I thought this was related to Saw.

why did you write the numbers 108 178 256 338 426 540 622 689?

because -> http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/108-178-256-338-426-540-622-689?

What sorcery is this?

I got a Game Over screen a bit sooner than I expected, though I'm not quite sure what to do with it yet. I suppose it has something to do with the files. Or the other thing from that place.

I think I may be on hint 7... tough to know for sure, since I thought I was on hint 3... or 6.... :P

All in all though, definitely enjoying the puzzle. LOGIC! :D Love it.

I'm trying to be a detective, but the misdirection is frustrating.

Need some hints for the secret hall.

Quiz or key not found!

Quiz or key not found!

Just a question, will we get the answers to te puzzle once it ended? I'd be interested in what I'm clogged up and frankly, I don't see myself solving it :(

I found a fellow detective and adventurer that likes puzzles. How nice.

The hints I've given cover almost every puzzle. Time is running out. Hurry.

All I need is your brain.

Maybe the whole thing in an insufficient knowledge of English. I'm not about words or sentences. I'm talking about the obvious or not things that can see a native speaker.

Totally disappointed. The giveaways are ending soon, but there's only one entry in one giveaway.

Co-op mode is open now.

How many people got past the 108 178 256 338 426 540 622 689 part?

I think I found something.

Stuck at Q9

EDIT: Never mind, solved that part. And I give up: endless guessing and mind reading on the last step with only 1 solver.

Quiz or key not found!
Is this normal?

Achievement unlocked: entered the secret halls. =)

Argh, found Kale but it's too late i guess to finds something more. if only i was dumber... i wouldnt be stucked in first quiz for a week

Damn! Damn! Damn! I hate that I spend almost a week thinking about that puzzle and trying to solve it without success and someone just came here and solved it in a few hours.

hi

Well? I'm particularly interested in 22 and "i...y.o.e", if the latter makes sense :)

Are the solutions ready yet?

Solution:

1. Entrance http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/108-178-256-338-426-540-622-689

Simple math:

1. 108 - 0 = 108
2. 178 - 108 = 70
3. 256 - 178 = 78
4. 338 - 256 = 82
5. 426 - 338 = 88
6. 540 - 426 = 114
7. 622 - 540 = 82
8. 689 - 622 = 67

Got another decimal ciphertext: 108 70 78 82 88 114 82 67

Use http://home.paulschou.net/tools/xlate/ to translate from DEC to TEXT, get lFNRXrRC.
It's the Game Start puzzle.

2. Game Start

1st secret character: E

The question is a dot, and the answer is also a dot. You can try without thinking. This is also a hint for the secret file puzzle, the morse code of the letter "E" is a dot ".".

Now get the binary ciphertext:
00000000 11101111 10010100 10011000 01010110 10100011 01001000 00010111

First put them into rows:

00000000
11101111
10010100
10011000
01010110
10100011
01001000
00010111

And then read it vertically, from top to bottom, left to right, get:
01110100 01001010 01000100 00111001 01010010 01101001 01001101 01000101

Translate from BIN to TEXT, get tJD9RiME, it's the I know he has the secret files puzzle.

3. I know he has the secret files

2nd secret character: d

The question is a picture showing a wave message. Use morse code to decipher the wave. A high singal cell means a dash "-", a low signal cell means a dot ".", and a blank cell means a space. You get: kale marson

And Kale.Marson has something I want.

Why did I put a dot between Kale and Marson? This is also another clue for the next puzzle.

4. Kale.Marson

When in the design stage of the puzzle, I was trying to make Kale Marson appear in the google search result without success in the first month, so I gave up the approach, and Kale Marson was not meant to be found in google search result in this puzzle at last. I put a dot between Kale and Marson to make it easier to be found in facebook. If you search "Kale Marson" you probably get nothing relative to the puzzle, but if you search "Kale.Marson", a facebook page will come into your sight soon. So the right magic here is to find a man in a social webstie. And you can also see I've put the google plus link in Kale's facebook page, because I wanted you to see the google plus page.

So you can use facebook and search Kale.Marson, read his facebook page. He says he's a huge google fan, and has a google plus link in his profile, and then find his google plus page. You can also use google plus and search Kale Marson to get to his google plus page directly.

But an unexpected thing happened. Kale Marson suddently appeared in the google search result, so it became much easier to find him.

