From TinWiki.org
WhatistheConspiracy is a game sponsored by AboveTopSecret.com and found at whatistheconspiracy.com. Information about how the game works and about prizes is in this thread. It officially began on August 8, 2008 though the site had hosted a series of "warm-up" puzzles since July 29, 2008. The link to this game was originally hidden near the bottom of the board forum page and was discovered by AboveTopSecret.com member Kellter on June 14, 2008. In an opening post Kellter wrote:
I stumbled upon a new link at the bottom of the ats page. Where it says: ( The Above Top Secret Conspiracy Community Web site is a wholly owned social content community of The Above Network, LLC. ) The parenthesis are links to whatistheconspiracy.com. I hope I'm not spoiling anything, is this going to be a new game or a spin-ff website or something? If it is a new game, I'd be happy to make a post in the games forum or you could move this. Interesting,,,,"
The Puzzles
Each puzzle is a cryptogram which, when solved, asks a question or gives a hint for an answer. The winner is the player who first enters the answer to the question, and the AboveTopSecret.com thread number in which the answer is found, in the submission form on whatistheconspiracy.com.
Puzzle One
The first riddle is: "Consumed sushi alongside Litvinenko" and the round was won by Kryties, who was the first to get the answer (mario scaramella) and correct thread ID number (234457).
The message is encoded according to the color of the dots; a table of correspondences listing each color (by its red/green/blue hexadecimal code) and corresponding letter can be found here.
Puzzle Two
The second riddle reads: "Swedish divers searching Estonia must locate suitcase owner" and was solved by Ian McLean, who submitted the answer (alexandr voronin) and thread ID (74382).
Puzzle Three
The third riddle was broken quickly, but the answer proved harder to find. Entering the letters and numbers into a hexadecimal-to-ASCII translator revealed the message: "subversive? exploree? east?from gothamlocating? event? named? after? place? southweut? from? same?". It was finally answered by ketamine99 who located thread 203038 and was able to provide the answer (william one sac) and thread number (203038).
Puzzle Four
On the afternoon of Saturday 8/9/2008 as the discussion of this puzzle threatened to veer into the intricacies of file formatting and color palettes, a message was added to the page, reading, "An intense graphic analysis of anything other than the colors of this cryptogram will not help you." On August 11th the image was changed to a hint image which solved the first step of the puzzle for players. The fourth cryptogram was solved by a relativity new member named dahmerjr in the morning (CDT) of 11/8/08. The answer to how he solved it can be found in [this post]. The answer is van allen radiation belt and the thread ID is 178507.
Puzzle Five
The fifth puzzle was solved on 8/13/2008 by Wintermute. The cryptogram reads, "Extreme Northern Installation Influences Nature." The answer was "haarp," and the thread ID was 3851. A more detailed solution to the puzzle can be found here.
Puzzle Six
The sixth puzzle was solved in under an hour by Draconian King. The clue was "Secret Experiments Assembly Mutilations Genetics Confrontation," the answer was Dulce Base, and the thread ID was 264651.
Puzzle Seven
Puzzle Seven was solved by FibroKat. The riddle was "wuclear sextqmst mistakenly departed quintuplet arrived conspiracy started." The answer was "agm-129 advanced cruise missiles" and the thread ID# was 302187.
Puzzle Eight
Ian McLean solved the eighth puzzle. The riddle reads "counterfeit backdoor stealthily installed throughout government"; the answer was "counterfeit cisco routers" and the thread ID was 350381.
Puzzle Nine
sos37 solved the ninth puzzle. It reads "MUDQAHADEEN CIACONNECTION EONSIDERED IMPORTANT REGARDING REAL NINEELEVEN CONSPIRACY THEORIES". The answer is "invention of islamic terrorism" and the thread it refers to is 314984.
Puzzle Ten
americandingbat solved the tenth puzzle. The code reads "dis pey ted mehs tear e uhs sel fone foe tog rougher kap churd de nyghd ob gyect huv ur eng uh buv tar mack" which, when sounded out, is "disputed mysterious cell phone photographer captured denied object hovering above tarmac." The answer was "00000000" (the user name of an AboveTopSecret.com member) and the thread ID# was 236709.
Final Puzzle (CURRENT)
As each puzzle is solved, a part of the final puzzle was provided. These are:
The file names of these ten images are:
32424003.gif
123687893450.gif
3409837421237.gif
875468.gif
876545711111.gif
7823408345280124671515.gif
234560054.gif
09933121222209.gif
6737892487702345345344.gif
123978576458576586465.gif
The final puzzle was discussed in this thread.
