Treasure Hunt

[Freddy Jacobi]

I have decided to see through puzzle two to completion as it was planned. You might have seen an image already:

[Hyrul]

For all of you guys who wanna catch up with what we did, what we found, and have, I made a google doc file summing it all up. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yyYIIDp6UxuMm6jXpEkV9NfL4gYf1BBvXFyo6uk4Z2s/
I'm mainly on the DT Discord for now, which is linked in it. I'll try to make this Gdoc always as up to date as I can.

[bosk1]

I do not agree. I find this cheating despicable. Consider yourself punished. All progress is reset.

This is a bad way to cope with the community having more computer skills than you.

Not at all.  Basically hacking the puzzle was a poor way to engage in a game that was supposed to be fun for everyone.  Cheating and then whining when you got caught is pretty lame, honestly.

[Hyrul]

This could have been prevented. Can we move on to that sparrows thing ?

[cramx3]

Well, now you know the DTF skills which allowed members here to find clues to impending album releases. 

Kind of true, the DT community is pretty hardcore about these things it seems, not that I support cheating, just saying.

Looks like you guys are able to save it still though so that's cool

[Ninjabait]

So, if the DT logo is a potential clue, there are two possibilities I can think of:

Mary Queen of Scots (the logo is very similar to her symbol)
Dominici (There was a rumor for a while that the logo was made from superimposing all the letters from Dominici on top of each other)

Or it could mean nothing or something else entirely

Edit: Also it looks like the stuff at the top of the yellow pad is a form of graphic notation. The green symbols definitely look like repeat symbols and the lines look like they could be outlining the contour of motives in a riff.

X-1 seems like a reference to Cygnus X-1

[mikeyd23]

I have no clue whats going on at this point, but keep updating this thread guys, it's cool to see play out.

[rab7]

Ah I can't believe I missed all of this.

If I had been here back at page 1, as a Hamilton fan, I would've been able to tell y'all immediately what "IHTHTB Your Obedient Servant" meant so you wouldn't have wasted time trying to decipher it.

[Ninjabait]

According to Google, there's a book called Mary, Queen of Scots by Walter Shaw Sparrow.

[Bertielee]

According to Google, there's a book called Mary, Queen of Scots by Walter Shaw Sparrow.

Good catch!

[Ben_Jamin]

Should've known DTF would solve this thing lickity split. You asked and people did it. I find that funny.

[Freddy Jacobi]

Well, to be fair, nothing has been solved, they just got access to some source files before the time. Those source files meant nothing without the decryption key in the big picture, but it did mean that they didnt have to solve any of the following puzzles to get all the source files. So the easy solution: reset the source files to contain a new puzzle, and they're back to square one.

[russoc4]

I do not agree. I find this cheating despicable. Consider yourself punished. All progress is reset.

Not at all.  Basically hacking the puzzle was a poor way to engage in a game that was supposed to be fun for everyone.  Cheating and then whining when you got caught is pretty lame, honestly.

Hi. I'm a regular on the Dream Theater Discord server (I use a different name there, but activation of the account is taking longer than I expected). I think that this treasure hunt is a fantastic idea and I'm excited that it's brought many fans across the forums, reddit, Discord, etc together to collaborate. We've seen a surge in people joining Discord thanks to it.

I came here to say that we (Discord members and Dream Theater fans all around) would rather not go down in history as cheaters, hackers, or as having maliciously ruined the hunt. This was an accident where the community and "Freddy Jacobi" can share the blame. And we all can learn from this.

When the first level of this treasure hunt was brought to the Discord server, I immediately considered it to be similar to the "notpron" puzzle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notpron, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Notpron). In this puzzle, you have to solve riddles to advanced to the next web page. Many of the riddles involve checking the page source and/or modifying URLs to advance. This is exactly what happened here. An ambitious treasure hunter found and modified URLs without knowing that this was out the bounds. I tried to do it too, but I wasn't as successful. To us, this seemed to be a normal part of the hunt, especially since Mr. Jacobi said "This puzzle will rely on logical skills, computer skills, and social skills." In fact, the first thing I did to contribute to the hunt was check the page source to discover that a Gronsfeld Cipher is involved; the clue was hidden as #FFFFFF colored text. No one said that this was hacking or cheating.

The person who crawled the website to find the URLs may or may not respond here. Either way, they apologize for what happened and assure us that it was a misunderstanding.

The exposure of the URLs was an oversight on Jacobi's part, and the discovery of the URLs was a result of our having no knowledge of what "computer skills" were or were not out of bounds. Jacobi learned a lesson about WordPress sites. We learned a lesson about the boundries of the hunt. Don't shame anyone for what they did not understand. Don't call us cheaters. We are just as eager as anyone else to discover the treasure.

