Bitcoin Forum

How does it work ?

- There are 5 riddles.
- Each riddle should give you a forum user name.
- If you concat all those usernames, with the exact same case as they appear on this forum, it should give you a brainwallet passphrase, generating the private key of 18EUCn1XmgvE9nqr4d8hb6EQSx3JprwPWp.
- Import the private key corresponding to this passphrase in a fresh wallet, and enjoy!

Why a fresh wallet ?


You need to either use a fresh wallet or make sure you delete this private key from your own, after you collected your loot.
Because if you keep this address in your own wallet, it might be randomly elected to serve as change address.
And you don't want your change to go to an address whose private key is known by 100 people, do you ?  ;D

But if all it takes is trying random combinations of 5 usernames from this forum, better bruteforce it in a few seconds, right ?

Try it. But hopefully I made that tricky.

Are the riddles linked ?

No. They're independant, so if you're stuck, just try another one, some are easier that others.
The final resulting passphrase should be in the right order, though, riddle1+riddle2+etc.

EDIT : I'm not a native speaker, so please don't be too hard on typos... The riddles should not suffer from any typo, so don't worry.
EDIT : Added another option to claim the loot, credits to cbeast.
EDIT : Fixed a crippling typo in riddle one. Made one, after all :(

Now here come the riddles! Have fun, and hey, joey, don't make it bad.. that's your chance getting a few coins!  :D
You like the idea and wanna add in some loot ? Please just send it to the loot address mentionned above.

Cannot figure out #3 and #5  :(

Wow, you already have 1, 2 and 4 ?  :o
I knew they were pretty easy, but I didn't expect such a quick execution!

Guess I commited a huge underestimation... Sorry for that, everyone.  ;D

"dry" word in french = sec ?

 ???

Just to emphasize:
or even better to sweep into a wallet.

Still not completely cracked, loot is still untouched.
Will post a hint tomorrow, if no progress.  :)

I changed a little something to help with one of the riddles.

Many thanks to the anonymous donator who threw in some more loot into the chest!

So, anyone getting close ?
I see the loot is still unclaimed.

As a hint, I can tell Escrow was onto something...  ;D

Didn't even get one, maybe throw some more clues out there.  ;D

I really think there are enough clues now, just try harder. This is not a giveaway, it's a riddle game. ;D

If it's not cracked by next wednesday, I'll send back the much appreciated loot contribution to sender address, unless I'm contacted here or through a PM by the donator for a different address. I'd hate to send coins to a generic mtgox address, so please, donator, if the sending address is not yours, contact me before next wednesday.

And I'll post the solutions.

hints?

It would be helpful if you rephrased the riddles in some way. They're not uh...in much of a typical riddle format really (IMO).
Regardless, this is a cool idea!

If you mean they don't sound like they're coming out of Gandalf mouth, I'll agree with you.
But for people a bit familiar with this kind of riddles, they're fairly easy, and not that twisted, really!

I won't be adding anymore hint, I'm feeling there are enough, already.
If you can't figure it out, just wait for the solution, and based on them, try your luck on my next (or hopefully someone's else, I wanna play, too! :D) set.

I wonder how Gandalf would say them, haha. :) But you're right, they're not my kind of riddles. I wasn't asking for hints, or at least I did not mean to, but I can see how it could be taken that way.
Anyway, it would be interesting to see more riddles in the future.

I believe the last nine letters of the brainwallet passphrase are "JohnJohnK".


YGKA ZJYGDK OKWPGI, VDKA ACO NOAAOPK, BOOH ACO WJKO.

A = T
B = N
C = H
D = U
E
F
G = O
H = D
I = W
J = A
K = S
L
M
N = L
O = E
P = R
Q
R
S
T
U
V = J
W = C
X
Y = M
Z = F

YGKA ZJYGDK OKWPGI, VDKA ACO NOAAOPK, BOOH ACO WJKO.
MOST FAMOUS ESCROW, JUST THE LETTERS, KEEP THE CASE.

