Post by Zarpedon on Dec 2, 2018 2:55:08 GMT
1. Find the images encoded within the hexadecimal. There are three.
2. Use the writing in the encoded images to reveal three clues.
3. Combine the three clues to point to a single historical figure.
PM me (Zarpedon) on Discord, in game, or here on the forums with the single word answer.
There is now a limit of 3 answers per person. Answer wisely and intentionally.
You must support your answer with *how* you solved the clues.
The winner will receive Full 3rd Age Armor Set (~170M).
Good luck!
Congratulations to environosis who was the first to solve the (Im)possible Clue.
Others who solved it:
melabanana (worked entirely solo)
Quirkie (fastest time to solve in 2-3 hours)
Fplus1 (first to identify ancient writing scripts)
1. To solve part 1, you should understand something about how Operating Systems read files. Every file type is given a signature of hexadecimals at the beginning of the file so that the OS knows what type of file it is (JPG, DOC, MP4, etc.) All JPG files begin with the same hexadecimal code ‘FF D8 FF’. Additionally, all files have a hex-signature that tells an OS where the file ends in memory. All JPG files end with ‘FF D9’. All the code in between these two signatures IS the picture. This information is really useful if your hard drive ever gets corrupted, since you can recover lost files in this manner by finding files with these start/end signatures. (You better believe the police do!) Using these hexadecimal signatures as bookends, you should have been able to delineate where the three pictures were in the code. From there you could have written a simple program to rebuild the hexadecimal string into a JPG file or an online resource (which I think everyone did).
2. The three pictures had writing of ancient languages on them. Picture 1 was of Linear B, an extremely old Greek Language spoken before the time of Homer. It was lost during the Greek Dark Age and only recently re-deciphered by a British man, Michael Ventris in the 20th century after a life time of work. The writing is syllabic, meaning that each figure represents an entire syllable. For example English is written with phonetic letters, so the word ‘syllable’ has 8 symbols, whereas Linear B, a syllabic writing system, would spell ‘syllable’ as ‘𐀱𐀨𐀩’ in only 3 symbols. Anyways, if you were able to find a Linear B syllabary, you would have spelt out ai-ku-pi-ti-je meaning “Egyptian”. A lot of you found the website with this word on there, but in a slightly different form: ai-ku-pi-ti-“jo”. This was due to gender inflection, since the final answer is a woman, the adjective needed to be feminine. Next, Picture 2, there was a bit of an issue with this one and my computer saving all the syllables. The writing was cuneiform, an early form of Akkadian writing. The syllables spelled the word “mús(h)” or “snake” in English. Finally, Picture 3 was Mayan hieroglyphics. The image was logogram for “woman” IX-KI. The only way to solve this one was to flip through Mayan hieroglyphs until you matched the image to a solution.
3. Putting all the clues together from the pictures, “Egyptian” “snake” and “woman”, the historical figure to whom all these apply is the famous Cleopatra. Cleopatra was the last pharaoh of Egypt after she was disposed by Octavian at the end of the 1st century BCE. She was famously depicted by Roman propaganda afterwards as having killed herself by putting a venomous snake to her breast to avoid capture by Octavian, who would have brought her back to Rome for his triumphal procession.
Reflection: I had a lot of fun making this and watching people solve it. Computer programming and ancient languages are my two fascinations in life. I was really overwhelmed by the tenacity of this community to solve a novel and complicated problem. Yes, many people were indifferent about solving it, but some went to inspiring lengths to figure it out. I would only change one thing, that being, adding more garbage hexadecimal to the Pastebin in order to confuse online conversion resources and force people to write a small program to find the pictures. Overall, this is something I would love to do again, whether as a creator or participant. I’m sure we would all enjoy doing Clues from time to time and I strongly encourage anyone reading this to write a challenging clue for the community to solve. The reward doesn’t have to be 170M. That is not a precedent. In fact I was thinking, if I ever wrote another one, the reward would be killing CBA in the wild with the un-protected Heron pet. A lot of people told me they didn’t care about the reward and just loved solving the clue for its own sake. Either way, I’ll turn over creative ownership to those who want it. You have whatever support you need from me. Thanks for the fun!