Thank you.

[bosk1]

Okay, fair enough.  Thanks for the explanation.   

[Ben_Jamin]

Well, to be fair, nothing has been solved, they just got access to some source files before the time. Those source files meant nothing without the decryption key in the big picture, but it did mean that they didnt have to solve any of the following puzzles to get all the source files. So the easy solution: reset the source files to contain a new puzzle, and they're back to square one.

"It's time to pick up the pieces, go back to square one."

[Bertielee]

I do not agree. I find this cheating despicable. Consider yourself punished. All progress is reset.

Not at all.  Basically hacking the puzzle was a poor way to engage in a game that was supposed to be fun for everyone.  Cheating and then whining when you got caught is pretty lame, honestly.

Hi. I'm a regular on the Dream Theater Discord server (I use a different name there, but activation of the account is taking longer than I expected). I think that this treasure hunt is a fantastic idea and I'm excited that it's brought many fans across the forums, reddit, Discord, etc together to collaborate. We've seen a surge in people joining Discord thanks to it.

I came here to say that we (Discord members and Dream Theater fans all around) would rather not go down in history as cheaters, hackers, or as having maliciously ruined the hunt. This was an accident where the community and "Freddy Jacobi" can share the blame. And we all can learn from this.

When the first level of this treasure hunt was brought to the Discord server, I immediately considered it to be similar to the "notpron" puzzle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notpron, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Notpron). In this puzzle, you have to solve riddles to advanced to the next web page. Many of the riddles involve checking the page source and/or modifying URLs to advance. This is exactly what happened here. An ambitious treasure hunter found and modified URLs without knowing that this was out the bounds. I tried to do it too, but I wasn't as successful. To us, this seemed to be a normal part of the hunt, especially since Mr. Jacobi said "This puzzle will rely on logical skills, computer skills, and social skills." In fact, the first thing I did to contribute to the hunt was check the page source to discover that a Gronsfeld Cipher is involved; the clue was hidden as #FFFFFF colored text. No one said that this was hacking or cheating.

The person who crawled the website to find the URLs may or may not respond here. Either way, they apologize for what happened and assure us that it was a musunderstanding.

The exposure of the URLs was an oversight on Jacobi's part, and the discovery of the URLs was a result of our having no knowledge of what "computer skills" were or were not out of bounds. Jacobi learned a lesson about WordPress sites. We learned a lesson about the boundries of the hunt. Don't shame anyone for what they did not understand. Don't call us cheaters. We are just as eager as anyone else to discover the treasure.

Thank you.

I've played notpron as well or zest for that matter and I know what you're talking about. So, I get where all of you guys are coming from. It's just that the revealing too early was a little upsetting and I can understand it might have been so for Freddy Jacobi as well. All in all, we all want the same thing : for the enigma to be solved. Just not too soon.

B.Lee

[Robo4900]

The Majesty image that Jacobi posted is a GIF with two frames.

If you change the whitest hue in the colour palette to some other colour(I chose red) and look at the first frame, it exposes text written using one of the other colours in the palette that appears identical to the white background(Palette entry #250, assume you count starting from 0). The text says https://vailrenovations84552723.wordpress.com/look/. It asks for a password. I tried using "GLASSPRISON", to no avail.

[Bertielee]

The Majesty image that Jacobi posted is a GIF with two frames.

If you change the whitest hue in the colour palette to some other colour(I chose red) and look at the first frame, it exposes text written using one of the other colours in the palette that appears identical to the white background(Palette entry #250, assume you count starting from 0). The text says https://vailrenovations84552723.wordpress.com/look/. It asks for a password. I tried using "GLASSPRISON", to no avail.

Nice job! So, we're missing the password.

[Robo4900]

Nice job! So, we're missing the password.

Looks like we aren't; I just had the capitalisation wrong. If you enter it as "GlassPrison", you get in.

[MinistroRaven]

The Majesty image that Jacobi posted is a GIF with two frames.

If you change the whitest hue in the colour palette to some other colour(I chose red) and look at the first frame, it exposes text written using one of the other colours in the palette that appears identical to the white background(Palette entry #250, assume you count starting from 0). The text says https://vailrenovations84552723.wordpress.com/look/. It asks for a password. I tried using "GLASSPRISON", to no avail.

In that page it says PROTECTED: picture + words (at least that's what I gather from the images posted there. So I assume the password has to do with a picture plus some word, maybe the letters in the other picture that was revealed

[Robo4900]

In that page it says PROTECTED: picture + words (at least that's what I gather from the images posted there. So I assume the password has to do with a picture plus some word, maybe the letters in the other picture that was revealed

Haha. Look again, I just had the capitalisation wrong. Use "GlassPrison" and you get in.