User name "John (John K.)" minus the spaces, parentheses, and period = "JohnJohnK"

How did you found that? I mean A=T and B=N
OP posted a pic of caeser but i tried caeser shift and didn't got anything.

He gave us A = T in the riddle.  "ACO" appears twice, so I figured that was the word "the", the most common word in the English language.  That gave me over half of the letters in "NOAAOPK", and I figured that was the word "letters".  (I don't know of any other words that fit "_ETTE__".)  Just kept going from there.

Wow you are really good at this.

Can't figure out 2 or 3.  Good fun, though.

Good progress, there! You're getting close, as Kris apparently solved 1, 2 and 4, too  :)

I'm having doubts about 1 now, I was too hasty.

I gave up on #3 and #5

5th is solved and 3rd one have a hint.
So feel free to try again and make that wallet empty. ;D

The picture hint was about the 5th one.
The best hint for #3 was given by you, actually, escrow (and I rephrased it a little, since then)

I have a guess for 3.  Lost on 1&2 now though.

I think I'm just getting tired, all I can remotely think of for #2 is pywallet :)

You cannot have any doubt once you crack #1, as it gives a username, unlike some other who only give hints to a username, such as #5 or... #2 ;)

Ah I see, that helps a lot

I thought about trying to brute force the first one, but I think I'll just go to bed :)

Haha! Brute force won't help at all, but a some sleep might. G'night!  :)

EDIT : Oh, you meant brute forcing the last username, that could work, in fact...
The brute force "protection" I had put was solved already. But that's cheating!  :P

Could you post the brainwallet address of each of the individual solutions?  Just to check our progress so far?

I tried every Caeserian shift as well.

I was going to go back and look for "the" but had moved onto other things by then.

- Taxes (or tax3s? Maybe the 3 means it needs to go in the 3rd place?)
- Sides
- It is actually "Jack of all trades", and money does not grow on trees - so Jack/grow + a connection to the number one...
- ?
- Heads

Jack, Sides, Taxes, Heads, grow - that all sounds quite a bit like gambling to me --> could be evorhees for example.

If this helps, feel free to donate a few cents to Wikipedia (via BitPay) on my behalf...

My best guess was that the numbers corresponded to the letters to use.  But xig?e wasn't a valid username.  You're right about the gambling connection, hmm...

You are getting very close, actually :)

Can't think of anything.  Maybe a drink will help.

Is the brainwallet corresponding to the other 4 usernames 1ED7i2wqgWFRt9Pc21PJMn4UAt4R4ncea?

I won't do partial confirmations, sorry, would spoil the fun if you finally find it.

I will just add one last hint, since you're apparently so close, would be a shame if you didn't solve it.


If not cracked before, I'll publish the solutions in 48h, and send back the (still) anonymous contribution to sender address.
Good luck!

Hmm here is what I have:


3)  Taxes:  x
2)  Sides:  i
all, none, or one)  Bob?  Jack?
3)  Everything seems to be about 5 letters, and all I can think of are the three wise men, and Myrhh rhyms with Err.. (grasping here):  r
2)  Heads:  e
1)  Grow:  g

xijreg
xibreg  << bigrex?

FUUUUUU, I just checked something, and the 4th one is actually kinda hard to find using google - though possible - because of a typo, I'm sooo sorry!
It's fixed.

advisors=>advisers

Keep on!

http://www.inspirationalstories.com/proverbs/german-never-listen-to-these-three-advisers-wine/

Ahhh thanks
So now I have 1 (I think), but the brain wallet isn't coming out (compressed or uncompressed), which means I've got another one wrong :(

The passphrase should be composed by a concat of the usernames you found, without space between them.
Uncompressed.

