... Wow. I hate myself.

As a little girl, I used to open all sorts of files in the PC’s text editor to search for hidden messages or flaws (which I never found, but I kept doing it anyway). ZIP files, images, game save files, anything worked. I can’t believe I didn’t think to do that now. *sobs*

Anywho, the challenge was the most brain-killing fun I’ve had in a while! ^_^ Thanks for the consolation prize!

Oh gosh, my computer lagged so much at that gibberish that I just probably gave up on checking it carefully. ; _;
Anyway, it was fun. Thank you for the event and for the nuggies! ^^

I probably never would’ve been able to finish step two just because trying to open stuff like that makes a huge mess ;3;

Was fun though, very interesting puzzle O: At least I know I was on the right path for it.

And woohoo 1k!

XDD

I’d thought ‘echo where?’ was telling me to look for where to echo on the page, which was why I sent you an echo.

In a way, that gives me hope for the next puzzle. And in a way, it makes me feel like I would have failed no matter what - because I never would have thought to actually type ‘where?’ to him.

And I types some pretty… weird things to the bone monster. ^^;;

Also, I spent wayyyy too much time trying to figure out why the source code said anything about that dang Fredericka the Great font. I couldn’t see any text that used the font, so I thought it was some sort of hint.

Anyhoo, I’m glad someone figured it out when they did, because I’d been about to start really spamming ‘possible keyword’ stuff via echo to you, Myla. XD;;

I’m a freaking idiot.
I seeded the picture before and thought nothing of it… because I had my computer locale/language in Japanese in order to play a game. Meaning when I bring up the image seed in word, it was in Japanese characters and well… that didn’t get me very far. Aw, goddddddd!!! I should have realized and changed it back to English, but I was so frustrated I overlooked it altogether :|

To find the hidden words, you had to go to the source (the “seed” in the bone monster’s hint), not opening the file in an image program, but instead a text editor/source editor like Notepad or something equivalent.

*jaw drops*

I tried so many things - so many things! - and I didn’t even think of doing that!! That’s amazing. I am amazed. Wow. I can’t wait for the next puzzle, whenever it might come… I feel like I got some puzzle-solving exp from all of that :P

And Diglett, I thought the Fredericka thing was suspicious too, so you’re not the only one!

WOW I’m…

a dumb ok the second part I totally did not think of d;gkadflasdfkgdl so clever.  As frustrating as it was I REALLY ENJOYED THIS LOL

Lol the first time I opened the CHRYSANTHS picture in Notebook I didn’t see the link. I was gonna post something in the forums like “I found the link!” and then post the gibberish that was the picture in text. As soon as I pasted it though, I saw the link at the bottom. So yeah, started out as kind of a joke and then BAM, found the link.

Also I SPENT SO MUCH TIME LOOKING FOR CLUES ON Tenshin Tatsuya’s PAGE BECAUSE IT’S A GREY COCKATIEL CUSTOM PET! THE WORST PART WAS I KNEW WHAT A VIGENERE CIPHER WAS BUT IT DIDN’T CLICK IN MY HEAD WHEN I SAW THAT WORD.

Yeah. I just… Didn’t see the link like at all.
Even with looking at the image source code. Whoops.

Oh, speaking of the code - I figured out quite quickly what kind of code it was, but I was stuck for a while at the part where I had to choose a key. I was one of those people who went with “cockatiel” and I remember being so, so confused. It was the only key that didn’t result in absolute gibberish, why wasn’t it the right one?? ?? ?? I checked out soooo many keys, even going as far to track the picture down in the wikipedia page, trying to find clues there… Haha!

But yeah, this was really fun (: I hope I can beat the next puzzle fully!!

wait!!?? how do you open images in notepad? I don’t get it somebody spell it out for me in the little people words ;~;

on the Brightside….

8 hours ago: Bone Monster (#1) sent you 1,000 nuggets! How nice!

thanks Boney!!!! <33333 *buys a raffle ticket*

-zooms in-

Miranda, first you save the image to your computer, then you browse to the folder, right click the image icon and choose “Open width…” and choose Notepad :3 That, or you open Notepad, go to Open File and browse to it that way!

Congratulations to the winners, and good job to everyone who figured any part of this out at all!

I managed to puzzle out the numbers = letters portion of the first part, but then I saw the result and just figured I got that wrong, haha. You guys are all amazing. And thanks for putting this together, Myly :) I unfortunately didn’t have time to sit down and really work on this, but it was fun to think about when I had some time.

I did the same thing Prose, so at least you aren’t alone.

I admit I only bothered with one stab at this because I was busy with school and such. But it did look like fun and I would like to see more of these in the future, maybe next time I might have more time/energy to participate.

with the first part, I didn’t parse “vignere” as a word and its resemblance to a word seemed like a coincidence when the second part wasn’t one, haha. otherwise I might have gotten a lot further a lot sooner. it also took me a long time to google the word “cipher”, I kept looking for “puzzle” and “code” and other stuff that didn’t help XD

once I figured that out though, the second part kind of stumped me until myla dropped a hint about the way to find the secret word by googling…it wasn’t very intuitive, lol.
I got stuck on that part for a while because I thought the solution was to change the file path for the “crysanths” image to something in the poem below it, and when I changed it to “worm” it was the exact same image. so I thought there was something to that method…

the third part I figured out almost immediately because I had seen those symbols before when searching for “cipher”, so I used those. once I figured out that it wasn’t a math equation, the solution was pretty easy.

that was definitely a hard puzzle to solve, and idk how anyone figured it out without the hints!

edit: also yes, thank you for the consolation prize!

Did not use cockatiels but cockatiel
/is shot
/dies

Juney hmm… i tried both from notepad and the image and they’re just not showing up for each other! .......oh wait. LOL, okay from notepad i just had to change it to “all files” wahoo!!! i did it :‘D thanks!!!

i feel like im 10x smarter now thanks to this challenge x3

*groans* THAT’S How You Do It!
I’m SUCH an IDIOT!