A puzzle to solve. A quiz as an aid.
No other hints now – but don't be afraid!

Consult this timer. Keep it spoiler free.
Ask me no questions – I shan't answer thee!

Once main solution is already found
I dare thee, my friend – seek a bonus round!

I bid thee good luck. And not least, but last
– all shall be revealed once things come to past.

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Alchemia cipher crackers: 26
Advanced puzzle solvers: 10
Grandmaster puzzle solvers: 5

Some updates:

• If you've heard about an eye of the tiger, I have changed the message slightly to remove some noise. I may add more hints about it later. Seems to be causing too much overthinking.
• If you found a new face and you see it rotated, I just been lazy and didn't fix it. Rotation wasn't intended as any actual hint. And that face comes to play much later anyway, until you read about it (EDIT: I think I fixed the rotation, but maybe if you use something else than I did, it will still be rotated, so ignore that)
• As I mentioned in one of my comments, I'm dissapointed if someone broke the cipher but didn't read my poetry – you're not there unless you've seen it named exactly as such.
• If you found something that shall not be talked about, the message is pretty self-contained and truthful. There are really no other hints for it elsewhere, it already contains quite a few hints that are much more straightforward than the eye of the tiger message. But if you want to bruteforce, be my guest, it's doable.
• I had to fix a small but vital messup near the very end, there's new picture. But it only concerned one person as far as I know, because noone else got that far, yet.
• On a rather unrelated note, I have changed the poem slightly just because it turned out I miscalculated syllables on one line. Probably noone gave a flying mosquito about my poem trying to adhere to some rules, but I'm actually quite happy with it. Also, perhaps it's more clearer now, that breaking Alchemia cipher is not the end, but I guess whoever cared, noticed that already, from my many updates.
• Bit of paranoia can go a long way. Although I guess more experienced puzzlers that have seen some funky solutions already have an upper hand.
• Again about the thing that shall not be talked about: the most important information is in rules 3 and 4.
• Seems I forgot to hint the format for "down the memory lane". That didn't stop a few of the solvers, because I guess it's pretty clear you are getting a code and bruteforcing casing isn't really a hard thing. I meant to include the format in the message just forgot. Well, use the same hint as I'm giving for the giveaway that is connected to recent civil war. You didn't find it or don't know what I'm talking about? Bruteforce it is for you, then.
• Okay still only one person with 100% completion. Real kudos to them, however I don't want so many of the Alchemia cipher crackers to be stuck going further down the rabbit hole. If you have successfully went back in time, revisit the destination – there's some new info for you.
• Just by the way – it is true about my updates above and at least most of the puzzle: if you found something and have little idea what to do with it, then that most likely means you can't use it yet. I tend to be pretty clear what you need at any given time. Like the cryptic names I give, like "going back in time" – if you've been there, you know it. No point in trying to guess what I meant by that in my hints here.
• For those who found the thing that shall not be talked about but are ultimately missing the format: hugs and kisses.

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SOLUTION

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Some wonderful people have contributed a few giveaways so I could hide / embed them in my main puzzle. I spent too much time on this to be just the Alchemia cipher one. Thank you, in alphabetical order: BBarkley, chour, dys, jetta, Super Fluffy Kitty! The solutions to mini side puzzles are after the main sequence solution.

Special kudos to chuckie001 for being the first solver everywhere, and letting me know I messed up a bit of the puzzle in later stages. So I could fix that for anyone who followed.

The main, centerpiece puzzle had practically more clues and visual hints than were really needed to solve it. Just to eliminate some guesswork. With added quiz to confirm your guesses. No excuses about moon logic, that part was actually very logical.

Main sequence

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Alchemia cipher.

The centerpiece puzzle. As the quiz mentioned, the key to solve it was on figure D. It was a QR code leading to a free to play flash game Alchemia. I am not affiliated with the game, and didn't myself play the extended paid version. However I liked the game and after playthrough I had the idea to use some of the machines found there to my own purposes. The game has embedded walkthrough, so it wasn't the challenge by itself, but still could be extra layer of fun.

