Cipher - Crack the Code
Cipher: Crack the Code is another new challenging brain teaser intricate and art-intensive online riddle game created and subbed by Benjamin Gabbay. "Cipher is an online riddle. Its name, according to the dictionary, means "a message in code." An online riddle is a kind of puzzle that requires a wide range of skills in order to advance through a series of HTML pages or "levels." Other kinds of games in this genre include NotPr0n (the creator of the genre), Neutral Riddle, Clever Waste of Time, and many others." Good luck and have fun! [Subbed by Benjamin]Update: New levels are added!
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1068 comments:
WHOOHOO! Free of the labyrinth!!! Thanks Justsmily for all your help in getting me out:)
Congratulations!
Will you take the later levels? I'm stuck at 53 :(
I'm giving it a go Justsmily. Staring at level 52 now and clueless.
Joining you in 53 now :)
Got 53 now, so ask if you need a nudge Justsmily.
You're fast!
I don't have any idea. Morse code doesn't work. I try making visual letters too, but nothing meaningful.
Visual letters is good. I got misled by the bottom of the car at first because I thought the short ones were on the left, but they are in the middle.
Come and help me in 54, LOL.
Still can't make word in 53.
The answer has 5 letters, right?
My closest guess is S(U/O)G(I/J)G (I think I'm pretty far from the answer lol).
You guys are doing great! I just came back after a day and a half of cleaning inside and outside. I made it to the sudoku which I'll attempt to tackle after some lunch. Read something about changing to numbers. I'll see if anything comes to mind.
Oh, that's exactly where I'm wrong! Thanks Minkie!
I don't see anything interesting in 54, other than the segments in pic that can be connected in pairs.
Hi Patty! Long time no see ^_^
I got lucky in 54 justsmily. After trying to do things with drawing lines I gave up. I made two assumptions (one about number of letters, the other about what parts of the level to use) I tried a brute force, and hit the jackpot with my second attempt.
Patty. Suduko. I checked out what you could use online to help with this level, given that you don't have certain programs. Give a shout if you need help.
That sounds ... incredible Minkie. I think I'll look at it a bit more.
I've been staring at level 56 for days now and haven't even got an egg. Tried so many things: primes, pi, times, dates, visually rotating things, trying to follow up biblical references. Nothing. Have you got anywhere with it Justsmily?
I haven't even passed 54!
I've been looking at the lines for ages, but can't think of any ways to get letters from that.
Justsmily. Balthazar sent that message for a reason (I think - I didn't do this level properly).
Justsmily. You've prompted me to go back and do 54 properly. But I don't know if I'd have got it if I didn't already know the answer. Really brute-forcing is much easier!
lvl 54: justsmily, if you haven't gotten it yet, Minkie is right; brute-force it. I got it on the 2nd decent try.
That's it justsmily.
YAY. Looking forward to you joining me on level 26. I've been staring at the same hints for ages and have no idea what to do with them.
Good job, justsmily, now join us in 56 where we are both stuck.
55: Clue on Nord: Need All The Others! You've missed several. Let me know if you need a few more, i.e. It's not only Romeo.
This riddle is really insane. I feel so relieved after passing it.
Did you get 55 then, Justsmily? Patty and I have been emailing about 56. We've been checking out exif and it seemed that pi was very promising, but although it gave a good word, it didn't work so far.
Yeah, I get 55. Let me take a look at 56.
It was one of the times that recurred. 31415. Also round and round, circles ...
There's an odd thing about the dates in exif. File modified before it was created. Must mean something.
56. Just entered pi.htm and got an egg. Not much help to me.
LOL never thought of that! But I guess it's confirmation of a sort?
Got 56! You got some numbers, convert it to letters based on their shapes. You've done this on a past level of cipher.
Well done Justsmily!!! But it's not Leet, I've already tried that. I'll work some more on it.
It's leet... Then maybe you've got the wrong numbers (84953 is wrong). Try a different way of counting.
Thank you, just smily, got it! Try the other digits you found earlier Minkie!
Thanks both. Onwards after some refreshment.
57. Don't see any help on EXIF. Some interesting dates
Dec. 25, 0 and Dec. 25, 1. Don't know if that is an abbreviation for 2000 and 2001?
