I see the five and one things you changed, but still not sure what to do. Any coding or programming skills required to solve this?
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Well I've definitely made progress with those hints, but I'm still stumped about what to do with about half of the clues. I'll have to come back to this later with a fresh brain.
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Hey, I can see you've put a lot of effort into creating this puzzle, and I appreciate the challenge. However, if it's been three days and no one has solved it despite the 16 hints, it might be worth considering simplifying it a bit or trying a different approach. I haven't made many puzzles myself, but I understand the appeal of crafting a tough one—just remember that it should be challenging yet fair. You might want to check out some puzzles by DogOnSG or TomasMacMordain; they tend to strike that balance really well.
Anyway, I'm really looking forward to seeing the intended solution for this one! I usually do pretty well with puzzles here, but this one has me spinning my wheels.
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Still stuck on the sequence bit, this puzzle might be a bit too difficult for me
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Should the only numerals left for assembled key? What is length for?
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I hope you don't mind me asking your two cents, but do you think there are enough people left trying to solve this to make it worth it?
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I think most of us are stuck at the wrong (error) step.
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I don't know who most of you are, but I'm stuck at the string of characters that seem to be as random as hell.
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I was answering to the question above.
people left trying
(where you commented "WTF?")
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Right. Still, I don't know how many got to the point where you are. I know I'm stuck before that, with my "WTF?".
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i still have various notes saved and have been popping back in once in a while. personally, i am stuck on the sequence bit as well.
the only things i can think of for >> to mean are either bit shift which doesnt yield anything useful (and falls outside of the rule of "no coding knowledge needed") or a caesar/rot shift (which ive tried a few variations of but have not gotten anything useful either). im also not sure why the final ?? is grouped together with the error/2 bit rather than being separated with a comma or semicolon.
as for the earlier clues, im also not really sure what the "length" one is about (i had a few guesses but none seemed to work). i also havent done anything with the clues from the link to the past, yugioh, mario 64, manfred von karma, or flash game links.
thats where my thoughts are at right now, so maybe some other people are on the same page as me. i will definitely keep trying to solve it if you provide more clues. at the very least, if you decide to cancel the giveaways, i would love to know what the solution was supposed to be!
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So the key should contain numerals, positional alphabetical characters and lenght? What to get the lenght from? This assembled key should unlock one of 5 other phrases? Does unlocking it give something meaninghful or it's another passphrase?
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I'm also stuck at the wrong/error step.
I'm missing all context here. From the hints I think it's describing some cryptographic actions, however I have no idea what the input should be.
With only a vague idea of what the equation could mean and no idea on the input, the possibilities are endless...
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Yes, but I still fail to see the input to these decoding steps....
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I actually found this whole puzzle fascinating, even if I've made no progress... so props on that!
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Been here since the beginning, and the hints and guide have been very helpful in getting me to start to understand the process.
If the stuff in my spoiler tags are too revealing for other people, I can edit them out
Some stuff I'm still not understanding:
Error# (Though I have noticed in the original post that error is now bolded which leads me to believe something about that video is the number i'm looking for. Seconds in the video? Length of something? idk)
How to find the ??s (This is where I feel like it might be something to do with the stuff after the ?s in the youtube links maybe?)
and then what to do after with them (maybe rot13 based on the >>13? but it feels like it might also be like base64(62?) or something bc of the capital/lowercase letters and numbers? Those both have numbers associated with them)
"Right place but not right position" Doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to me as I feel like those words are synonymous.
NPC Console? Is this the "odd clue out"?
Decryption D scares me
The "key" stuff from your original hints makes more sense now lol
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i am still confused on everything but bump for the sheer dedication you put into the puzzle, clues, and guide. I'll look at this later... still got 48 or so hours.
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seconded on the dedication! it is really impressive! and it is nice having a puzzle that is more challenging than they usually are... there are just so many factors for different trains all mashed together that it is difficult to figure out what we actually need to use lol
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assuming that decryption A is base 64 and decryption B is reversing the character order, ive had the clues for puzzle 1 decoded since the easier edit, but im still stuck on what to do next. ive tried a whole bunch of methods, including the letter/length from the video uploaders' names (which i really thought would work since theyve now been italicized), the letter/length of the preceding plaintext numbers written out as words, the letter/length of each primary recommendation ciphertext, the letter/length of each secondary recommendation ciphertext, and the letter/length of the actual alphabet (so let 1 is a, let 5 is e, etc.). i have tried each of these methods with two order variations: using the order presented in the discussion post as well as the order noted in the plaintext, but it still hasnt yielded a functional GA code. am i missing something? there shouldnt be any more steps based on both the X...; clue and the puzzle 1 decryption methods mentioned in the guide, and im not sure what other combinations i can try.