The alpha function.

Figure A and Question 1 were about the alpha function, some function that I established to encode an alphabetical string. I thought about making it case sensitive, but the final version is not.

Basically it's a function that takes a seed character and an array of shifts, then rotates the seed according to the shifts, returning a string of same length as the array. The sample results were there to deduce that behavior and also understand that the underlying alphabet is ABC..XYZ123..890.

The Fridge and The Sundial.

The game features a fridge lock mechanism and a sundial. Let's start with the latter as it's easier to explain.

It's basically.. well.. a sundial, but with a little flashlight instead of the Sun, giving full 24 hour coverage. Each hour has an alchemical symbol assigned to it and in-game puzzle was to assign proper symbols to three selected times of the day. So, this apparatus has 24 cyclical states, one for each hour.

Fridge lock mechanism has three interlocked cogs with symbols, one with 8 symbols, the other with 12, and third small one with just 4 symbols. Each cog has a small magnifying glass to view one selected symbol. The in-game puzzle was to match three symbols on the cogs with symbols you had on a "keycard" given you by someone by the fridge.

The fridge lock mechanism also features a small display and keypad with 9 symbols. Setting the cogs to some particular combination shows a sequence of 4 symbols on the display, they match the symbols from the keypad. In-game, the one selected wheels setting shows a particular combination that you have to enter on the keypad to unlock the fridge.

Incidentally, the lock has 24 cyclic states just like the sundial. The third small wheel actually introduces no bigger cycle, but the middle sized one on the left takes 3 rotations to complete the cycle (3 8 = 24), and the big one in the middle takes 2 rotations (12 2 = 24).

Figure B was there to synchronize the two mechanisms. So, one alchemical symbol from the sundial could be translated to 3 symbols on the fridge lock cogs, and that would subsequently translate to 4 symbols on the display.

Quiz questions were there so you could confirm you got the synchronization right, I just had to provide temporary 3x3 translation table from the fridge lock display symbols to alphanumerical values. The quiz answers actually read NICE and GOOD. The translation table also foreshadows the next part.

The Face Recognition.

Another place in the game features a door locked with some face recognition apparatus. There are two wheels you can turn, one wheel contains 12 face details (stuff like eyes, nose, mouth - smile or otherwise) and the other contains 12 face contours (like bearded with a crown, no beard but crown, some long or short hair etc.).

The two wheels overlap in the middle with a small viewing window that shows combined details and contour to show a full face. The in-game puzzle was to match this with a face you can see on the mechanism, which allows you to unlock the door.

Figure C was obviously connected to this part. It features a 12x12 grid and two selected faces that "think" about a position on the grid. The solving face points to 3x3 piece that pretty much matches the 3x3 keypad on fridge lock - has the symbols from there. Rest of the grid are alchemical symbols matching the ones on the sundial.

Basically, the faces are coordinates to the grid. I was thinking about the solving face as (0, 0) coordinates and for example the another face on fig. C was (+1, -2). That face was establishing, that the grid wraps around the edges, at least the top and down edges. The face from Q4, (-2, +9), was confirming the grid actually has full flat torus topology (wraps around both edges) so it matches the cyclic behavior of wheels.

The face details select a row on the grid. Face contours select a column. Full face selects 3x3 submatrix with the middle matching where the face coordinates of details and contour meet.

That's the "thinking" part. A coordinate face "thinks" about a 3x3 table it points to.

There is also "talking" part. The faces actually "talk" with symbols from the fridge lock keypad, and your task is to translate what they "say" into an array of numbers with plus or minus signs.

It's as if a full face is actually a substitution cihper function from keypad symbols to an array of numbers, according to a 3x3 subsitution table it "thinks" or points to. But wait a minute, how do you get numbers from the grid full of alchemical symbols? Well, simple, each symbol on the grid had assigned number from 0 to 23 according to the hour it corresponds to on the sundial.

