Too Many Secrets
Marleen's 40th birthday puzzle hunt
My sister made me this amazing birthday gift - least I could do was to write a report on it and make it look kinda of awesome to do the experience justice. So that's what I did. I didn't have time, however, to create a version that displays beautifully on small screens. So this report is only available on tablets, laptops, desktop PCs and TVs.
You can try turning your mobile device sideways (for landscape mode) - or otherwise, find a slightly larger screen and then come back!
Thank you.
- Marleen
Tool Kit
The Map
See the map in your tool kit in the top right corner? You can access it at any point to follow along. It also held some more secrets... but I didn't understand right away in which ways the map was supposed to help me. So, more on that later!
Meanwhile...
Starleen stumped
Okay, so what's on the map? A dragon, music notes, an X that marks the spot, a red dot, yin and yang (and a three-eyed yin-yang?!), Trainer Dave (uh-oh!), some writing in Klingon, a URL at the top, and more.
I decided that the URL at the top was the best candidate to start my quest. As expected, it was encoded:
→ ghofzssb.gifus.gv
... but old trusty Caesar can fix that for us, and that got us here:
The cryptic white board also gave us another URL:
If you're utterly clueless about what any of this means, don't worry, so was I.
But you have to start somewhere.
Note: This is one of the hardest puzzles in the entire puzzle hunt. If you think the difficulty is ridiculous, that's because it is! But it is so elegant...
Yeah, I needed help with this one and luckily my sister didn't hold it against me, and "nudged" me in the direction of the solution tiny hint by tiny hint.
Without further ado, here's how the solve works:
The problem:
a p where b (p) = x
The solve:
- Escape velocity x = 11.2 km/s (this is known)
- "xunsetui", run through the Caesar decoder, translates to "hexcodes"
- Use the # decoder to note down the html colour codes for the characters listed for "a" and "b"
- The numbers in the coloured boxes refer to the position in the respective hexcode
The solution:
a p where b (p) = x → CA11 “p” where D.0.B. (“p”) = 11.2
My sister's birthday is the 11th of February. And I was supposed to call her.
Of course I was already on the phone with her, because of all the help I needed. But once the solution presented itself, she just cheerfully yelled at me in Klingon - Qapla'!
My reward for solving this (even with lots of help) was threefold:
- I now knew where I currently was on the map (in the Klingon sector).
- My sister gave me a new URL.
- Isabell also told me to talk to Jeff to pick up a physical birthday present.
