Keys
Last updated
Last updated
Players started off with an image with a picture of MatPat and the GT logo in a frame with a blurred out title. The question of "What was the title of this work of art? (ok it was just trash 🤷♂️)" was provided alongside the image. This image ended up referencing this part of a Game Theory video.
The video could be found with two methods:
By going to the Game Theory YouTube channel and going to the video that was released on the date that's on the frame (November 26, 2017)
By adjusting the brightness/contrast of the image and seeing the title of the target video over MatPat's head
The key is just the name of the piece of art pictured (the blurred text), Pretentious Internet Ramblings.
Up to this point, this was the most complicated key we have had so far in the whole ARG. It consists of slowly finding 9 puzzle pieces and assembling them to form a final picture.
It starts off with an image with alien glyphs (translates to 'Enter the date Price found') and other text. The image was accompanied with the text "Enter the date in this format: MMM DD YYYY" underneath, telling the player that the key was a specific date.
To get to the next step, players had to adjust the brightness of the image to find a bit.ly link in the spaces at the bottom, spelling out bit.ly/bg3thefirstpiece.
The bit.ly link redirects to a Dropbox folder. The folder contains a .psd file with a puzzle piece and instructions on how to properly open the .psd file. Following the instructions, players can download the .psd file, open it in Photopea, and discover a set of instructions on what to do next. Players had to unhide a layer by setting its opacity to 100% to find the next link, and to download each puzzle piece to save it for the final picture. A tutorial is also given to people having trouble with managing the puzzle pieces in Photopea.
After saving the first puzzle piece (for the purposes of this Master Tracker, progress images of the complete puzzle will be shown on this same image), players can acquire the second piece by going to the link: www.thetheoristgateway.com/supersecret/the_2nd_piece.png.
Piece 2 has the text "bit.ly/bg3rdstreet" on it in the middle, which is where the third piece is found.
The 3rd piece contains hexadecimal, which decodes into 'openmeinatexteditor'. Doing so in a raw data viewer such as Notepad or Notepad+ reveals some appended text at the bottom: 'You are one third the way. This will get you two thirds the way: www.thetheoristgateway.com/supersecret/456/'
These three puzzle pieces all have gold alien text on them. Translations follow:
4th piece: www.unturnnostone.com/0011
5th piece: 0111011101000110
6th piece: 1000.html
Combine all the pieces and it becomes www.unturnnostone.com/001101110111010001101000.html (the binary decodes to '7th'). The file name of the 7th piece is binary that translates to 'the7thpiece'.
Piece 7 has 3 sets of binary encoded into black and orange dots. It also has alien glyphs next to each set of binary, translating to '1', '2', and '3' respectively. This explains the order of the binary. The binary in 1s and 0s form is as follows:
1: 0110100001110100011101000111000001110011001110100010111100101111 2: 01101001011011010110011101110101011100100010111001100011011011110110110100101111 3: 00110101001110010110101000110100011101010011010101100001 The binary combined and then converted to plaintext reads https://imgur.com/59j4u5a.
The Imgur description of 'the 3rd piece' is incorrect, since this is the 8th piece found.
Piece 9
Piece 8 has a QR code on it, which when scanned goes to https://www.thetheoristgateway.com/supersecret/thefinalpiece/index.html. This website has a image that has alien glyphs around the border, translating to 'wwwdotthetheoristgatewaydotcomslashsupersecretslashthefinalpieceslash'.
In the bottom text in the image, it says to look at the image inside of a text editor. The following text is hidden:
'Hello again, Theorist. Instructions: Extract the first 11 capital letters of the text. Extract the first 11 numbers of the text. Add them to the end of the hidden URL, letters first followed by the numbers, then add .PNG. You shall have your final piece.'
Following the instructions provides ECADSISSRIA33063373121.PNG. Concatenating the two leads to, the last piece, at www.thetheoristgateway.com/supersecret/thefinalpiece/ECADSISSRIA33063373121.PNG.
If the player puts '.png' at the end instead of '.PNG', there is a different webpage that tells the player to try again and read the instructions carefully, hinting at the capital PNG. Make sure to have '.PNG'!
This link leads to the final puzzle piece, and thus completes the puzzle. However, the player must rotate the piece 180 degrees and flip it horizontally to get the correct orientation.
The finished puzzle shows blurred images of Spyro, Spiderman, and Ratchet and Clank. It also gives the coordinates 34°11'36.8 N, 118°20'42.0 W. The characters and coordinates all point towards the game studio Insomniac Games. Insomniac Games was founded by Ted Price (which is what the starting alien glyphs hinted at) on Feb 28 1994, which is the key.