All this was possible to deduce from the fig. C, with Q4 to confirm the logic.

The Seed.

Q5 was rather easy. There's a clock in game that shows "X" as the NIGHT SHIFT END. It bugs me, why 10 AM or PM would be a night shift end, maybe them alchemists work on a 12-hour shifts or something. Anyway, X was the answer and the seed to use on fig. F.

The Figure F.

It was just putting everything above together. An alchemical symbol with the visual cue from fig. B translates to 4 keypad symbols. With extra 1 symbol, that gives 5 symbols total. Apply the (+9, +2) face to it to get an array of numbers.

Now apply the alpha function with the seed "X" and the array of 5 numbers you got from talking coordinate face, and you get the giveaway code, just as the quiz would tell you after solving it, in case that wasn't obvious by that time. The quiz also hinted the format, that all letters are upper case.

The centerpiece giveaway was M&B: Warband. Anyone who got there would be tallied as Alchemia cipher cracker.

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The Bonus Round

AKA The Thing That Shall Not Be Talked About.

The poem suggested you to find a bonus round after solving the main puzzle, and then I added hints that you are not there until it is spelled like that, so you don't confuse the hidden giveaways for the bonus round.

To get to the bonus round, you had to look at the source code of my description of the Warband giveaway. By the "hugs and kisses" I have signed with: oX0Xo. This was by the way the format for the bonus round giveaway (lower, upper, number, upper, lower).

The bonus round itself turned out to be harder than I thought, ah well. It had 5 rules, first rule was "Do not speak about the bonus round" hence the moniker I gave to that part. The important rules were #3 and #4. #5 was just saying that you have to look on the grid for the code for it is there.

Rule #3

I liked the idea of hiding a bonus giveaway code somewhere besides the main solution on figure F, so I really put it there with a smile.

Hard stuff to get, apparently. It was narrowing down the possible location of the code to just the rows from the grid that were pointed by a smiley face detail. There 4 details like that, thus 4 possible rows to look at. I should maybe tell that it's on a face not featured anywhere, because indeed the three rows that did not have the code were pointed by a smile that had been featured elsewhere on the puzzle. And the actual, 5th row from top, or "+5" row from (0, 0), was for a smile that I didn't put anywhere else.

Ah well, it was still possible to just apply the alpha function to whole 12x12 grid without casting 2/3 of it away. So the real important rule was only the 4th one, as it was concerning a seed to use.

Rule #4

You will need a seed for the alpha function, but you will not find it here. Also, I did not put any hints about it anywhere else. However, I do not really expect you to use brute force.

That basically says it all, and it pains me to see that most people found it easier to just brute force 36 seeds to the whole 12x12 grid. The solution to this riddle: the whole raw text message DID NOT feature letter 'J' or number '8'.. so these were the seeds you would not find there. Just 2 seeds to try, not 36.

The smiley face row of numbers, when alpha function with 'J' seed was applied to it, would say GIVAWAY@@@@@ (of course the @@@@@ was the actual code). So, you could see that row had actual English word on it, just misspelled to fit 12 symbols, basically telling you what the code is. That's why you could apply alpha function to the whole grid and see that row anyway. Use the 'hugs and kisses' format with it, and you got to Deus Ex: Invisible War giveaway, the bonus round solved and you counted as 'advanced solver'.

But, of course, the rabbit hole went deeper.

Going deeper down the rabbit hole.

The message on the bonus round giveaway would explain you that the bonus round riddle message pointed you exactly to two seeds, so even if you bruteforced the solution, you'd still have to come back there as I used the other seed to hide yet another giveaway code. Now since you already knew 'J' was one of them, it would be easier to go back and solve the riddle, although I think 3 players still bruteforced this part.

It was actually pretty easy riddle to get to the next round, even if you had to brute force everything not even knowing the '8' was the right seed to use.