Dec 25 2000 has 2 events: Bush v. Gore, and partial solar eclipse (the final eclipse of the Second Millennium).
Nord says we need the EXIF and the title. Sounds familiar to a lot of levels. Ha, Ha!
Hints are pretty scarce in these upper levels. The forum has literally no hints at all.
Oh, yes that verse is helpful. Onto 58 now.
Minkie, care to share?
Is it taking things literally? Like "another way"?
No, like who are the "they" in that verse. One of them is horribly familiar.
Yay, got it as well. Thanks Minkie!
Actually these levels are getting a bit boring... The past levels are better.
I think I agree with you Justsmily, but we are so near the end now ...
Yeah... Let's try to finish it anyway.
58 I think we need to know what font it is, but I'm getting loads of matches to it.
57. I know the 3, but don't know what to do with them. No matter how I enter them, it's not right.
The font is Arial.
But I think that's not important lol.
The user is still cipher Patty. The pass is one of the 3.
The font I think I need is not free. I think I know what I need to do, but can't see how to do it. I'll tackle it tomorrow with a fresh(er) brain.
Thanks, I thought it was juniper!
Just seen your last comment Justsmily. I'll work on that tomorrow.
Yeah, I think I'm off too, it's pretty late now. See you later!
58. From Nord. this is a GIMP level. I'll have to quit soon. Leave good hints!
Patty I haven't solved 58 yet, but this is a gif without animations so that hints colours. You can use the same online picker as before. Don't miss the little ones.
58. Still stuck. Have looked at a lot of different areas. Found a useless egg that had me going down a rabbit hole in search of Alex Trebek. Anyone getting anywhere??
I read that the title is important. How can we interpret "Not my type"?
No idea Justsmily, unless it is something to do with truetype.
I've been trying to use hexcodes to no effect. The only interesting thing I've noticed is that the little blue and purple vertical bars are the inverse of the colours they overlay.
Actually truetype makes sense. But it doesn't have anything to do with colors :(
There's a clue from Nord: Get their h** c****s and match them with the corresponding u**c*** of the f***. But I don't understand the asterisks.
Why include an egg for false?? It does have a different type--TIMES? And now I'm trying answers in the form of a question because of the egg.
I read it as hex colors, unicode, font.
Something interesting, in wiki arial unicode ms, mentions a bug, which GMT talks about removing a bug from level 58 in the cipher forum.
Really? Is Arial crucial to the level?
Patty, good find! (potentially!!) I'd seen about that bug in wiki, but not the GMT comment. You may have renewed my hope :) Although the bug I read about involved misplaced diacritics, so :/
Grasping at straws, coming up empty. Done for the day. Maybe for good!
All the 6 hex colors end in 00, so we should have 4 letters for each color. Then we can convert them to Unicode (U + ????). I haven't found the answer, but I think that way makes sense.
I've tried that Justsmily. Not got anything useful from it though. I've also tried removing the first two digits and the outside two digits. You get some characters/syllables etc doing these things, but note that some of them were not defined in Unicode until quite recently.
Have wasted another day on 58. Keep mulling over the quote above from Nord, 'Get their h** c****s and match them with the corresponding u**c*** of the f***.' I'm pretty confident of hex colors, fairly sure of unicodes, but what else could f*** be. File, four? I thought font because of 'not my type' title. Also find the term MATCH interesting.
I've also been looking at that word "match" patty. I've been busy all today, but have a couple of things I want to look at tomorrow (particularly pinning down exactly what character maps would have been in use when the riddle was made). If I can't do it then, I'm out.
I found a file!
Just change the extension of the picture to the extension of Truetype file.
But it's still an Arial font I think.
Yeah, it's really an Arial font. I just checked.
Finally! Passed 58!
"Get their hex colors and match them with the corresponding unicode of the font" tells exactly what to do. Don't search for the unicode value, do it in Word.
Well done Justsmily! Patty, as a fellow mac user you may be able to help here. I've downloaded and installed the font, which is showing up in fontbook, but is not showing up in word. Any idea what I should be doing?
NVM got the font working in word now.
Thanks Justsmily. On 59 now.
Patty, putting in unicode on a mac is not as straightforward as on a pc. I found out how to do it here:
https://www.webnots.com/how-to-use-unicode-hex-input-method-in-mac/
Justsmily. Are you using Gimp? There's clearly a load of stuff in the jpg for level 59, but I've no idea what tools to use.