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no idea unfortunately. my first thought was that they were timestamps for the youtube videos, but theres no colon, and it seemed too imprecise a measurement to go off of words on screen or words said by the narrator. then i tried spelling out the words, but that did not work as stated above.
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It may be a number of seconds, when you copy a link with timeline there is a link like that with a number of seconds at the end https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?t=164, but still cannot get anything meaningful.
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oh yeah i totally forgot you could do that! that would make sense with the seconds clue as well. i just tried it and have not been able to get anything meaningful either though.
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No Entry 1 Day left very hard puzzle
I waiting ended to solved
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Looking for giveaways? Too bad! Instead, have some video recommendations.
I’ve got five videos from five YouTubers with under one million subscribers. These are mostly video essays, feature-length stuff you can’t burn through on a lunch break. To keep them topical, they are all about video games, though only one of them is specific to PC gaming and two-and-a-half are about games that can’t be played on PC legally except by ripping and emulating roms from your own legally purchased console games, which is the "only method I recommend..."
A Brief Review of Pokémon Generations 1-5, by KingK
To ease us in, we have a sort-of popular gaming YouTuber with a six-figure subscriber count. Okay, I say “ease us in,” but the video’s five hours long. Here me out. KingK’s style is very relaxed but methodical. I especially love his Zelda and Sonic videos, but I went with his Pokémon retrospectives because he’s planning to release his Gen 7 retrospective within the next few weeks or so. You could watch the playlist of the original videos for this reason, as it includes two videos not in the compilation covering Gen 6 and the games for N64 and GameCube, though the compilation video has all of the sponsor segments cut out. I sort of wanted to be controversial and recommend KingK’s review of Link to the Past, because I think that video’s backlash was 90% unwarranted, but whatever. Go watch them all if you like.
The Appeal Of Older Graphics, by Internet Pitstop
I was originally trying to keep this recommendation list majority-zero-play-button, but I thought it was a bit too heavy and dry, so I switched in this guy. His whole aesthetic is relaxing, just chilling in a greenscreen. Looking at pretty graphics and animation. The graphics video is a feast for the eyes. I’m also going to break my game-only rule to recommend his video about Yu-Gi-Oh. Well, I guess technically it is a game… whatever.
Ocarina of Time is the Mayonnaise of Video Games by i am error
i am error has such a gentle yet emotional style that gets me kind of weepy sometimes, and that’s a feat. In addition to her big Ocarina of Time video, she’s also made an even bigger Super Mario 64 video. I also want to shout out her Minesweeper trilogy (the first one’s unlisted, see her playlists), and her video on “the pain of losing friends,” which hit like a freight train.
Franziska von Karma: Profoundly Misunderstood [Analysis & Retrospective] by Wendy Rocket
This one is purely a personal pick that I don’t expect everyone to see the same way as I do. It’s a defense of one mid-tier popular character from a mid-tier popular game series, it’s delivered via rantsona, I get it, I don’t care, IT JUST SPEAKS TO ME! But give it a chance anyways, especially if you like Ace Attorney, and especially especially if you just thought of Franziska von Karma as the black sheep between Edgeworth and Godot. Also, Wendy has a less intense video about Manfred von Karma. I’m mostly mentioning it because it’s her only other scripted video, but it's still good, I swear!
Exploring Dead Games by Redlyne
Finally, a bookend of another six-figure sub guy who is well on his way now that his videos are pulling seven-figure views pretty consistently. This recommendation is kind of the dessert. No essay or persuasive point, just entertaining content. I’ve seen all three of these videos thus far, they’re all I’ve watched, but I’m looking forward to watching his 2-hour flash game video. Skimming through it brought back a lot of memories.
I hope you enjoy the videos!
…
...why are you still here? There are no giveaways! Never mind the level requirement and expiry date in the title, go watch the videos and move on with your life!
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