[SOLVED] 2 vials - 4/17/07

[deagol]

PS: Oh no! you guys beat me to it! darn it, I spent 3 hours on this! plus one hour editing this damn post ...I mean, Good job! grrr. Oh well, I'll still post it so you all can see why now my brain has turned to mush... go ahead, laugh at me Well, seems like I only got a little bit, and not sure what I had to do to get the whole thing.

I may be on to something. I was reading this article and was trying to understand and apply that technique on our cipher. It looks quite promising.

As I mentioned before, starting with Vvzcj! = Hurry! I got part of the key: obill. So I tried to use that (as the arrow suggests and just like the word 'THE' in the article example) on the previous cipher.

After a few tries, skipping one letter got me the best results (skipping 0, 2, or 3 letters gave me gibberish). The idea is to use the part of the key that was obtained as plain text, but offset a number of characters to the left.

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cipher text: Lj Tmbx Ac Qwdef - 8404<-- Vvzcj!
 plain text:                  <---\     Hurry!
implied key:                       \--- obill
                                        ^^^^^

I'll place obill, or rather, "o Bill" against "c Qwde", matching the capitalization on the cipher. As I said I'm skipping one letter, that last 'f' (plain text and implied key marked with * below because we don't know them yet).

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cipher text: Lj Tmbx Ac Qwdef - 8404<-- Vvzcj!
plain  text:          o Bill* <---\     Hurry!
implied key:          o post*      \--- obill
                      ^ ^^^^

That new bit 'opost' didn't look as gibberish-y as the other attempts I made. Now I just have to pick a letter for the word Bill*.
The obvious one would be bills, so I tried that. The cipher letter 'f' which I had skipped, would decrypt to an 's' (to get Bills) if I use an 'n' on the key:

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cipher text: Lj Tmbx Ac Qwdef - 8404<-- Vvzcj!
plain  text:          o Bills <---\     Hurry!
implied key:          o postn      \--- obill
                            ^

See how the key now says "opostnobill"? the 'n' I got from guessing bills makes the word No for No Bills, which is a good sign.
Now I'll just repeat what I did before with obill, this time with opostn, or matching the cipher text spacing and capitalization, "o Post n".

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cipher text: Lj Tmbx Ac Qwdef - 8404<-- Vvzcj! ETA: It's Tbmx you idiot!
plain  text:  o Post No Bills <---\     Hurry!
implied key:  v eyje no postn      \--- obill
              ^ ^^^^ ^

As said before, the plain text is english, and that N with the cipher text A (from Ac) implies another n as the key, giving us english once again in the key (nopostnobills).
But then there's gibberish before that. Let's complete that last letter to see the whole key:

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cipher text: Lj Tmbx Ac Qwdef - 8404<-- Vvzcj!
plain  text: No Post No Bills <---\     Hurry!
implied key: ev eyje no postn      \--- obill
             ^

So the gibberish part is eveyje. This is exactly how the autokeyed vigenere works (which interestingly is the real cipher that Blaise de Vigenère invented since the normal vigenere we've been using all the time was invented 30 years before by Giovan Batista Belaso): instead of repeating the key over the length of the message, you append the plain text after the key and use that for the subsecuent shifts.

The other option is using "Billy" instead of "Bills":

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cipher text: Lj Tmbx Ac Qwdef - 8404<-- Vvzcj!
 plain text: To Post Ho Billy <---\     Hurry!
implied key: sv eyje to posth      \--- obill
             ^       ^      ^

The key now is sveyje and the plain text is more obscure (and funny), but still interesting (Ho Billy? billy-ho?).

You can check both results by using this tool. Put "Lj Tmbx Ac Qwdef - 8404<-- Vvzcj!" as the message and decrypt with either of the keys obtained (yveyje and sveyje). I think this is a very strong indication to focus on decrypting the rest with autokeyed vigenere.

I have no idea how to use 8404. I tried something similar with the other two ciphers (Sowehws Hipn - Aghfil Nxblq) and didn't get anything meaningful. I tried both keys as tiny pics and tiny urls, nothing. I'm not sure what "No Post No Bills" means, but it looks like some imperative for Maddy, or maybe the dropped-off armless person.

I tried my best to explain how I got this, and hope some of you understand it well enough to take it further. Right now I'm beat and need to eat. I'll get on chat after that and see what everyone thinks of it.

[marlasinger]

Wicked deagol, you're still my hero.

Guys, I"m going to say something.

Let's be serious here for a moment. No one takes the time to create a fucking puzzle so hard that we can't figure it out - WE can't figure it out - in a day - and has it decode to a drop in a location that an ARG player has not been confirmed to be living in.

Do you know what I mean? There's something wrong here - these guys have created a seriously awesome ARG and taken the time to do this...but didn't confirm the most important part: there is someone IN KC to get the fucking drop!?

something's up.

