The Incredible Puzzle Thread

[RingmasterJ5]

Originally Posted by Harald B

Hm, the answer presumably has to do with "beep.mid" then. That said I still can't seem to open it properly with either text editors or media players.

.mid means MIDI(Musical Instrument Digital Interface).You can open it with QuickTime Player.

[NeatNit]

Originally Posted by RingmasterJ5

.mid means MIDI(Musical Instrument Digital Interface).You can open it with QuickTime Player.

What you said doesn't help at all, and AFAIK even Windows Media Player can open MIDI files.

[RingmasterJ5]

Originally Posted by NeatNit

What you said doesn't help at all, and AFAIK even Windows Media Player can open MIDI files.

(edit: nevermind, figured it out and PMed Didero with the answer.)

[dankirk]

Originally Posted by Didero

You win!
Fun puzzle, isn't it?
I'll give the rest of you a chance to solve it too. I'll post the solution tomorrow, for those that are still stumped.

Comeon... It's tomorrow somewhere... What's the answer?

[Didero]

ANSWER TIME!
First, let me repeat the puzzle:

Can you figure out my riddle?



(Post your findings and get one internet cookie)

The puzzle actually consists of two parts, though the first is apparently the most difficult since most of you didn't solve it

I'll do this the same way questions are answered in the Hints sections of the different games, with increasingly less vague hints, with the last one just being the answer. That way you can still solve it by yourself if you want
Part 1

1. What's depicted is not important, but the image file is.
2. The Wikipedia article on 'steganography' might give some hints. I'd link it here, but links show through spoiler tags.
3. There's something hidden inside the image file.
4. Searching the internet for 'hide data in image' or something similar will help you.
5. If you're still lost, just do this: If you have 7-zip installed, open the image with that. Otherwise, rename the file to 'safea.rar' and open it with your preferred archive opener. (I'm not entirely sure if it is a rar file, since I use 7-zip myself, which doesn't care about the extension. If '.rar' doesn't work, try '.zip'. Sorry) You should find a file inside. Halfway there!

Side info: The fact that there's a file hidden inside the image is the reason the image is low-quality. The hidden data is basically interference. That doesn't mean all low-quality images have a file hidden in them, but it can be an indication.
Part 2
Before you start this part, you should have everything you can get from the image (Namely, the famed "beep.mid" file). This part is probably easier than the previous one, but if you're still stuck, follow these hints:

1. What a strange sound. Though it does seem consistent...
2. Maybe a message is hidden in the beeps.
3. Now what signalling language consists of short and long beeps...?
4. Oh, I know! It's Morse code!
5. It's going rather fast though... There probably are plenty of ways to have it automatically translated. The next hint describes my way, if you're curious and/or still lost.
6. The way I solved it, which is most likely a pretty roundabout way of doing it, is like this: Audacity, a free audio editing application, can't handle MIDI files. Therefore, I needed to convert 'beep.mid' to something Audacity does understand. There are plenty of sites and programs that can convert it for you, Google helped me find one. I then opened the MP3 file the site created for me, in Audacity. The short and long beeps clearly show as peaks, with a clear distinction between short beeps and long beeps. I wrote the different beeps down, with dots for short and dashes for long beeps. I then found a 'Morse code to text' translating site and converted the Morse code to something readable.

That should lead you to the solution: "If you find this you rock".

I hope that helps people find the answer, and helps impatient people just get the answer
But if you find the answer on your own, you rock!

And for your patience with my silly puzzle, you all get internet cookies:

I don't think there are enough for everybody though, so you'll have to share. Except people who found the answer without (too many) hints

[Lena_P]

...

I'm glad that your friend doesn't design Telltale's puzzles. It would never occur to me to unzip a file that doesn't seem to need unzipping, and the message uncovered at the end isn't much of a payoff

[Avistew]

I stopped caring a while back. Barely glanced at the solution. This sounds like an Ouverture Facile kind of thing, except on that website that's the kind of thing you expect.

Thanks for sharing, though, and sorry we didn't get it.

