[Event] Touhou ARG Event! (group puzzle) [ENDED, solutions posted!]

Welcome to Touhou ARG Event, another community collaboration proudly presented to you by Touhou Giveaways group!

What is the event about this time?

We prepared for you 21 unique puzzles of varying difficulty. Each puzzle, upon completion, unlocks access to main giveaway in the tier, as well as extra giveaways added to it. Overall, there are over 100 hand-picked giveaways, with a lot of nice games inside, including our grand prize for this event: NieR:Automata™.

The rules

The rules are simple - there are no rules. You can use whatever way you want to approach the goal, find clues wherever you feel appropriate, and bruteforce your way through if needed. This is supposed to be community (group) puzzle, therefore we highly recommend to work in a group (or groups) in order to achieve the goal. However, regardless of our recommendation, the rules stay the same - nothing is true, everything is permitted.

Beware! There is a catch though. The more people participate, the more entries there will be, which will lower your overall chances of winning our giveaways! This is why you should think twice whether you want to work solo, in a group, as one huge community or with your best friend. This thread is entirely up to you, as well as puzzle giveaways, which means that you can leak questions, answers, clues, giveaway links and everything else you consider appropriate, be it here or anywhere else. Let's see how our social experiment will turn out :3.

End date

Giveaways are set to end on 15th April, giving you more or less a full week to go through all of our puzzles. A lot of them are easy, but there are also those that will not be obvious at first and might require specialistic knowledge, a lot of imagination or going widely out of the box. We plan to include hints where appropriate, which will happen in giveaways directly connected with the puzzle you're having troubles with. There is only one rule regarding this - we will not include hints to puzzles that at least a single person passed through. This is to ensure that if you decide to work solo, other people will not have it any easier than you to get there. So if there is going to be a hint, it will be a hint for everybody. Let's see how far you'll go before time runs out! Toho clock is ticking!

Final notes

We recommend to leave us a comment once you reach a giveaway, which will disable all of our potential hints for that puzzle, as explained above. Joining that giveaway will have the same effect.

zelgh's guide might come useful as a general eye-opener, although you'll need far more than that to move forward :3.

Solutions to all puzzles will be published once event is over.

Without further ado, let's rock! The first giveaway starts with code 943 :3.

Solutions

Internal parts used during the event under arg.justarchi.net were re-uploaded on my Dropbox for archival purposes. This way you can use the actual files after the event is over, since I do not intend to keep arg.justarchi.net running for indefinite future.

Puzzle 1

First puzzle was right there in the thread. First obvious part was at the end of it which indicated that the giveaway starts with 943. The missing two characters were put in italic in the rest of the post. 'k' in "unlocks" and 'a' in chances. Those two were possible to see right away, but they were even more obvious in the source code of the page where they're verbosely put in <em></em> tags. Added together, that gave access to the first giveaway, 943ka.

All future puzzles were included inside comments of prize giveaways, starting with 943ka above.

Puzzle 2

Second puzzle was still classic one and it involved caesar cipher with shift of -9 (or +17, depending on way), although you didn't need to know the exact number at all. In order to make it harder, the original message wasn't written in English (which would spoil half the fun), but actually in latin, which is what confused a lot of people for no reason, as they were expecting to see familiar words instead. There are a lot of tools available that didn't only make it possible to decipher, but even automatically guess the shift, hence why I say that you didn't even need to know it beforehand, you just needed to know the cipher used (and it was damn obvious for anybody who solved that cipher in the past, there is a reason why it's one of the most ancient ciphers that ever existed).

Decoded message was written as:

Salve viator! Ut te in omnibus et ideo mirabantur. Quod autem non sit qui suus 'iustus est iter tuum principium, ad intimum animum, quod ludos secula iudicandum esse prefixit. Sit perceptivum, ut notas, quae vobis occurrant, ut non veniam utile altius quid reconditum in aliquo puncto. Nunc omnia opus est scire GCVgr, et off nos ire!

With plain obvious giveaway code, GCVgr.