While Deaf Alien was responsible for the first major breakthrough and dahmerjr for the next, it was Ian McLean who put everything together in the correct order on the evening of August 26, 2008 and found the catchphrase, "it is all a lie that is the truth."
Pregame
Before the start of the challenge on 08.08.08 forum members were provided with a taste of what was to come in the form of practice puzzles.
The Very Beginning
When whatistheconspiracy.com was first discovered it had several lines of text centered on the page, in varying sizes and colors. These read:
What is the conspiracy?
Why are there conspiracy theories?
What is the truth?
you will soon know.
Wait for the sign.
Knowledge will be released.
Those who are worthy will understand the grand confusion of our time.
From June 14 to July 29 players waited, occasionally teased with images and opaque statements from the moderators. During this time, several side explorations were made. One of these led to another site called allthelies.com. On this site there was one main body of text which read:
The Path you seek, was taken before...
Now is the time to search for more.
July 29, 2008
On July 29, 2008 the discussion thread was moved into the Games forum by AboveTopSecret.com moderators and a new graphic appeared at the game site to replace the seven statements.
whatistheconspiracy.gif
On July 29, AboveTopSecret.com forum members found that there was a new link to whatistheconspiracy.com on the transition page as a new post was processed. When they followed it, they discovered a cryptogram consisting of Greek characters, brackets, and other symbols. This was solved by Xeros and other members at AboveTopSecret.com. The solved cipher reads:
THERE VILL TEN
CODED QTEST_ONS
EACH NEEDING AN
ANSWER
ALL REVEALING A
FINAL QUESTION
It was noted that the solution to the cryptogram included some apparently deliberate mistakes: the word "BE" has been dropped; V replaces W in "will"; T replaces U in "questions"; and two different symbols seem to code for I.
Once this cipher had been cracked, the game page changed again, to a black-on-black screen that read:
IT WILL START
whenistheconspiracy.gif
The third clue was considered easy by many members and was quickly solved. It involved more symbols and read simply:
When will it start?
This led to much speculation that something big concerning the game will happen on 08/08/08.
080808.gif
Another clue was posted, once again in this cryptographic form but once again the wit and intellect of the AboveTopSecret.com membership managed to break it. It read:
Here discover,
Cryptogram questions,
Solutions yield prizes
Complete solutions
Deliver concluding
Cryptograph statement.
July 30, 2008
starting080808.gif
Unsane was able to solve this puzzle, posted on July 30. He noticed that the bottom line looked like it should be read in a mirror and ended up putting a piece of paper over half of it and was able to solve it like this:
- Original Picture
- Cut in in Half Horizonatally
- Mirror it Horizonatally and the message is clearly readable
- Made it negative
The solution is:
most of the questions require both an answer and ATS thread ID
250000.gif
The member Outrageo managed to solve the middle section in good time. It read as follows:
THE GAME BEGINS ON AUGUST EIGHTH AND YOU WILL NEED YOUR WITS CREATIVITY AND IMAGINATION TO WIN
The member Ian McLean translated the small purple rectangle at the bottom of the image. It contains, encoded in the green color channel, the text
abovetopsecret
July 31, 2008
The morning of July 31 was devoted to the analysis of the last image posted on the 30th. In the afternoon the game page changed again.
whatis.gif
This simple substitution cipher was quickly solved. The solution reads:
AND NO? YOU MUST WAIT UNTIL AUGUST THE EIGHT
2342541DFDVCE4W4D.gif
The next clue also was quickly solved by substituting the letter just down and to the right of each symbol on a QWERTY keyboard. It reads:
DENY IGNORANCE
5163107202019312.gif
The next image showed a series of 3D numbers. It was deciphered to read:
THE PUZZLES WILL BE MORE TMWST CRYPTOGRAPHS
TMWST is thought to stand for "The Man Who Saw Tomorrow", a movie about Nostradamus.
The solution to this cryptogram, in which letters are assigned numbers according to their position in the QWERTY keyboard layout, was provided by DraconianKing:
A = 11,B = 24,C = 22,D = 13,E = 3,F = 14,G = 15,H = 16,I = 8,J = 17,K = 18,L = 19,M = 26,N = 25,O = 9,P = 10,Q = 1,R = 4,S = 12,T = 5,U = 7,V = 23,W = 2,X = 21,Y = 6,Z = 20
Using this substitution the file name (5163107202019312) could also be converted to THEPUZZLES.