For the record, the contents of the page are as follows:

So you have solved the second puzzle. Well done. Do you like ciphers as much as I do?

Well, anyways, here's the next piece of the puzzle.



The next puzzle will surely stump you. Pay attention to my social media and look for the keyword "sparrows".

I see a very tiny S on the drum cymbal in the corner. Do also note that the letter on the first image has changed too; it's a D now...



Also note that the pictograms on the page with this image are a painting, a plus sign, and a speech bubble... Images And Words?
And the first page was called When Dream And Day Unite...
I wonder; if A Change Of Seasons is included, then we have a total of 14 DT studio releases so far, and one more on the way, so perhaps when we solve puzzle 15, we'll find out the name of the new album!

[MinistroRaven]

The Majesty image that Jacobi posted is a GIF with two frames.

If you change the whitest hue in the colour palette to some other colour(I chose red) and look at the first frame, it exposes text written using one of the other colours in the palette that appears identical to the white background(Palette entry #250, assume you count starting from 0). The text says https://vailrenovations84552723.wordpress.com/look/. It asks for a password. I tried using "GLASSPRISON", to no avail.

In that page it says PROTECTED: picture + words (at least that's what I gather from the images posted there. So I assume the password has to do with a picture plus some word, maybe the letters in the other picture that was revealed

Never mind you already solved it

[Alpenglow]

The Majesty image that Jacobi posted is a GIF with two frames.

If you change the whitest hue in the colour palette to some other colour(I chose red) and look at the first frame, it exposes text written using one of the other colours in the palette that appears identical to the white background(Palette entry #250, assume you count starting from 0). The text says https://vailrenovations84552723.wordpress.com/look/. It asks for a password. I tried using "GLASSPRISON", to no avail.

In that page it says PROTECTED: picture + words (at least that's what I gather from the images posted there. So I assume the password has to do with a picture plus some word, maybe the letters in the other picture that was revealed

Never mind you already solved it

Yeah and that's Images and Words. The first page was When Dream and Day Unite. They're probably taking the album names chronologically.

[bosk1]

In that page it says PROTECTED: picture + words (at least that's what I gather from the images posted there. So I assume the password has to do with a picture plus some word, maybe the letters in the other picture that was revealed

Haha. Look again, I just had the capitalisation wrong. Use "GlassPrison" and you get in.

For the record, the contents of the page are as follows:

So you have solved the second puzzle. Well done. Do you like ciphers as much as I do?

Well, anyways, here's the next piece of the puzzle.



The next puzzle will surely stump you. Pay attention to my social media and look for the keyword "sparrows".

I see a very tiny S on the drum cymbal in the corner. Do also note that the letter on the first image has changed too; it's a D now...



Also note that the pictograms on the page with this image are a painting, a plus sign, and a speech bubble... Images And Words?
And the first page was called When Dream And Day Unite...
I wonder; if A Change Of Seasons is included, then we have a total of 14 DT studio releases so far, and one more on the way, so perhaps when we solve puzzle 15, we'll find out the name of the new album!

Even if it turns out you are wrong, that's some grade-A sleuthing right there. 


EDIT:  And just to clarify something from the get-go, me praising Robo or anyone else is not to say that I know that the answer is correct.  I DO know who Freddy Jacobi is, and I AM in on this whole thing.  But that being said, I don't know the answers to any of these and do not know where they are going, so I cannot tell any of you if you are right or wrong.  I haven't asked for any inside information, and I don't intend to.  And even if I did, I wouldn't tell you.   

[Robo4900]

Even if it turns out you are wrong, that's some grade-A sleuthing right there. 

EDIT:  And just to clarify something from the get-go, me praising Robo or anyone else is not to say that I know that the answer is correct.  I DO know who Freddy Jacobi is, and I AM in on this whole thing.  But that being said, I don't know the answers to any of these and do not know where they are going, so I cannot tell any of you if you are right or wrong.  I haven't asked for any inside information, and I don't intend to.  And even if I did, I wouldn't tell you.   

Haha. Thank you very much.

FWIW, I think the next thing we're supposed to be working on may be this image DT posted to their Twitter and Facebook...


The comment that comes with both is as follows:

Here's a production shot - just in - of a one-of-a-kind, collectible piece we're having custom-made just for DT fans. Guess what it is? [thinking emoji]

[Polarbear]

I'm way too dumb to solve any of this, but I have to say that this "Hunt" is an awesome idea!

[Bertielee]

Robo, you're VERY clever! And I had seen the image with the plastic thingies. Don't know what to do with them yet.

