Treasure Hunt

[Freddy Jacobi]

I would hope people have enough smarts to understand that contact information surrounding non-confirmed entities should be treated carefully.

Someone in this thread were making assumptions that they had to scramble some information randomly, and started calling a number I had not given them. What if it had connected? What if 100 people had started calling that number? Please consider that side too. Hope that clarifies.

[Blake]

I assume this is Freddyese for "It's not an ip address, don't poke it."

What if it's something that's not connected to my hunt at all? That's my point. Be careful with what information you guys are spreading around, as it may not be connected to the game. That's what I mean by innocent bystanders. Say you got a treasure map, and you read it wrong. You started digging in the yard of some old bloke, and before you know it, his entire yard is just a bunch of holes. Poor bloke knew nothing of what hit him.

I understand your concern. Everything that's been posted here so far has been publicly available information, so I don't see the harm. I still like the hypothesis that it's an ip address, but I won't do anything that could be harmful if I'm wrong.

[Blake]

I would hope people have enough smarts to understand that contact information surrounding non-confirmed entities should be treated carefully.

Someone in this thread were making assumptions that they had to scramble some information randomly, and started calling a number I had not given them. What if it had connected? What if 100 people had started calling that number? Please consider that side too. Hope that clarifies.

Makes sense, thanks for clarifying.

[Blake]

Confirmed. In the last post with the dead sparrow, there's some difficult to read text at the top. I did a Google image search and found the original dead sparrow picture, and then aligned and diffed it in Photoshop to make the text stand out. It says spz2.jpg. Combining that with the ip address, we get: https://159.65.85.240/spz2.jpg

[Blake]

Ignore the 0's and 1's in the image. It says "You're loking in the wrong place." Instead, if you inspect the file, you'll find that there's text appended to the end of the binary data.

Code Select Expand


blake@bfdesktop ~ $ tail -n 1 ~/Desktop/spz2.jpg
���
҈�09����]B� �SL�h������r��\ ��CB�g���PK
��L��+� 
��more.txtUTP�N[ux
                                                                                               
�
PK

N�https://freddyjacobi.wordpress.com/


[Blake]

LOL, I found your message Freddy.

blake@bfdesktop ~ $ curl https://159.65.85.240/spz2.jpg -I
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx/1.10.3 (Ubuntu)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2018 01:35:23 GMT
Content-Type: image/jpeg
Content-Length: 199837
Last-Modified: Thu, 19 Jul 2018 23:31:06 GMT
Connection: keep-alive
ETag: "5b511f3a-30c9d"
X-Blake: much_respect
Accept-Ranges: bytes

[lucasembarbosa]

Where did we come from?
HOW are we here?
Where do we go while HE CODES?

Translate all of this if possible, thank you so much.

[Blake]

The GDoc has a pretty good summary: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yyYIIDp6UxuMm6jXpEkV9NfL4gYf1BBvXFyo6uk4Z2s/edit#

[lucasembarbosa]

This is going too deep and too fast. I'm not ready yet to enter this level of the matrix...

[erwinrafael]

To find the password to this: https://freddyjacobi.wordpress.com/awake/

OK, so the zip file has this message:

"sp9fOXAkIFer1fLh4UpAisBoB1AKv5SaB8E4kw==
rc4

Inspiration leads to inspiration leads to inspiration. To find the key to open the box, you must reference the inspiration by book, chapter and verse."

[erwinrafael]

Sparrow is a reference to Pull Me Under, right? And PMU is inspired by Hamlet Act1 Scene2.

But the Book chapter verse is throwing me off because that is a biblical reference

[Logain Ablar]

If it is a biblical reference, it could be Matthew 10:29 https://biblehub.com/matthew/10-29.htm

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father's care.

[MinistroRaven]

If it is a biblical reference, it could be Matthew 10:29 https://biblehub.com/matthew/10-29.htm

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father's care.

Other instances where Sparrows are mentioned in the Bible

https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Sparrows

[Skeever]

I would hope people have enough smarts to understand that contact information surrounding non-confirmed entities should be treated carefully.

Someone in this thread were making assumptions that they had to scramble some information randomly, and started calling a number I had not given them. What if it had connected? What if 100 people had started calling that number? Please consider that side too. Hope that clarifies.

Understood, but if I can provide some feedback, I would say that this guidance is appreciated up front if these things are out of bounds. I personally would not have dialed any numbers, or googled any addresses or IP addresses, but it's not unreasonable to see how people would have come to those conclusions, especially given the nature of the previous clues (one even leading to someone's business and a phone number - and I felt extremely uneasy about making that call as one of the first people here to do it).

I understand the need course correct and puppet master this thing, but the posture that has been taken when doing so comes across as a bit condescending and judgmental from my perspective, which I am sure is not intentional, but sucks the fun out of things all the same. 

[AngelBack]

I think some folks need to chill a bit.  I'm sure whoever FJ is, he is not a full time internet treasure hunt game maker.  He has probably already encountered a few unintended consequences already.  AND they are doing this for the fans, they certainly did not have to and I would guess no one is making money on this.  I appreciate the creativity and zeal some are approaching this with and I would guess that Bosk warned FJ this group is GOOD at sleuthing.  But I say let's keep it light and fun and if FJ has to steer us back in line, accept it with the understanding the band certainly had to sign off on this and it is meant to be fun and to give us fanboys something to do until release date.