[Fink]

Ha ha!

I didn't think my puzzle (yes, now that I think about it, thats a better name for it) would cause so much trouble.
I'm his friend who came up with the puzzle.

If you want some more info, here is how I made it:
1st, I used free software to make the tone.

Morse Code

Then, I hid the file in picture with help from this.

Hiding things in plain site

(Basically, if your on windows, you can make one really simple with this code "copy /B source.gif+source.zip target.gif" it just has to be a gif)

I felt hiding a text file would be too easy. I was going to add another layer, but I don't think that was needed now.
Thanks for playing all, and sorry for trouble

[The Highway]

Originally Posted by Didero

ANSWER TIME!
And for your patience with my silly puzzle, you all get internet cookies:

I don't think there are enough for everybody though, so you'll have to share. Except people who found the answer without (too many) hints

I'm stealing all the cookies that Avistew and Lena P didn't take, and they only took one and split it, so, that leaves me with how many cookies?

Originally Posted by Lena_P

...

I'm glad that your friend doesn't design Telltale's puzzles. It would never occur to me to unzip a file that doesn't seem to need unzipping, and the message uncovered at the end isn't much of a payoff

I think it was ingenious. I hope that in Puzzle Agent there is one massive overarching puzzle (not just the storyline) that you have to solve certain puzzles to understand, thereby forcing you to complete as many puzzles as possible!

[doodinthemood]

Oh wow that was fiendish fink, well done

What comes next in the sequence:
R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,Y

[The Highway]

Originally Posted by doodinthemood

Oh wow that was fiendish fink, well done

What comes next in the sequence:
R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,Y

Here are my guesses:

1. A
2. B
3. C
4. D
5. E
6. F
7. G
8. H
9. I
10. J
11. K
12. L
13. M
14. N
15. O
16. P
17. Q
18. R
19. S
20. T
21. U
22. V
23. W
24. X
25. Y
26. Z

Now one of those HAS to be right!

[NeatNit]

Originally Posted by Didero

Side info: The fact that there's a file hidden inside the image is the reason the image is low-quality. The hidden data is basically interference. That doesn't mean all low-quality images have a file hidden in them, but it can be an indication.

This is not true. The reason this picture is "low quality" is that dithering was used to make it look better.
It could have been a flawless picture, if that's what the creator had chosen.

Originally Posted by doodinthemood

What comes next in the sequence:
R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,Y

My guess is that R stands for Red, B stands for Blue, and Y stands for Yellow, but I have no idea where this is from.

[doodinthemood]

One of the highway's answers is correct and Neatnik is very close but made a little slip up.

[The Highway]

Originally Posted by doodinthemood

One of the highway's answers is correct and Neatnik is very close but made a little slip up.

Is the next one G?

[Avistew]

Originally Posted by NeatNit

My guess is that R stands for Red, B stands for Blue, and Y stands for Yellow, but I have no idea where this is from.

I thought it was colours as well, but B could also be black. And I still have no idea what it all means.

Also, I didn't take any cookie at all, Highway.

[The Highway]

Originally Posted by Avistew

I thought it was colours as well, but B could also be black. And I still have no idea what it all means.

Also, I didn't take any cookie at all, Highway.

It was a puzzle! Theoretically!

Oh well, new try:

Say Avistew was watching her weight and took no cookies. And say Lena P definitely wasn't watching her weight and took ten. How many cookies does that leave The Highway?

[NeatNit]

originalnumberofcookies-11?

[flesk]

Originally Posted by The Highway

Is the next one G?

I thought of that too, but then it would have to be R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R, B,R,B,R,B,Y

[The Highway]

Originally Posted by NeatNit

originalnumberofcookies-11?

no, minus 10

[doodinthemood]

Whoops! Shoulda checked my knowledge really. Bamse and The Highway are correct.
So the pattern goes
R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,
R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,
R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,R,B,Y,G

If you solve it from now on, just give the next letter in the sequence, and so on. Someone else can give a new puzzle.