I found 4 coords in the file. Don't know what to do with them.
Ah, sorry, you need to find an another file. Concentrate on the title.
Thanks got that file now. Seems there is a lot of checking out to do.
58. Whew, what a level! Thank you two! I was able to move on.
There are two more coordinates to find elsewhere Justsmily. I haven't found out how to use them yet either, but I'm going to investigate all those apparently redundant copies of the image if I can find a way to do so.
Justsmily. I've found another coordinate in the new file image.
Ah yeah. So I found 2 in exif, 4 in the file. What about you?
I've got 2 in exif and 5 in file justsmily. My 5th one was in the main image of the psd file.
I got it I think... Are you refering to J-?
Either way I think the most important thing now is to figure out how to use the coords.
I can't remember a past level using such coords :/
No. I don't have J- (where did you find that?). This one is quite clear when you unmask it.
They may not be coordinates, but just letters numbered from 1 to whatever (I have no repeated numbers). On that assumption I've been trying some brute forcing without success.
I have found the unmasking one already.
Let's check our number. I have all from 1 to 6.
The J- is hidden in brightness/contrast by the way.
I've got 2,3,4,5,6,9,11
Where did you find 9 and 11?
Ugh. Not finding that J, but I'll assume that's my missing 1.
Layers 4 and 5.
Strange. I don't find anything in layer 4 and 5.
The J is at image copy 2.
Ok, 8 coords now.
What should we do now? I think that's all.
I tried merging them into a word by numbers, but it seems like gibberish.
I've got a feeling we should be finding something in the other copies.
Don't think it's worth much, but moon + coordinates brings up Gardiner's sign list, common Egyptian hieroglyphs.
I don't think that is a code. The fact that there's no repeating letters is hardly a coincidence.
Repeating numbers I mean.
I've been bruteforcing passwords assuming 11 or 12 letters, to no effect. Of course it is possible that the user name isn't CIPHER. And come to think of it, there are 13 layers so it could be 13 letters.
Actually there's no words in English that has such weird letters :/
Justsmily. Is your J in the bottom right corner of the pic? I'm not so sure about that one. Besides I've found it looking the same in copies 1, 2 and 3 so far.
No, it's only in copy 2 and written very clearly like other coords. It's somewhat in the upper part.
You can also use paint to reveal it.
I have been trying that in all of its spellings with cipher and in***** as user names to no avail.
At last I've got J to turn up in Gimp by using filter, animation, optimise difference. Nothing new is turning up using that method, so perhaps you are right Justsmily that we have all the info now.
That's odd. J is showing up for me on image copy 4 using brightness and contrast, but not in image copy 2.
Yes bucket fill in gimp finds it easily now. I've no idea why I didn't find it before. Must have changed a setting somewhere along the way.
My last thought before going to bed. In the exif info the layers have curiously numbered layer IDs. I'm wondering if we are meant to be combining the things we have found with something from previous levels.
Status ignis: Did you both solve this secret level off 32 level? Does it require gimp or can a simple photo manipulation program like ipiccy work? Read the '56 px' doesn't refer to the size but the lines. Haven't been able to do much.
I haven't found status (or zephyr) ignis Patty. I'll go searching.
Status ignis. In now and busy trying to count lines to try and get an idea of what that comment is about.
Patty I'm reading on Nord page 22 about an excel file. I'm not sure if this is about level 32 or status ignis. I know that level 32 was changed at some time. Do you have any idea?
I haven't found any secrets.
I know ignis is in level 32, but how can I find the other way to do it?
32. GMT had to change this level early on because someone figured out how to use excel or notepad to get the answer to 32 easily. We had to change the jpg to gif on this level to get the animated pic of letters. I think that was what the excel reference was to--not Status Ignis. I may be wrong though. I thought I read on a GMT post on Nord that gimp should work well for St.Ig.
Yes I've just seen that post Patty. I've been trying to teach myself more Gimp.
"Spoiler:
I thought about keeping only what the hint says, but have NO idea if that is even possible to do with the program I'm using lol" and "you idea is right keep trying".