[robwebster]

Has anybody noticed the binary at the bottom of the sparrow picture? spz2.jpg?

01011001 01101111 01110101 00100111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101100 01101111 01101111 01101011
01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000
01110111 01110010 01101111 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110000 01101100 01100001 01100011 01100101

I've run it through a translator. I've been bamboozled.

Edit: I've just seen that it has indeed been caught! Whoops!

[erwinrafael]

Darn it. So rc4 is another decryption, and when you run

sp9fOXAkIFer1fLh4UpAisBoB1AKv5SaB8E4kw

to an rc4 decrypter like this one

https://encode-decode.com/rc4-encrypt-online/

and you input Matthew 10:29 as password (thanks Logain Ablar!)

you will get the link to this Youtube page:

https://youtu.be/J8XC3-DF0kY

Maddi is dialing a phone number! I can not call it because I am in the Philippines! LOL. Based on his finger movements, it's 518-227-1547. Hey Freddym is it safe to call that number?

The YT text says "surrounded by the missing". I guess this has something to do with the misspelled text in the sparrow image that is missing an "o"

[MirrorMask]

Well, shouldn't that point to light? "surrounded by the LIGHT".... it looks like they borrow a lot from I&W

[lucasembarbosa]

The Sherlock crew already figured it out, hehe...

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yyYIIDp6UxuMm6jXpEkV9NfL4gYf1BBvXFyo6uk4Z2s/edit

[erwinrafael]

Well, that spoils it. I was hoping not to look at the cheat sheet. 

[erwinrafael]

The letters in the puzzle pieces so far and the number of puzzle pieces (16) point to the Hidden By Design as the big picture. Would that be the title of a song or the album? Sounds badass.

I hope the final payoff would be a video of the band jamming the demo of the song.

[nobloodyname]

Someone in this thread were making assumptions that they had to scramble some information randomly, and started calling a number I had not given them. What if it had connected? What if 100 people had started calling that number? Please consider that side too. Hope that clarifies.

Maybe I'm just behaving like the old man I (almost) am but people calling numbers that may or may not have anything to do with this 'game' sits uncomfortably with me, as does some of the other activity. Perhaps it would be prudent to set some boundaries before someone inadvertently ends up in trouble?

[gzarruk]

The letters in the puzzle pieces so far and the number of puzzle pieces (16) point to the Hidden By Design as the big picture. Would that be the title of a song or the album? Sounds badass.

Sounds like a good album title to me

[Bertielee]

The letters in the puzzle pieces so far and the number of puzzle pieces (16) point to the Hidden By Design as the big picture. Would that be the title of a song or the album? Sounds badass.

Sounds like a good album title to me

Thirded.

[Another_Won]

The letters in the puzzle pieces so far and the number of puzzle pieces (16) point to the Hidden By Design as the big picture. Would that be the title of a song or the album? Sounds badass.

Sounds like a good album title to me

Thirded.

I agree.  Where did we first hear the phrase "Hidden by Design?"

[MirrorMask]

Future interview:

"How come the album title came about?"

JP: "We went through the lyrics as usual. It was planned to be called Hidden by Design but some people on our forum figured it out too soon and we felt we had to change it"

[Bertielee]

Future interview:

"How come the album title came about?"

JP: "We went through the lyrics as usual. It was planned to be called Hidden by Design but some people on our forum figured it out too soon and we felt we had to change it"

Oh, Nooooooooose!  

[lucasembarbosa]

The letters in the puzzle pieces so far and the number of puzzle pieces (16) point to the Hidden By Design as the big picture. Would that be the title of a song or the album? Sounds badass.

Sounds like a good album title to me

Thirded.

I agree.  Where did we first hear the phrase "Hidden by Design?"

+1 here. Cool name. BTW, came from this post:
https://www.facebook.com/dreamtheater/photos/a.10152286380427181.1073741827.7677942180/10155410731402181/?type=3&theater

[gzarruk]

Future interview:

"How come the album title came about?"

JP: "We went through the lyrics as usual. It was planned to be called Hidden by Design but some people on our forum figured it out too soon and we felt we had to change it"

"So what title did you guys settle on?"

JP: "Water's Edge"

[nobloodyname]

^^^ Well done

[Bertielee]

Future interview:

"How come the album title came about?"

JP: "We went through the lyrics as usual. It was planned to be called Hidden by Design but some people on our forum figured it out too soon and we felt we had to change it"

"So what title did you guys settle on?"

JP: "Water's Edge"

Congrats gzarruk! Btw, you've just discovered America (look at your post count)!

B.Lee

[MirrorMask]

Isn't "stumbling by accident unto some islands nearby a continent that has been visited many years before not even realizing they were not India" more accurate?

[Bertielee]

Isn't "stumbling by accident unto some islands nearby a continent that has been visited many years before not even realizing they were not India" more accurate?

Well, in fact, I took the shortcut.

B.Lee

[MirrorMask]

Well, that's what Columbus said.

[gzarruk]

If the album ends up being titled Hidden by Design, I'll feel weird abbreviating it HBD, as it reads like "Happy Birthday"