The second code hidden on the grid pointed to a giveaway of Deus EX: HR DLC, Explosive Mission pack. And that giveaway explained you that basically the rabbit hole goes even deeper, and there are actually 13 giveaways active and 3 more to come once some giveaway slots open for me. Everyone who got there, got invited to Blue Gifts group for these 3 giveaways (Deus Ex original, Deus EX: HR and Deus EX: HR - Missing Link).

It also turned out that to get to the very final giveaway, you need to find some of the other hidden giveaways ("down the memory lane", "the eye of the tiger" and "pony power"), concatenate their codes and use tinyurl.com to get to the final final message.

The Final Final Giveaway.

The message you found after finding all the other giveaways was an easy puzzle describing textually alchemical symbols and steps to perform to get another alpha function + seed + talking face + fridge lock state + extra symbol giving you the final giveaway code. The talking face to use was one featured in the Photoshop:PhotoshopThumbnail visible with Joeffrey's EXIF online viewer.

I'm sorry I know at least one person wasn't able to find that face as they didn't know that online tool and everything else they tried didn't work. Also, I'm sorry that at least one person found the face early on and tried some stuff with it and then got bit angry with the puzzle once it turned out that the face comes into place much later on, and also the initial rotation on the face was an unintentional flop that I corrected later, not an actual hint for anything. Thought it would be a nice puzzle step to actually rotate the face purposefully so you had to rotate the 3x3 translation table. Oh well..

The very final giveaway was Civilisation V by BBarkley.

Also, Chour decided to put his "revenge" 2 puzzle giveaways there, however they turned out to be an actual real revenge, har, har, as noone from the very advanced puzzle solvers actually got them. Sigh. Here's hoping though to see some first forum puzzle by Chour! YAY! :D

What I actually consider a "grandmaster" puzzle solver was someone who got 100% of the giveaways, and one elusive Fortix turned out to be a demise for some. They got everything BUT that. Fortix is a real killer, whatddya say.

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Side quests

Although my poem says about looking for bonus round, there is actually only one thing clearly spelled as bonus round. However, there were plenty hidden giveaways on/in the picture. Pretty much EVERY SECTION of the main puzzle had something hidden, as easy as bucket filling a section and get the giveaway code right away. Or fudging with contrast/brightness. Shame on you.

Gratz to the solvers and especially the winners! One person was ultra lucky to win 3 of the giveaways, and another got 2! And who knows maybe the 3 giveaways that are still running in Blue Gifts group will make them even more lucky with my puzzle.

Figure A. Bit where you say Luv Ya!

Bucket fill to reveal a message:

gratz on finding dys
extra BIT where you say: "Luv Ya!"
and gather all the results from here
together as they are

Solution: http://bit.ly/B6Y9D82QN - indie gala 3 by dys. 16 people commented.

Figure B. The elusive Morse pixels

Ah, the ever so elusive Fortix! Turned out for some reason to be often the very last giveaway found by the puzzle grandmasters. Some I think missed only this one. Like, was it really that hard at that point to realize, each section has a bonus?

Bucket fill to reveal pixels forming Morse code message translating to:

SG CODE FFSBR 1ST AND 3RD LOWER

Fortix by Super Fluffy Kitty. 11 people commented.

I also referred to this one as connectd to recent civil war, to possibly reuse the "1st and 3rd lower" format hint from one of the deeper giveaways I didn't give format for.

Figure C. The Bonus Round

The actual bonus round asked to look for not 1, but 2 giveaways here, the solution is hereinabove in main sequence. No bucket fill at this time. Description on how to get these codes followed from a hidden link to a pastebin, on the Warband giveaway description.

Referred to as The Thing That Shall Not Be Talked About, as it had 5 rules, first of which is "Do not speak of the bonus round."

Whoever solved the bonus round riddle was tallied as advanced puzzle solver.

Figure D. The Eye of The Tiger.