B.Lee

Edit : when saving the pic with the cymbal, the name that comes up is "2UdkaSd". Don't know what to do with it. Yet, there are 2 caps : U and S. The first letter was D (as it was changed). If we add the S on the cymbal, we have 4 letters. USDS! But we all knew Derek Sherinian was a US resident?!? I really suck at riddles.

B.Lee

[Hyrul]

Edit : when saving the pic with the cymbal, the name that comes up is "2UdkaSd". Don't know what to do with it. Yet, there are 2 caps : U and S. The first letter was D (as it was changed). If we add the S on the cymbal, we have 4 letters. USDS! But we all knew Derek Sherinian was a US resident?!? I really suck at riddles.

B.Lee

The image name are generated by Imgur, which is where FJ now uploads them (instead of the website itself where you could bruteforce your way to)
So the names aren't any clues.

[Bertielee]

Edit : when saving the pic with the cymbal, the name that comes up is "2UdkaSd". Don't know what to do with it. Yet, there are 2 caps : U and S. The first letter was D (as it was changed). If we add the S on the cymbal, we have 4 letters. USDS! But we all knew Derek Sherinian was a US resident?!? I really suck at riddles.

B.Lee

The image name are generated by Imgur, which is where FJ now uploads them (instead of the website itself where you could bruteforce your way to)
So the names aren't any clues.

I said it, I suck at riddles. Thanks for the info anyway.

B.Lee

[Blake]

I do not agree. I find this cheating despicable. Consider yourself punished. All progress is reset.

Not at all.  Basically hacking the puzzle was a poor way to engage in a game that was supposed to be fun for everyone.  Cheating and then whining when you got caught is pretty lame, honestly.

Hi. I'm a regular on the Dream Theater Discord server (I use a different name there, but activation of the account is taking longer than I expected). I think that this treasure hunt is a fantastic idea and I'm excited that it's brought many fans across the forums, reddit, Discord, etc together to collaborate. We've seen a surge in people joining Discord thanks to it.

I came here to say that we (Discord members and Dream Theater fans all around) would rather not go down in history as cheaters, hackers, or as having maliciously ruined the hunt. This was an accident where the community and "Freddy Jacobi" can share the blame. And we all can learn from this.

When the first level of this treasure hunt was brought to the Discord server, I immediately considered it to be similar to the "notpron" puzzle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notpron, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Notpron). In this puzzle, you have to solve riddles to advanced to the next web page. Many of the riddles involve checking the page source and/or modifying URLs to advance. This is exactly what happened here. An ambitious treasure hunter found and modified URLs without knowing that this was out the bounds. I tried to do it too, but I wasn't as successful. To us, this seemed to be a normal part of the hunt, especially since Mr. Jacobi said "This puzzle will rely on logical skills, computer skills, and social skills." In fact, the first thing I did to contribute to the hunt was check the page source to discover that a Gronsfeld Cipher is involved; the clue was hidden as #FFFFFF colored text. No one said that this was hacking or cheating.

The person who crawled the website to find the URLs may or may not respond here. Either way, they apologize for what happened and assure us that it was a misunderstanding.

The exposure of the URLs was an oversight on Jacobi's part, and the discovery of the URLs was a result of our having no knowledge of what "computer skills" were or were not out of bounds. Jacobi learned a lesson about WordPress sites. We learned a lesson about the boundries of the hunt. Don't shame anyone for what they did not understand. Don't call us cheaters. We are just as eager as anyone else to discover the treasure.

Thank you.

I'm a bit late to reply to this because my account needed to be activated, but I agree completely. It was I that found the images. It was an honest misunderstanding, and I am sorry. When I saw an image with one letter, and the hint that we needed to find the next URL, I assumed that we had to find more images hidden on the site to construct said URL. When I discovered the images sitting out in the open, that seemed to reinforce the idea that we were supposed to discover them, so I shared my findings. Now I understand that this was out of bounds, and it won't happen again. I apologize to Freddy Jacobi for making you redo the puzzles, and to everyone else for spoiling part of the surprise.

[Schurftkut]

did someone overlay the images with that formula one already?

[JayOctavarium]

And here I thought this was a troll originally...

[gzarruk]

So, are we assuming this whole hunt is going to lead us to the new album title and/or artwork? They haven't recorded anything yet, so the chances are either that or song titles. Either way, just can't wait to see what the end result is.

[fadetoblackdude7]

Nothing's even been recorded yet. I'd say it's far too early for the titles/artwork to be revealed.

[noxon]

So, are we assuming this whole hunt is going to lead us to the new album title and/or artwork? They haven't recorded anything yet, so the chances are either that or song titles. Either way, just can't wait to see what the end result is.

The first solution did say itd take a few months to complete the hunt....