[sparkybennett]

PS: Oh no! you guys beat me to it! darn it, I spent 3 hours on this! plus one hour editing this damn post ...I mean, Good job! grrr. Oh well, I'll still post it so you all can see why now my brain has turned to mush... go ahead, laugh at me Well, seems like I only got a little bit, and not sure what I had to do to get the whole thing..

WOW
I am impressed!!

[kellylen]

wow deagol i love you

[sparkybennett]

Wicked deagol, you're still my hero.

Guys, I"m going to say something.

Let's be serious here for a moment. No one takes the time to create a fucking puzzle so hard that we can't figure it out - WE can't figure it out - in a day - and has it decode to a drop in a location that an ARG player has not been confirmed to be living in.

Do you know what I mean? There's something wrong here - these guys have created a seriously awesome ARG and taken the time to do this...but didn't confirm the most important part: there is someone IN KC to get the fucking drop!?

something's up.

so we should be looking for another venue, just in case it isn;t KC?

[blugh]

I agree... and the PM would not make a typo like that... he/she/they would have triple checked everything.. its not like they made it right away

[marlasinger]

I have this feeling. Foutain doesn't necessarily equal fountain, and I know it's convenient, but it just doesn't make sense that they'd write themselves into a corner like they have. I'm going to move my post to the other thread.

[lonelyelendi]

Wicked deagol, you're still my hero.

Guys, I"m going to say something.

Let's be serious here for a moment. No one takes the time to create a fucking puzzle so hard that we can't figure it out - WE can't figure it out - in a day - and has it decode to a drop in a location that an ARG player has not been confirmed to be living in.

Do you know what I mean? There's something wrong here - these guys have created a seriously awesome ARG and taken the time to do this...but didn't confirm the most important part: there is someone IN KC to get the fucking drop!?

something's up.

I'm with marla on this one for two reasons:

1) One drop in NY now one in KC? How are they doing all this?

2) She is EXTREMELY attractive.

[kellylen]

tell me then. what is a foutain

[TOSG]

Wicked deagol, you're still my hero.

Guys, I"m going to say something.

Let's be serious here for a moment. No one takes the time to create a fucking puzzle so hard that we can't figure it out - WE can't figure it out - in a day - and has it decode to a drop in a location that an ARG player has not been confirmed to be living in.

Do you know what I mean? There's something wrong here - these guys have created a seriously awesome ARG and taken the time to do this...but didn't confirm the most important part: there is someone IN KC to get the fucking drop!?

something's up.

Disagreed. The evidence for the drop being at The Hurricane in Kansas City seems overwhelming (the address is even 4048: 8404 backwards, like the way the arrow in Zipp's note points).

I think that the PM probably assumed that the ARG has grown enough so that for any major city (KC is hardly some backwoods town), there would be either a player or a friend of a player who is able to retrieve the drop. Hopefully he's right.

[lonelyelendi]

My point exactly Kelly. We don't know. So we can assume two things: First that our code is wrong but just looks mostly right, or second that it was a mistake.

I am partial to the first.

[TOSG]

My point exactly Kelly. We don't know. So we can assume two things: First that our code is wrong but just looks mostly right, or second that it was a mistake.

I am partial to the first.

The odds of that are astronomical.

[kellylen]

im more partial to the 2nd. and having it being a pain in our ass

[Luminous]

Wicked deagol, you're still my hero.

Guys, I"m going to say something.

Let's be serious here for a moment. No one takes the time to create a fucking puzzle so hard that we can't figure it out - WE can't figure it out - in a day - and has it decode to a drop in a location that an ARG player has not been confirmed to be living in.

Do you know what I mean? There's something wrong here - these guys have created a seriously awesome ARG and taken the time to do this...but didn't confirm the most important part: there is someone IN KC to get the fucking drop!?

something's up.

I definitely wouldn't discount this location just because you haven't found your retriever yet. With the Facility J Princeton drop, we spent a week or so looking for a drop retreiver. One didn't come through until the very last moment, and he wasn't even an official member of our team. He also didn't have the video equipment we would have liked to have for recording the drop. That being said, it went off with out a hitch.

I have this feeling. Foutain doesn't necessarily equal fountain, and I know it's convenient, but it just doesn't make sense that they'd write themselves into a corner like they have. I'm going to move my post to the other thread.

Yes, PMs, even the best of them do make typos. Again, with the Facility J puzzles, we have run across several. It's not uncommon.

EDIT: BTW Deagol, AWESOME solve, even if you didn't get it in under the wire. What an amazing decryption you did! And thanks for laying out the process by which you acheived it. I learned alot!

[marlasinger]

I'll say it's more likely a mistake, but the mistake doesn't bug me - it's the fact that there might not be someone to get the drop that bugs me. That's the WHOLE POINT of the arg!!