August 1
Sometime during the night of July 31 new graphics appeared on the AboveTopSecret.com site. These only showed up the first time a visitor logged into the site after 7/31/2008. There was a new banner for whatistheconspiracy.com across the top of the page and some strange glyphs down the sides. When solved, these glyphs read "SOLVE THE CRYPTOGRAMS / WIN PRIZES FROM ATS".
August 2 and 3: Unsolved Puzzles
A new image appeared on August 2, 2008. It was titled 0051631072020193120.gif and had words across the top and bottom and a scattergraph on a black background.
The file name (0051631072020193120.gif) could be converted to 00THEPUZZLES0.gif using the solution from the previous cryptogram.
Although members did not feel this puzzle had been solved, the site changed again on August 3, 2008. It now showed a graphic called "theriseofthenext" with the number 828201 in green striped letters against a black background. This led members to this post edited by HUNT_ADMIN. The graphic in the post is titled clue080808.gif and contains the following text:
THE EIGHTH DAY OF THE EIGHTH MONTH OF THE EIGHTH YEAR WILL SEE THE RISE OF A NEW CHALLENGE.
A REVELATION OF THE GRAND CONSPIRACY OF THE AGES WILL BE PRESENTED TO THOSE WORTHY OF THE TEST.
CUNNING SKILLS OF CRYPTOGRAPHY AND LOGIC WILL BE REQUIRED OF THOSE WHO TAKE THE CHALLENGE.
IT WILL BE OBSERVED THAT A CYCLE OF ADDITIVE COLORS IS IMPORTANT AS WELL AS THAT OF SIMPLE DOTS.
IT WILL BE OBSERVED THAT SIXTEEN IS IMPORTANT IN NUMBER AND COLOR, BUT THAT CAESAR SEQUENTIALLY SHIFTS HIS COLORS.
IT WILL BE OBSERVED THAT THE CYCLE OF TRIANGLES BUILDS WORDS AND SYMBOLS ARE DIAGONALLY TRUE.
IT WILL BE OBSERVED THAT CAESAR SLIDES ACROSS ON EACH, AND JUXTAPOSITION IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS.
IT WILL BE OBSERVED, TWICE, THAT THE ROTATION OF GLYPHS BUILD MEANING.
AND FINALLY IT WILL BE OBSERVED THAT THE MISSING COMPONENT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WHAT IS SEEN.
Monday, August 4
SOLVING THIS GLYPH PROVIDES ADVANTAGE UPON FINAL QUESTION
- AboveTopSecret.com Information Account posted twice to the thread, first to clarify some game issues and second to provide a teaser about the game prize.
Tuesday, August 5
ROTATION SEQUENCING SUBSTITUTION JUXTAPOSITIONING SCRAMBLING MISDIRECTION ZEITGEIST STRATEGIZE SOLUTIONS
Wednesday, August 6
On Wednesday 8/6/2008 the image at www.whatistheconspiracy.com changed again. The new image was titled "soonyouwillknow.jpg" and featured an image of an astronaut and the words "What Is The Conspiracy?"
The images visible in this banner were identified by Outrageo as (left) a picture of an Isaac Caret drone and (right) the photograph taken by Neil Armstrong during the first moon walk.
Image provided by Outrageo
Also, people detected letters in the green shading, which may read UNMO.
Image provided by Monkeybus
Thursday, August 7
After the sources of the images in soonyouwillknow.jpg were found and posted to the game discussion thread on 8/7/2008, whatistheconspiracy.com changed again, to a black background with a timer in green (#408000 in hexadecimal) that read "(number) hours and (number) minutes until the start of the challenge".
Soon after, a new image appeared, named 01101001.gif:
Players quickly recognized that this said "R U RDY" when read upside down, and the image changed again, to 011010001a.gif.
The code at the bottom of this image was not cracked before the main challenge began.
A few hours before the official start time, an episode of ATS MIX was released in which Skeptic Overlord discusses the pregame thread and the coming game with Johnny Anonymous and Dave Rabbit.
Missing Letters
Several of the cipher solutions include what seem to be deliberate errors. It is not yet clear whether these are to be taken as clues in themselves, or if this is just a means of making it more difficult to use computer decrypting software to break the codes.
AboveTopSecret.com forum member TheRiddler has been collecting these missing and misplaced letters in this post.
See Also
Relevant Discussion Threads
External Links