The problem is Kale has something you wanna get, but you don't know what it is. So you study his profile, and you can find two links in his profile, his two past events, and his public email address.

4a. The two secret files

The two links are pointing to two secret files. Secret file 1 has a word which is placed vertically. Do you remember the vertical binary puzzle? Clues are everywhere. Look very carefully in the file1, and you'll see the word ovErhEre be vertically placed in col 5. It is over here.

Open secret file 2, and pick the 8 letters from the same place where "over here" is located, and you get: VncLIaQv.
So you get the Game Over puzzle URL http://itstoohard.com/puzzle/VncLIaQv (see 5a).

4b. Kale's past events.

Kale has two past events, one is "I like eating", it's nothing; the other one has the text IH17W which looks suspicious. Kale is a huge google fan, so if he wants a short URL, he definitely uses goo.gl, and he does. If you were careful enough you could see the two secret files were shorten with goo.gl links, clues are everywhere like I said. So http://goo.gl/IH17W leads you to a picture showing you a password. But you don't know where to enter the password.

4c. Find the password entrance

Remember Kale's public email address? Why does he show you his email address? Because he wanted you be able to send emails to him. According to his facebook and google plus profile, if you want to to reach him, you must say puzzle.

Actually his email address was not public at first, I wanted you to guess his email address at first. But later on I realized that the puzzle would become too difficult to solve. If you guess his email address send the email to kale.marson@gmail.com or kalemarson@gmail.com , he can catch it. But I was afraid of no body would try to send an email without knowing the email address first, so I made it public to be another clue. Yes, clues are everywhere again.

It doesn't matter the word puzzle is in the title or content, as long as your email has the word puzzle, Kale will reply you with the text D9jL3uRs. And leads you to another itstoohard URL: http://itstoohard.com/puzzle/D9jL3uRs (see 5b).

5. Game over puzzles

There are two game over puzzles, each one leads you to a giveaway.

5a. The arrow puzzle http://itstoohard.com/puzzle/VncLIaQv

Secret character: 6

Follow the arrow's direction, look down, just look down, and what's this? It's your keyboard. The answer can be keyboard, a keyboard or my keyboard. You then get one of the giveaway codes CoC9k*. It's a pity only one player reached this giveaway in time, but he already has the game. There's another clue written in the giveaway, it leads to another itstohard link (see 6)*.

5b. The password entrance puzzle http://itstoohard.com/puzzle/D9jL3uRs

Secret character: S

The password is in the picture which you got from 4b. But Jeasoel is not correct. You should be doubting why is the picture so large (4690 x 3319 pixels). Why? Because there's something hidden in the picture. If you saved the picture and looked at it very carefully, you should notice the little something something in the bottom right corner. And it's K916 written in there. Another clue here.

If you flip K916, it becomes Kale. That's what Kale tried to tell you: The password is flipped. So the solution here is to flip Jeasoel, and you get 7692061. You may think why isn't it 7bg2ob1 or something mixed with numbers and letters, because there are too many combinations to become a reasonable password. But two combinations are reasonable - all are numbers, and all are letters. Besides, even without guessing, K916 already gave you the clue: Flipping 916 gives you ale, but flipping K gives you K. It means, flipping the letters gives you the numbers.

Entering the password gives you another giveaway code RKcya (see 6).

6. How many puzzles

The last secret character: g

The giveaways from 5a and 5b both lead you here. It's a simple guessing puzzle, only for reminding you there are more secrets to discover. If you've reached one or two giveaways, you now know how many giveaways you missed. And before reaching here, you definitely missed at least one giveaway. Because the last secret character is over here, and without this secret character, you are not going to the last giveaway. There are 5 secret characters in total, correctly combining them gives you the last giveaway code. But the order is the problem.

7. Make the last giveaway code

According to their order of occurrence, all secret characters have their positions except secret characters from 5a and 5b. But if you check the end time of the giveaways they led to, the 5a's giveaway ends before 5b's, and 5b's ends before 6's. That's the correct order of the last giveaway code Ed6Sg.

At last, all players who reached any of the giveaways got a chance to enter the Trine 2 bonus giveaway (it's a bonus, no link here). Someone won it after a few days and is now going to save the king together with the knight, the thief and the wizard.

The End.