Puzzle 3

This initially was supposed to be another puzzle, but due to some technical difficulties pulling it off, we decided to replace it with a backup puzzle instead. It involved a very simple crossword for which answers you could find without any difficulties on google. Just for the sake of completion, those answers were:

nine9
seven7
Alice Margatroid
Shikigami
Sakuya Izayoi

When you put appropriate letters into the final box, you get next giveaway code, GG7Z9.

Puzzle 4

This puzzle involved two stages, which is what made it interesting. First stage was a source code written in brainfuck that, once executed, printed https://arg.justarchi.net/puzzle4 on the console. Of course the difficulty of this part lied directly in knowing in advance that something like brainfuck exists, since many people were unaware of it, despite of a lot of similar puzzles on SG happening in the past.

Second part involved going under https://arg.justarchi.net/puzzle4 link, which included directory index with the only file available - 感情の摩天楼 ～ Cosmic Mind.ogg. What made this puzzle easier was me keeping up with ogg RFC, and therefore making a lot of good quality audio software, such as VLC, recognize it right away in the metadata view. However, that was not the only way to do that, as you could as well open the file in notepad++ or similar and read the metadata blocks yourself, since they were visible in plain sight.

In any case, you could easily notice 5 interesting metadata blocks:

3=r
5=k
1=z
2=A
4=e

Which of course, after adding together resulted in next giveaway code, zArek.

Puzzle 5

Puzzle 5 also included two parts, and as the first one expected from you to actually be perceptive in terms of what you did in the previous puzzle. The only lead that was included in the giveaway as the fact that the next giveaway starts with tW.

However, many people actually "solved" this one without even completing previous puzzle, since all that was needed to finish the first part was smartly changing previous https://arg.justarchi.net/puzzle4 link that you've just used a second ago into https://arg.justarchi.net/puzzle5, effectively redirecting you to You're Correct Horse which was a hint that you're looking in the right place.

The second part involved looking inside the response that you're receiving from the server, which is what actually makes your browser follow that redirection. You could access that through many possible ways, such as using network view in Chrome/Firefox, by analyzing raw data sent by server, or by navigating to the link using curl which just dumps the output without interpreting the content, opposite of what a web browser is doing.

The entire html file that was sent to your browser was made of:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>YOU ARE SMART</title>
    <meta name="next_giveaway_ends_with" content="zpH">
    <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3_lVSrPB6w">
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

Of course the most interesting are two <meta> blocks - one which was used for redirection (which was a hint only), and second one which included remaining 3 characters for the next giveaway, which together with 2 initial ones unlocked another giveaway code for you, tWzpH.

Puzzle 6

This is where the event started to be interesting. This one involved no data to work with, but just an indicator that you already know all that is needed, with further hint that 5 giveaways you visited earlier might have something to do with it.

If you actually solved previous 5 puzzles then this one should be semi-obvious to you, since you've just seen 5 different giveaway codes. A bit of creativity would lead you to composing next giveaway code by copying 1 letter from each giveaway you've seen until now, which is 9 from 943ka, C from GCVgr, 7 from GG7Z9, e from zArek and H from tWzpH, giving a birth to 9C7eH, which was the next giveaway code.

Yes, as you can guess ArchiBoT helped us in this by finding out the exact combination of first 6 giveaways in order to make this puzzle possible, from all the giveaways that we've created exclusively for the event. Thank you ArchiBoT :3.

Puzzle 7

This puzzle was interesting because it said in plain obvious what you have to do. You had to call a specific phone number (actually owned by one of our group members) and ask for large pizza with extra soy sauce, after which you'd be given the code.

The real puzzle was how you're going to achieve that in order to avoid fees. You could go plain obvious way without a second thought and just call the number (optionally prepending +1 if you're not from the US) and get the code, either from our member or from his voicemail, but that solution was pretty boring.

Much more interesting solution involved a hint that was added in the giveaway shortly after the event started - you had the task to contact with our agent on the phone number in order to receive a code, but it didn't say explicitly how you're supposed to receive it.

