Forums

Recently, Dr. Zirgiss, physics scientist from Cambridge, England, went missing. Just before his disappearance, he was rumoured to be conducting a top secret experiment. Although he had a government grant to investigate alternative fuels, further investigation shows that this experiment, codenamed ZESTER (Zirgiss Electro-Static Thermocurrent Electrogenesis Rotor), was in fact separate to his public research. What's more, the experiment's location wasn't documented. Unconfirmed reports from conspiracists and those close to the secretive professor claim that the experiment involved a large spinning rotor system, on the end of which was a pod containing human subjects; this experiment was secret for a reason. For this reason, it is important that we find Zirgiss as soon as possible. Here is the information we have:

A string of binary. This was found in a letter we intercepted; it was addressed to the last known location of Zirgiss's wife:

http://files.droplr.com/files/22954129/evibC.binary.txt

A screenshot of his laptop. This was found in an email sent to a chinese gmail address. We "intercepted" it. It is very important that you study every part of this image:

http://grab.by/1NxP

PS: [please email the current location of Zirgiss to: rishim [at] mac [dot] com]

PPS: [please don't take the ^china joke^ seriously ]

PPPS: [any page about "Isaac Leaver" is NOT part of this heist. Just ignore it]

Cs and Vs? What does that mean?

^^^ same Q

PROWED MEMBER OF THE WHITE TEAM

Think about the words on the list...

I've read the article and I'm guessing he's not at Moss Landing, and I'm as far as the numbers. I've done what it says, but keep getting page not found. I can't work out if I need to combine them into a single string (in which case I've probably got a typo) or if there's some other conversion I need to do first.

Earn us both 5000MB extra space when signing up for Dropbox, thanks

Any takers? I know this is kind of grave digging, but I spent quite a long time on this heist, I'd like to see if anyone can manage to crack it

Very confusing quest!

Yeah, you really need to think outside the box. Make sure to look at the screenshot in detail... especially the list...

Still no takers? Incentive needed? I have invites for a few things...

hrm... which few things?

“Excuse me, I need to soak my brain in acid now.”
“I took Craft Disturbing Mental Image as my feat last level.”
“Maybe my ears, too.”
—Order of the Stick

do the things in the menu bar of the window have any significance? or the page numbers?

“Excuse me, I need to soak my brain in acid now.”
“I took Craft Disturbing Mental Image as my feat last level.”
“Maybe my ears, too.”
—Order of the Stick

I also assume that Cs and Vs refers to Copy(s) and Paste(s).
⌘-C and ⌘-V

“Excuse me, I need to soak my brain in acid now.”
“I took Craft Disturbing Mental Image as my feat last level.”
“Maybe my ears, too.”
—Order of the Stick

Nope, sorry, think a little harder...

The menu bar items have no significance, but the list on the right is very important...

Well,I could offer Google wave, threadsy and flavors.me invites, but I think none of those three require an invite any more. I do have lockerz though

yeah... i guessed that. So, are the page numbers in hex or something?
and do the 1s and 0s even do anything at all?

“Excuse me, I need to soak my brain in acid now.”
“I took Craft Disturbing Mental Image as my feat last level.”
“Maybe my ears, too.”
—Order of the Stick

Think about how the 1s and 0s may represent words...

Yes... i got the hopeless binary clue. I am asking if they have any use except to tell you, Hey, this is in binary!
Or maybe that Cs and Vs thing...

“Excuse me, I need to soak my brain in acid now.”
“I took Craft Disturbing Mental Image as my feat last level.”
“Maybe my ears, too.”
—Order of the Stick

Yes. Yes they do.

@rishim, most of us have got to the stage of the "Cs & Vs thing but that's where we all get stuck. Sorry, but this is the point where you have to give us something or your puzzle looks like it's going down the drain..

From a spam free, orange team, land

Fair point andys53. Cs and Vs means Consonants and Vowels. Now look at the short bits of text on the list.

... what and run it into binary, taking Consonants as 1 and vowels as 0? or something like that?

“Excuse me, I need to soak my brain in acid now.”
“I took Craft Disturbing Mental Image as my feat last level.”
“Maybe my ears, too.”
—Order of the Stick

Could you provide the list as a text file? N/o, but it'd be a pain to copy it out... and you've got it somewhere on your home computer, I'd guess.

“Excuse me, I need to soak my brain in acid now.”
“I took Craft Disturbing Mental Image as my feat last level.”
“Maybe my ears, too.”
—Order of the Stick

Nothing really needs to be copied out, just look at the words after the "pagexxx:" bit and correspond the binary into consonants and vowels ("1" represents one of them, "0" represents the other) to work out which one is correct. Then simply put the "pagexxx" bit for that phrase after "web.me.com/rishim/"

First step, done, just a few more to go

I'm sorry, what?
replace vowels with 1 (or 0) and consonants with 0 (or 1)? then oh...
ah...
got it.

“Excuse me, I need to soak my brain in acid now.”
“I took Craft Disturbing Mental Image as my feat last level.”
“Maybe my ears, too.”
—Order of the Stick

Is y a vowel?

“Excuse me, I need to soak my brain in acid now.”
“I took Craft Disturbing Mental Image as my feat last level.”
“Maybe my ears, too.”
—Order of the Stick

No, it's not. Here's the idea: only one phrase on that list will match the start of the binary code, find it and you've completed stage one

now how to order the pages? maybe numerical order...

“Excuse me, I need to soak my brain in acid now.”
“I took Craft Disturbing Mental Image as my feat last level.”
“Maybe my ears, too.”
—Order of the Stick

I don't understand; this stage should be completed exactly as I've just said, there's no ordering of pages or anything

well yeah, but where do i put the little flashing number in the image? it said refer to the list...

“Excuse me, I need to soak my brain in acid now.”
“I took Craft Disturbing Mental Image as my feat last level.”
“Maybe my ears, too.”
—Order of the Stick

"this doesn't go there. look back at the list."

“Excuse me, I need to soak my brain in acid now.”
“I took Craft Disturbing Mental Image as my feat last level.”
“Maybe my ears, too.”
—Order of the Stick

Ahh, I see. Read back over the phrases in the list, the flashing code goes into a URL, you just have to work out what URL.

oh. Crud.
not rishim.*u***e*.com/33a8ds?
fine.

“Excuse me, I need to soak my brain in acid now.”
“I took Craft Disturbing Mental Image as my feat last level.”
“Maybe my ears, too.”
—Order of the Stick

wtf just got a picture of a creepy guy. Now what?

now I put in the text and got a long list of random #'s and letters

well that's good.
Have you ever heard of Base64 code? maybe it works there...

where'd you put the text? www.web.me.com/rishim/*********?

“Excuse me, I need to soak my brain in acid now.”
“I took Craft Disturbing Mental Image as my feat last level.”
“Maybe my ears, too.”
—Order of the Stick

Like I said, just re-read the phrases in the list, they give a huge hint as to where the code from the image goes