I've got an idea about how to do this in Gimp, but it will take me quite a time. When I've got a cleaned up pic, I'll email you a copy. Not this evening probably. I think a program that can work with layers will be necessary for this.
justsmily, you have your answer to 32. Use those letters on the level pic letters to get another answer. (The same way you found the level 32 answer.)
There are way more than 56 lines. And even more crossings. I don't know where to start.
I counted 71 by using paint to color each line as I counted it to keep track of them. Can't say that's 100% accurate, but should be close. I did not double check.
Also in looking for Status Zephyr, I do not believe I ever solved the individual 49a-d.jpgs. Wondering if they will hold the key to St. Ze. Looking back at them and feeling awash.
At least, it's something to work on with 59 stoppage.
There were so many red herrings in 49, that it could be hidden in all sorts of places.
I'm done for today, but tomorrow I'll try repeating that thing with the pic in ignis, but this time I'll try only to include the 56 shortest lines. Something may show up.
Zephyr is hidden in 49 administration database iirc. There's a hint about finding something weird in it other that misspelled words, but I haven't found what it is yet.
Wow, check the intro page of cipher! It also has a discord channel now!
Still can't find Ignis. I tried using al----- as codeword now but yielding gibberish. Anagram doesn't work.
Justsmily Status Ignis. That should work. Maybe try another anagram solver.
Solved status ignis in a moment this morning. I'm here to give a nudge if needed.
I'm not seeing anything new on the intro page.
Hmm? Its layout has changed a lot.
http://www.gamemastertips.com/cipher/cipher.htm
Ignis: I have divided the pic into 9 parts of --px, but not sure what to do with that.
I picked out 12 parts Justsmily.
I delete the black area, I cut only the small picture with lines into parts.
And I only cut vertically too. Do I have to cut horizontally?
I think you are doing the wrong thing Justsmily. You need to choose some of the lines using the hint. I've got to go soon, but I'll check back just before I leave.
Justsmily, I just got status ignus. Let me know if you need a hint.
BTW, 56 pixels is about 1.5 cm long (.6 in).
Yay, I got it too. Thanks!
I am no closer to finding status zephyr.
Still wonder if there are solutions to 49 a-d.jpg's I never found.
In limbo.
Hint hint hint from Nord.
Apart from level 50, there is another significant difference in the database - not just a missing, extra, or one different letter. You actually can't miss it if you look carefully enough. Once you found it, check it out.
I've been staring at that database. One oddity is the four levels where the htm is index. I never saw the reason for going to those blank folders rather than to normal htms. The other thing I am finding is that if I go through the riddle proper I don't often have to put in passwords, but if I click on the links in the database I have to enter a password every time. I don't understand this and don't know if it is significant. Going now. Be back later.
Is 49 the only one with an extra folder?
. . .besides 50.
It is (apart from 50 and after 50 of course).
level 59. It occurred to me that the coordinates might mean we are looking for a certain type of file, but when I enter the appropriate extension, it asks me for a user name and password.
In fact I'm done. I'm not even getting 404 error messages now. I'm being asked for a user name and password whatever I enter.
Checked in this a.m. to see if anyone made any progress.
I am definitely at an impasse. Cannot find Status Zephyr; tried looking at planets with moons with the coordinate names, then seas of moon, mountains of moon, nada.
I'll see if I can change the ext. Otherwise, I am at an impasse.
Just reenter the password. Your computer won't remember the password after you shut down, so you have to reenter the password once you turn it on.
Actually I'm surprised that you haven't encounter this type of problem throughout the game until now.
I've been trying that Justsmily, but it's not working.
Oh, and I've got that different intro page now Justsmily. I must have been picking the old one up from my cache, which I have cleared this morning in an attempt to sort out my password problems.
Yeah, it's nice indeed :)
Have you solved your password problem?
Yes Justsmily. I'd failed to note down one password change so I was using the wrong one. Doh.
59. I was playing with the preview of psd file with colorsync gamma. Found I11 in upper left. I had no image just gray background. Doesn't seem to help. So must also have 7 & 8 and possibly 12 to find? But can't get anything to work with brute forcing.
I just got 59. Yes, you can brute-force it! No anagram!
Get to 60. Something strange is going on. No matter what I put in the htm, it is coming up as the same pic. No 404 error message.
Well done Patty!! Trying to follow in your footsteps.