The picture has stuff hidden in other places too, I have used a lot of tricks on the picture. This might have been found and solved without a hint, but an actual hint is in Comment EXIF metadata of the picture. Base64 encoded message (just so it doesn't show plaintext when hex editing the file):

Hey there so look at the QR code, figure D you see? It's totally like a Bengal tiger. I kid you not. Its head. Just tilted.

And with three big eyes. Threee eyes whoa! The middle eye... Look into the eye of the tiger! Deep inside you see?

Bluish. Whoaaa it's... like... mirror image... of black panther! Totally. Follow it I tell you... Epic!

Bengal tiger = white cat with black spots = alegory for the big QR code on figure D.

Three big eyes = three big QR code markers. Middle one (upper left corner) is the one you have to look deeper into.

The marker actually is.. a QR CODE! Just not white and black like bengal tiger, more like a black panther, but bluish. Black and deep blackish navy. Also, mirror image just like in my orginal puzzle so shouldn't be readable unless flipped.

Giveaway from the QR Code-ception: Indie Gala 2 Epic bundle by dys. 15 people commented.

Figure E. The helpful Quiz.

If you opened the image as zip file, you'd get a message.txt telling you to concatenate the solutions of the quiz and use with tinyurl.com. So, that's an actual reward for solving the quiz, just with extra paranoia thrown in to find it.

The giveaway - Bejeweled 3 by jetta. Found by 15 people, even though more solved the actual quiz.

Figure F. The easy one.

Just bucket fill to directly get an easy one on me. Indie Gala V. 21 people have found this one of the easiest sub-puzzles.

The Pony Power On The Outside.

A homeage to Jexel's puzzle. I decided to force people to subliminally stare at ponies, just like he did. Bucket fill outside of the figures to reveal My Little Pony silhuettes and message to make them tiny.url. Just take the first letters of names of the ponies.

That led to Zombie Driver by Super Fluffy Kitty. At least 21 peopl wille have night.. err.. dreams about ponies.

The zip within.

As mentioned already, you could open the image as zip file to reveal message.txt. Apart from giving a reward for solving the quiz, it also asked to repeat some of the last steps of my first puzzle here, to get "down the memory giveaway". However, that first needed "going back in time" to find another giveaway mentioned hereinafter, from the bonus round, to repeat three times after tinyurl.com.

That led to another code similar to figure F. So, this required solving the Alchemia cipher plus extra dash of paranoia.

I forgot to include giveaway format for this, but that didn't stop people from bruting it, after all it was pretty clear you got just another giveaway code just like Figure F. Later on I added the hint to reuse format hint from Fortix's morse code (1st and 3rd lower case).

The giveaway: Krater by BBarkley (aka Rys33). 11 people got there.

The EXIF metadata.

Also as mentioned, EXIF metadata held some extra info, too. One of these - hint to look into the Eye of The Tiger. Another - Photoshop:PhotoshopThumbnail with a misterious face that came into play at the very end of main puzzle.

The third thing was another plain 5 character giveaway code hiding as EXIF tag.

It was Indie Gala 4 by dys. 17 people got this another very easy one.

There is an excellent EXIF viewer online simple web search away, that would show all these.

Going back in time.

The bonus round pastebin message mentioned going back in time, close from there. You had to look for past version of the pastebin, feature provided by the site, to get the code to Broken Sword Trilogy giveaway by me.

Conclusion

I generally wanted to induce as much paranoia as possible and I think sometimes I succeeded too well!

I used TIFF because I wanted both pixel perfect precision of PNG and EXIF of JPEG, and TIFF combines the two. Pity I wasn't able to insert actual EXIF CompositeThumbnail so had to use the annoying feature of my Photoshop Elements - it puts its own stuff on the images, including its own Photoshop:PhotoshopThumbnail. Unfortunately the latter isn't as easy to find as CompositeThumbnail that would even directly show in file explorer on Windows and possibly other OSes, but the online tool I mentioned above works well for that, too.