines afterwards:
Now all the letters are still in the same order, but we have the scanlines ABC, DEF, GHI and JKL.
I have not yet actually tried solving the puzzle myself, by the way, just passively reading this thread.
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2023 5:06 pm
by chridd
Jplus wrote: ↑Tue Apr 25, 2023 10:25 am
For those struggling with the scanlines, I think The Snide Sniper means the following.
Spoiler (Show/Hide)
Suppose we have a grid of letters instead of pixels.
The rows are scanlines. We have three scanlines of size four: ABCD, EFGH and IJKL. We could keep all letters in the same order, but put them in shorter scanlines, resulting in more scanlines. For example, if we reduce the scanlines to size three, we will have four scanlines afterwards:
Now all the letters are still in the same order, but we have the scanlines ABC, DEF, GHI and JKL.
I have not yet actually tried solving the puzzle myself, by the way, just passively reading this thread.
Yes. (That's as far as I'd gotten originally, and I haven't gotten around to trying to figure out the rest.)
The way I did it was
Spoiler (Show/Hide)
export the image using GIMP as (iirc) a PPM image, ASCII format, then swapped the width and height in a text editor, and opened the result in GIMP
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2024 8:18 am
by EcstasyKey
I got as far as everyone else seems to have, i.e.
Spoiler (Show/Hide)
I have an image of the Pentacephalic One and not sure what to do about the arbitrary latte.
What I did was
Spoiler (Show/Hide)
write a lil Python script to grab the pixels into a numpy array where I could reshape them at will
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Thu Mar 07, 2024 3:58 pm
by The Snide Sniper
So, another hint before I just give the final step: the "unpredictable coffee" (Java random) gives you a sequence of numbers. Those numbers have something to do with all the dead pixels.
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2025 7:30 pm
by The Snide Sniper
Okay, I promised a write-up of this like 3 years ago, I should probably actually make one.
Walkthrough
The first step, which was really more so that it was easier to download, was to decompress the file using GZIP, as indicated by the .gz extension. IIRC the "txt.txt.txt.txt.txt" also indicated that there were 4 additional steps before you reach the end.
You now had the actual text file. The next step was a little harder, but still wasn't incredibly hard. The text file was a base-64 encoding of another file, which could be determined from the / and + symbols in it. A hexdump or file command would tell you that this was a PNG image, and opening it would give you a broken-looking image. Chridd got closest to the bottom by swapping the width and height to get the fixed image: a five-headed cat that I made in Photoshop many many years ago, with some random dead pixels with color #ebe3f9.
This brings us to the text in the OP: removing the special characters, it read, "the opEN chunk will guide you to what you seek". This was referring to an extra chunk I had inserted into the PNG datastream named "opEN" that contained a clue to the final step. This is where, in hindsight, I definitely made it way too difficult. Although a couple of people found the opEN chunk in the file, nobody managed to decipher its cryptic contents: "it may be compared to the Unpredictable coffee" followed by a number in hexadecimal.
You were supposed to use the hexadecimal number to seed Java's PRNG (the "unpredictable coffee"), and compare the values produced by it (with range of the image's width minus 2) to the X positions of the dead pixels to create binary data. Doing so would give you an ASCII message that simply read:
Solution
The ducks are filled with angry ooze.
Spread the word.
The first person to post this on either the forum or the Discord would have been given some form of prize, probably a role saying that they won the event.
Now, a question for y'all. What did you think of this? Was the stuff that was actually solvable fun? Should I make another one of these sometime? I have a few more ideas for steps that could be included that I didn't use here.
Re: ~:?{I=T<:`' ~|I("(S(/?) (!T["I=.M>-|+)%=*%E^'&!
Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2025 9:47 pm
by Jplus
Solving the puzzle felt like more effort than I could convince my brains to invest (so I ended up not really trying). That being said, I did like the puzzle and still kind of want to solve it. I haven't read the spoilers yet for that reason.
As far as I'm concerned, by all means do more of these.