2. Use the writing in the encoded images to reveal three clues.
3. Combine the three clues to point to a single historical figure.
PM me (Zarpedon) on Discord, in game, or here on the forums with the single word answer.
There is now a limit of 3 answers per person. Answer wisely and intentionally.
You must support your answer with *how* you solved the clues.
The winner will receive Full 3rd Age Armor Set (~170M).
Good luck!
Congratulations to environosis who was the first to solve the (Im)possible Clue.
Others who solved it:
melabanana (worked entirely solo)
Quirkie (fastest time to solve in 2-3 hours)
Fplus1 (first to identify ancient writing scripts)
1. To solve part 1, you should understand something about how Operating Systems read files. Every file type is given a signature of hexadecimals at the beginning of the file so that the OS knows what type of file it is (JPG, DOC, MP4, etc.) All JPG files begin with the same hexadecimal code ‘FF D8 FF’. Additionally, all files have a hex-signature that tells an OS where the file ends in memory. All JPG files end with ‘FF D9’. All the code in between these two signatures IS the picture. This information is really useful if your hard drive ever gets corrupted, since you can recover lost files in this manner by finding files with these start/end signatures. (You better believe the police do!) Using these hexadecimal signatures as bookends, you should have been able to delineate where the three pictures were in the code. From there you could have written a simple program to rebuild the hexadecimal string into a JPG file or an online resource (which I think everyone did).
2. The three pictures had writing of ancient languages on them. Picture 1 was of Linear B, an extremely old Greek Language spoken before the time of Homer. It was lost during the Greek Dark Age and only recently re-deciphered by a British man, Michael Ventris in the 20th century after a life time of work. The writing is syllabic, meaning that each figure represents an entire syllable. For example English is written with phonetic letters, so the word ‘syllable’ has 8 symbols, whereas Linear B, a syllabic writing system, would spell ‘syllable’ as ‘𐀱𐀨𐀩’ in only 3 symbols. Anyways, if you were able to find a Linear B syllabary, you would have spelt out ai-ku-pi-ti-je meaning “Egyptian”. A lot of you found the website with this word on there, but in a slightly different form: ai-ku-pi-ti-“jo”. This was due to gender inflection, since the final answer is a woman, the adjective needed to be feminine. Next, Picture 2, there was a bit of an issue with this one and my computer saving all the syllables. The writing was cuneiform, an early form of Akkadian writing. The syllables spelled the word “mús(h)” or “snake” in English. Finally, Picture 3 was Mayan hieroglyphics. The image was logogram for “woman” IX-KI. The only way to solve this one was to flip through Mayan hieroglyphs until you matched the image to a solution.
3. Putting all the clues together from the pictures, “Egyptian” “snake” and “woman”, the historical figure to whom all these apply is the famous Cleopatra. Cleopatra was the last pharaoh of Egypt after she was disposed by Octavian at the end of the 1st century BCE. She was famously depicted by Roman propaganda afterwards as having killed herself by putting a venomous snake to her breast to avoid capture by Octavian, who would have brought her back to Rome for his triumphal procession.
Reflection: I had a lot of fun making this and watching people solve it. Computer programming and ancient languages are my two fascinations in life. I was really overwhelmed by the tenacity of this community to solve a novel and complicated problem. Yes, many people were indifferent about solving it, but some went to inspiring lengths to figure it out. I would only change one thing, that being, adding more garbage hexadecimal to the Pastebin in order to confuse online conversion resources and force people to write a small program to find the pictures. Overall, this is something I would love to do again, whether as a creator or participant. I’m sure we would all enjoy doing Clues from time to time and I strongly encourage anyone reading this to write a challenging clue for the community to solve. The reward doesn’t have to be 170M. That is not a precedent. In fact I was thinking, if I ever wrote another one, the reward would be killing CBA in the wild with the un-protected Heron pet. A lot of people told me they didn’t care about the reward and just loved solving the clue for its own sake. Either way, I’ll turn over creative ownership to those who want it. You have whatever support you need from me. Thanks for the fun!