This allowed you to find any free sms service and ask for giveaway code on your e-mail or even Steam account, which was indeed what a lot of people followed, and that was truly great. Another option involved finding free call service (yes, at least one person found one), and yet another option was just grabbing any of your US friends and asking them to do one of the above, be it sms or a call. There were a lot of possibilities. Regardless which way you followed, you received IaXPD code to move forward,

Yes, we intentionally wanted this puzzle to involve a real phone number, bringing ARG into reality.

Puzzle 8

This one was easy once you realized what is going on. Approaching this puzzle could be done in a lot of possible ways, but the most obvious fact was spotting that there are exactly 36 blocks between each ░ block that could hint you into this one being some kind of break.

Just changing ░ block into a newline nicely converted previous mystery into a clear message:

▮▯▯▯▯▯▮▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▮▮▮▮▮▯▯▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▯▯▯▯▯▯▯
▮▯▯▮▯▯▮▯▮▮▮▮▮▯▮▯▯▯▯▯▮▯▮▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▮▮▮▮▯
▮▯▯▮▯▯▮▯▯▯▮▯▯▯▮▯▯▯▯▯▮▯▮▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▮▯▯▯▯▮
▮▯▯▮▯▯▮▯▯▯▮▯▯▯▯▮▮▮▮▮▮▯▮▮▮▮▮▮▯▯▮▯▯▯▯▮
▮▯▯▮▯▯▮▯▯▯▮▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▮▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▮▯▮▯▯▯▯▮
▮▯▯▮▯▯▮▯▯▯▮▯▯▯▮▯▯▯▯▯▮▯▮▯▯▯▯▯▮▯▮▯▯▯▯▮
▯▮▮▯▮▮▯▯▯▯▮▯▯▯▯▮▮▮▮▮▯▯▯▮▮▮▮▮▯▯▯▮▮▮▮▯

I guess that there is no need to explain where Wt95o came from :3.

Puzzle 9

This one involved an image that at the first glance was screaming "the next code is here!" and indeed, there was. Smart people would immediately notice that there are exactly 5 rows of 3 colored squares each, so very likely 5 letters composed in some miracle way out of 3 colors.

Now, analyzing the file further in any a bit more advanced image editor could lead you to a code hidden in the comments:

[white,0][yellow,1][orange,2][red,3][purple,4][blue,5][green,6][black,7]

Once again, you could see it even with notepad++ or anything, it wasn't even hidden.

Now replacing colors in the above image with numbers from the code would lead you to following result:

060
166
066
112
156

At this point it should be obvious, but if somebody is not aware, that was 0v6Jn code written in octals. You could easily convert octal to text using any online decoder for that purpose, assuming you didn't want to convert yourself.

Puzzle 10

This one was much easier than it should be. First step was visiting https://arg.justarchi.net/hackme website on which you were supposed to enter a password.

Now, this was super easy because the entire "password" thing was actually client-based written in javascript, so you could move forward through a lot of possibilities, including disabling the function entirely, but let's explain the most obvious way:

In the source code, there was as plain as day:

function hackme() {
    input = document.getElementById('password').value;

    if (input == document.title) {
        self.location = input + '.html';
    } else {
        alert('Access denied!')
    }
}

Now out of entire function it required just to read and understand this part:

if (input == document.title) {

You could now either guess or google what document.title stands for, which of course was title of the document, and that one was also in the open:

<title>SECRET</title>

So the password was "SECRET" after all :3.

Once valid password was entered (or entire puzzle skipped and other countless ways of moving forward), the resulting page redirected you under this link, which was a Discord server invite.

Once inside, if you attempted to write anything on the channel, ArchiBoT would immediately delete your message and tell you to contact on private. Everything you put there was actually going through our AI tool, but the phrase that resulted in ArchiBoT giving you a link onwards required to tell him what I told you on the beginning of the puzzle - "The secret of getting ahead is getting started". This resulted in JiXqY code.