If I open the psd file in colorsync, I get the image, not a gray background, and I can't reproduce what you did Patty.
I already have 11 with another letter, so I am confused.
Sorry, mistyped it was I10. Yes, G11. Sorry. Hurried too much to get posted. (only 2 blanks 7 & 8.)
Phew. On 60 now, but I do wonder where the other coordinates were. I have searched and searched.
60. The only way I don't get that pic is when I put in index.htm, when I get a 404 error message.
Woops, you guys are fast!
But we're missing 2 letters, and that's not a meaningful word. So ... how can you brute-force it?
It's not a word justsmily. But it uses letters from a word we mentioned earlier.
See Minkie's post on 8/13/20. She was only 1 letter off. Use the coordinates in order-no anagram. It is a play on the word Minkie used in that post.
8/13/20 at 10:44 a.m.
Passed it! Thank you!
Only to be greeted with a 404 page...
So, did you not reach the start of level 60 Justsmily?
A couple of thoughts: 4 is on the index finger and there were 4 levels with index in the database.
I imagine we should distrust the comment in the page source.
I think I also got that 404 page, but when I went back, I typed in the word in the URL and went right to 60. Hope that works. Be sure the . . ./introit/ folder is there.
Hmm, this level looks fairly simple...
It's not. From what I've read on cipher forum, there are several parts. The first of which is getting out of this first part. What do you call a Url that accepts every htm?
Can't find a name for that one...
Neither can I, just musing. Tried hyperlink just for the heck of it, and of course it was accepted like any other thing I've tried.
On other pages in this riddle, if you go to "inspect" then click the console tab, there is nothing there. But on the opening page of 60 (and all subsequent guesses) there's a message. Don't see that this gets us any further, but I thought I'd mention it.
Has anyone found Error 418 yet? I'm a teapot. Doesn't work though.
Actually that page with fingers represents a 404 page for this folder. It's due to an error that GMT intentionally made for this level "Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 (Not Found)". This might help.
Wait, teapot.htm is a real page. You can see redirecting to that page by typing wrong in one character.
Good find! Yes, the teapot page is different from the others, but the page source looks identical, so what now :/
Have been trying things with htpcpc
So we do not get the failed to load comment on the teapot page. But where to go from here? The photo appears to be the same.
I hate it when things get computer techy; not my thing!!
Woops, teapot can be used as a folder too without the error!
Thanks justsmily. All I've been able to put in my teapot so far is index.htm
btw you two. I hadn't realised until recently how current this riddle still is. Especially since the intro page was changed recently. In view of that I'm going to go back through this blog and remove my more spoilery comments, cos now I'm feeling a bit guilty about them.
Yeah, actually I'm thinking about that too. Patty, I think we also should delete our spoily comments too.
Surely there is a statute of limitations on all the secrecy! LOL!
Before Minkie & I started using this site, no one had posted anything since 2017. But I'll abide by your wishes. After 10 years, someone would have to need as much help as I to look here. I empathize with them. If it weren't for you guys, I'd still be stopped at lvl 36.
Was hoping to see progress by you two computer geniuses this a.m. I know I won't be able to get any farther with the tech and computer coding that must be involved.
I think we can be a bit laxer here than elsewhere Patty, but it looks like level 61 may be on its way so this site may soon attract more attention.
I've just been typing things in at random, mainly trying to brew all sorts of concoctions. Not a techie either.
Nord p 169 Luthorien seemed to be at the point we are at now. He is advised to "check the source carefully" whatever that means.
Yeah, the main page changes from 60 to 60.5 levels. Not sure what GMT means by that.
The only thing I can find in the source is that the address for the jpg is specified as being in the new folder, but when I try to get it there I get a 404 error message. I've tried interrupting any redirects, but without success.
It's still at the same folder as the fake pages as I can see.
Really I can't see anything that differentiate the real page and the fake ones.
When I hover over the links in the page source, I see an address in the bottom left of the screen. On the level page the links for music and style are in /cipher/ and the jpg is in /cipher/introit/, but in the new folder music and style are shown as being in /cipher/introit/ and the jpg is shown as being in the new folder.
Hmm? I see that it's exactly the same as the old ones.
Just try an another folder like cipher/introit/aaa/ and you'll see the difference.
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