The party is over :) Thanks everyone for participating!


SOLUTION

1. The first puzzle was hidden in the ugly dogs pictures. You had to look for watermarks and hard-to-see symbols that formed the itstoohard puzzle code when combined together.

Q1 was a substitution cipher. Whether you solved it manually or used an online automatic solver, the result was an excerpt from Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" sonnet. Both the sonnet's title and the author's name were valid answers to this question.
Q2 required you to input numbers corresponding to letters on the phone's keypad. CALL ME MAYBE resulted in 2255 63 62923.
Q3 listed five Scorpions albums. Answering with the order in which they were released (5 1 7 2 8) or listing their years of release (1977 1972 1980 1974 1982) was required to successfully solve this puzzle.

2. The second puzzle was hidden as an invisible link in the announcement's source code. You had to view the page source (via right-clicking on the page and clicking view source or whatever works for your browser) in order to find the hidden link that led to a QR code. Decoding it with your phone or with the help of an online decoder led you to the itstoohard puzzle.

Q1 offered a password-protected RAR archive. Viewing the contents of the RAR revealed the file that accused you of killing the cat. A simple google search revealed that it was actually 'curiosity' that killed the cat, which in turn was the password to the archive. The next step required you to extract the pic from the archive and study it closely. Hidden in lower-right corner of the image was the password that finally helped solve Q1: tunaftw
Q2 was a secret message hidden in an audio file. The picture was placed there to help you find the decoding method. The Cube and the writing on the wall hinted at the game called Portal. Adding the ham and the radio and as a result googling for "portal ham radio secret message" revealed the method which Portal developers used to hide easter eggs in their game. The audio file then could be decoded using any SSTV decoding software (MMSSTV, for example), which revealed an image with a password to answer this part of the puzzle: farcat

3. The final itstoohard puzzle link was split between the two previous giveaways. The Hitman giveaway had half of the link hidden in the period in the GA description. The Far Cry 3 giveaway had the second half hidden in the source of the GA description, which was hinted at by the italicized part of the word "resourceful". The puzzle offered two questions that asked for code words from the two previous puzzles. The code words were hidden in the puzzle descriptions - the first letters of each line spelled SILENT in puzzle #1 and SNEAKY in puzzle #2. Solving the third puzzle led to a giveaway of Dishonored.


ORIGINAL POST
Yes-yes-yes, it's Kitty's birthday today! Let's eat grass and barf on the carpet! Let's catch mice and bring them to our humans! Let's celebrate! Bring tuna and lots of catnip (my avatar is high on catnip nao!). Oh wait :( I wanted to get you some presents, but the evil dogs ambushed me and stole them all! D:
Can somebody assume the role of the brave Corporal Mrow and save the day? Search for tracks and hunt those dogs down. I've got some suspects here, but they refuse to bark!
Good luck, Corporal!
EDIT: Since people have been asking about the games - the giveaways are Hitman: Absolution, Dishonored and FarCry 3. All giveaways require a contribution value of $31.
11 years ago*

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Happy birthday kitty :)

I'm feeling lucky that I already have the games, since I'm not smart enough to participate in the puzzles XD

11 years ago
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Haha ^_^ You probably underestimate your skills :)

11 years ago
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FFS! I have 30.97

11 years ago
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Ouch! Sorry about that :)

11 years ago
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I'm terrible and clueless when it comes to these types of puzzles :V Happy Birthday though!

11 years ago
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Thank you! ^_^

11 years ago
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Meowy Birthmeow :3

11 years ago
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Meowrci!

11 years ago
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Happy Birthday Sleepy!!!May all your wishes come true :)

Really cool giveaways there,but I suck at puzzles.Will see if I can find anything.Thanks anyway for the generosity :)

11 years ago
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Thank you for the awesome birthday wishes :) And good luck with finding and solving the puzzles!

11 years ago
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I dont have the slightest clue on how to go about these riddles. Happy birthday anyway!

11 years ago
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Thank you!

11 years ago
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11 years ago
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Thanks mate :)

11 years ago
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Red herring is an English-language idiom that commonly refers to a type of logical fallacy in which a clue is intentionally or unintentionally misleading or distracting from the actual issue.

oh I see what you did there :D

11 years ago
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I love red herrings ^_^ My previous one caused a lot of hate and broken keyboards, I believe :)

11 years ago
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I prefer salmon :3

11 years ago
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But red herring is so tasty!

11 years ago
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But salmon is moar tasty!

11 years ago
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happy birthday sleep :D
i think i know where this is going but i don't have the means nor do i want to go get it.

11 years ago
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but dem giveaways, they taunt me so.

11 years ago
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Answer their call! ^_^

11 years ago
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Happy Birthday, Sleepy! All the best to you!

11 years ago
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Many thanks, BigHeart!

11 years ago
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:3

11 years ago
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Haha, awesome :D

11 years ago
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Happy B-day Sleepy (^・ω・^ )

11 years ago
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Aww, so much win! :D

11 years ago
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bumping for solved...ish

11 years ago
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Congratulations! ^_^

11 years ago
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May the God Cat bless you! Happy Birthday! :D

11 years ago
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Thank you! :)

11 years ago
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happy purrthday!

11 years ago
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solved all 3.. but the 4th?

Thanks again!

edit: oh, nvm, not related to this puzzle, I guess :)

11 years ago
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Yep, only 3 games are the part of the treasure hunt :)

11 years ago
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Happy birthday Sleepy :D

11 years ago
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Thank you Xiangming :)

11 years ago
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2 solved dont even konw what to do with the info to get the third puzzle entrance :)

happy birthday btw and thanks for the excellent giveaways and very nice puzzles!! kept me entertained all day

11 years ago
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I can't even get to the second puzzle entrance...

edit:how did i miss the one that I did???

11 years ago
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Happy birthday Sleepy :), here have some of dem lemons! Lemons.jpg

11 years ago
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Thanks for the lemons! Why can't I hold them all?

11 years ago
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You are my favorite kitty! ;)

11 years ago
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And you are my favorite button! ^_^

11 years ago
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get the catnip, sniff it, kill everyone while time is slow.

also happy birthday to you

11 years ago
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Thank you, will do! ^_^

11 years ago
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I can get one each of two of 'em, but the rest are keeping me stumped for now! Excellent puzzle thus far, and happy birthday! :)
[edit] fin! :) [/edit]

11 years ago
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Thank you probe :) Congrats on solving!

11 years ago
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Sooo soo very stuck

11 years ago
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:)

11 years ago
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idk where to start here, also kats too kawaii

11 years ago
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There's no suck thing as 'too kawaii'. There's only 'not kawaii enough' and 'just about right kawaii' :)

11 years ago
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Happy Birthday, hope you got lots of presents :D

11 years ago
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Oh yes, I did! ^_^

11 years ago
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Bump for solved, thanks so much for a fun, solvable (with persistence) puzzle.

11 years ago
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Thank you for solving! :)

11 years ago
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Closed 11 years ago by SleepyCat.