Puzzle 11

This puzzle started with leading you to another directory index, with a zip file for windows, linux and osx. All of those programs were exactly the same in terms of functionality, they differed only in compatibility across those 3 operating systems.

Now, in order for the program to print a giveaway code, you were asked to set a date to 4 April 2018, 13:37:00 UTC. This, despite a bit tricky, was possible to achieve and printed the next giveaway code, UNAvY.

However, this wasn't necessarily an intended way to solve this puzzle. Initially I wanted to actually require also 337 miliseconds, making this puzzle literally impossible to solve in "legit" way. You were supposed to use ILSpy or similar disassembling tool in order to extract giveaway code without even running the program in the first place. In the end however, I decided that this should not be a mandatory step, and if somebody wants to go through the hassle of setting a clock instead of poking inside the code, let him achieve that as well.

Puzzle 12

This was a puzzle that yet similar considering previous ones, could leave you thinking for a second. It involved a QR code that included a 1nxMmxXfAXTWe2v7ev83HCV2NPUiZ1vyc bitcoin address.

Now, this was actually a real bitcoin address that was generated specially for the event - as you can guess already, you weren't supposed to actually do anything with it, especially sending money, but extracting first 5 characters and creating 1nxMm giveaway code out of it.

This puzzle wasn't really a hard one, it was actually a very easy considering your past experience with previous ones, yet it definitely left you thinking "wait, could that be possible?", similar to how puzzle 6 achieved that :3.

Puzzle 13

This was my magnum opus, the puzzle I'm the most proud of, since it involved actually a lot of science to prepare, even if it wasn't that unique itself, but still challenging for those that have never seen something like that before.

The puzzle itself left only 3 hints:

• A link to 廃獄のロア.ogg file
• A link to song's lyrics
• A hint that you can already hear the answer, you just can't understand it

Now, link to lyrics was entirely false lead, indeed, this song has lyrics in made-up language, but that has nothing to do with the puzzle itself :3.

A hint was actually correct on this matter, because indeed, you can "hear" it, as the code is hidden inside 14000-19000 Hz frequencies of the song, and that range is indeed possible to hear by humans. However, that part is played so quiet that you can't possibly hear it with your human ears, you'd need an actual spectrogram for that, which would nicely uncover my magnum opus of hiding a code in audio stream that is visible to a tool, but impossible to hear as an anomaly during listening. Normally this is a very hard thing to achieve, but with proper song, proper frequencies and mixing, as you've just seen, totally possible :3. Easy way would be going above frequencies that are possible to hear by humans, but then my hint would no longer be correct on this matter, and I wanted it to be correct :3.

Of course, as visible on spectrogram, the next code is 6UazY.

Puzzle 14

From now onwards, all puzzles were more or less simple. This one involved telling you that given Steam user has the code, and we don't know how you're supposed to do it, but you have to get that code back.

Now, contacting the Steam user, even if you succeeded in doing so, wouldn't give you any answers, since the hint was intentionally written in a way to possibly influence you into just asking for the code, which would only annoy you further when you hear that you won't get it :3. Instead, code was hidden in plain sight, in achievement showcase - HIXNA.

Puzzle 15

This "puzzle" involved going through our visual novel that was prepared for the event specially for you by jbondguy007 and it was possible to download under 3 links - for windows, linux and osx.

There is not a lot to say about this one, since the code was given to you on the end of the game, so just go play it if you're wondering about the story of Cirno, Ghosty and Spacecat! In case you're too lazy to see what we've prepared for you, the next code was j7s5t.

Puzzle 16

This puzzle asked you to send an e-mail with VN feedback to us. We were actually reading them in case you're wondering, but in the end our e-mail was set to auto-respond to you with pre-generated ArchiBoT message with the next code to proceed, yuXCh.

Dear user,

This is a confirmation indicating success in receiving your complaint/praise that you've sent to us. Be assured that I forwarded it to appropriate person in charge of your inquiry. Pleace accept our deepest apologies/thanks and feel free to move forward with our yuXCh -90% discount code that you can spend on any ArchiNet merchandise of your choice (except Touhou fumo plushies). Code is valid until 01/01/1970 00:00:00 UTC.

For further messages, please contact:

• JustArchi@JustArchi.net regarding praises, positive feedback and kind words.
• /dev/null in case of complaints, negative feedback and salty responses.

Sincerely,
~ArchiBoT

Puzzle 17

This one involved going through a massive spam of e-mails, which was pure effort and no real puzzle solving, but if played smartly, you could notice that one e-mail is different than all other ones - yes, the one written in uppercase. It included the next code in the spam message, which was BFUeT.

BY THE WAY YOU'RE PROBABLY LOOKING FOR BFUET BUT WITH LOWERCASE E.

Puzzle 18

At first this is dead end, but there is an invisible link hidden in the comment which leads to a massive tree of folders created from the longest "pls rember" quote, in particular:

For the love of all that is holy in Gensokyou, for the love of the Gods who moved to this world for the sake of self-preservation I implore you, beg of you, beseech you to remember, call to mind, and recollect your previous thoughts so that whenever you have feelings of discomposure, disquitude, reverence, presentiment, misgiving, consternation, and abhorrence, recreancy, or whenever you break out in a cold sweat and tremble uncontrollably in dread, I implore you to recall from your past experiences the feelings of contentment, optimism, jubilation, joviality, hopefulness, vivacity, prosperity, or delirium. When the day is in doldrums, and you feel languish, heartbreak, down in the dumps, disconsolate, grief-sickened, heavyhearted, low-spirited, despodent, lububrious, woebegone, doleful, defected, bereaved, wistful, sorrowdul, glum, forlorn, downcast, bitter, dismal, troubled, low, or hurting, always remember happy days.

And once again this is nothing special, since this way of hiding links should be common to every person that solved at least a single puzzle here :3. The code on the end of the maze was z1JLs.

Puzzle 19

This puzzle involed a link to another game we created specially for the event, this time Cirno's adventure created by Anxeal.

Now, the code was hidden in various parts of the game, and getting all of the characters involved you poking inside every corner of the game. Majority of those letters were obvious, but first one involved 8 tiles of grass that included light and dark one, which was supposed to be read as binary 01110100 in order to get letter t. I guess the rest, especially "5 in roman numerals" was obvious enough :3. In any case, the final code was tXBnV.

Puzzle 20

This puzzle involved disguised logo programming language which is used for programmatically drawing various figures or objects. We intentionally put exactly 5 lines of logo language to indicate that each line is responsible for 1 letter, even though there is no such requirement in the language itself. If you executed the code in any logo language interpreter, such as this one, you'd get nicely-drawn 1RIvQ code.

Puzzle 21

This wasn't in fact a puzzle but just a plain simple ITH link which was put there as a final verification that you passed all previous puzzles. This was to ensure that if somebody started in the middle, he wouldn't access the final gate just like that. All you had to do was inputting giveaway codes from the very first one to the very last one. Doing so unlocked the final giveaway, z1I8h

And that was it!

We tried to include as many unique puzzles as needed, many of which were never seen on SG before, which is why a lot of people had difficulties as soon as reaching puzzle 4, which wasn't in fact hard at all considering you had pretty much only one place where potential hint could be. A lot of people tried to overthink quite obvious and simple answers, while other ones didn't make it even to the first giveaway, despite of us linking zelgh's guide which has entire section dedicated to the very first puzzle (you could basically solve it just by reading the guide and following what's written there). Obviously the puzzle-solving is not for everyone, and this is also why we made it a "no-rules" event, which allowed you to group and solve them together, yet a very small fraction of people actually decided to go this way, for unknown to me reasons - if it was allowed, then why not :3.

In any case, we hope that you enjoyed solving puzzles as much as we enjoyed creating them. I can't even express enough grattitude to jbond and anxeal for their AWESOME contributions which made the event even more unique and enjoyable, despite of having a mere week to do so.

See you in our future events! :3

Pssst, we're recruiting!