I had tysat verify the the passphrase before I posted this whole riddle, and just tripled cheked it, it's right.
So I guess you have a small glitch somewhere. ;)

xijneg backwards = genjix

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1931

I got the same, but that means I'm wrong on one or more of the others :(

I don't understand the Sir Nicolas bit, so it's probably that one.  The only fruit named city on the Mississippi with a remotely close username I could find was Bartlett.

Hmmmm, there's a city named Fountain in Colorado.  Start there maybe, then go straight to the river?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain,_Colorado

Yeah, but the picture is from the wikipedia page of Blytheville, AR, which is right on the Mississippi.

Ugh, I tried Shakespeare, because it has pear in it, and the address was 18EL... so close :(

Riddle #4 gives a direct username, not just a hint to it.
Provided what you shared with shawshankinmate37927, I'm sure he'll be able to help... He's got glasses  ;D

My guesses:
1)  genjix
2)  jackjack
3)  pirateat40
4)  ?? nbartlett or njbartlett -- Bartlett is the only city I can find
5)  JohnJohnK -- already provided above


Is glasses a hint, or just a reference to his avatar?
Now I'm looking for nicolas, glass, or a fruit along the mississippi...

Just borrow some before following the instructions.  ;)

OI!!!! Where's the loot gone ?
Just been stolen away!

Is it a fruit or a vegetable?  ;)

Thanks for the BTC!

lol
Now answers please ?

Ps: Congrats steve

Ok, congrats... I guess...
Bit dissappointed you just took advantage og cp1 sharing his solutions. :(

Each line missed a word, which you had to figure.


Then each line contained a number index to extract a letter from each of those words


Which gives:


Which gives, once reversed : genjix

The 3rd line referencing the last was both a hint, and some sort of a false lead, but the last one was actually working the exact same way.

I FU with the 4th riddle text and used "advisor" instead of "adviser", which made it much more difficult to find on google.

This was was fairly easy.
You just had to replace the second line by "wall", which was pointed out by all the hints about different kinds of walls

Which ended up in:


But something is still wrong. The 2 vowels in line 1 and 3 are switched.
Finally, Pywallet comes to mind, which is currently maintained by jackjack, who was the final answer.

This was was poorly designed, and a bit tricky, as it did not give a direct answer.
As escrow.ms found out, the french translation of dry is sec.

since dry was uppercased - which it was not in 1st version, it leaves you with those clues:


I was really thinking that would be sufficient to lead to pirateat40
Pirates Drink, sing, and occasinally sink, too, don't they ? :D

I think everyone found this one easy, it was just a matter of using tinyeye to get the starting point.
Which was Blytheville, Arkansas.

The Mississipi is close, just go to google map and scroll following the river south.
The only tricky part is that you had to zoom enough as it is really not a big city.

http://uppix.com/f-tomato5207f66b0013a2d6.png

Then the part about dismissing Nicolas (Cage) was just a confirmation you found the right one.
Tomatocage was the answer!

You all got it, this was a Caesar code.
Congratulations to shawshankinmate37927 to solve this without figuring the code.

You all correctly got the T=A hint.
But that made no sense, once translated using this code, as everyone could see.

The trick was the letters order was not the alphabet, but the keyboard order.

Then it was just a Caesar shift.

QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM
UIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNMQWERTY

Maybe I should have put a keyboard image instead of Caesar... :)

Using this translation, the message was MOST FAMOUS ESCROW, JUST THE LETTERS, KEEP THE CASE.
Which was trivial to figure, then... JohnJohnK was the answer!

That's somehting to try first, when an apparent Caesar does not work, try with another letter order, keyboard layout being the second most popular after the alphabet, and this forum is filled with geeks...  ;)

Thanks to all who tried, and congrats to the winner SteveB.
I'll wait for comments and post a final word about how it went from my point of view, so the next riddle games attempts (which will be so frequent we'll get a sub for them, hopefully) can profit from this little experience.

Thanks again! (and sorry, cp1 and shawshankinmate37927, you were so dedicated... :()

No worries.  I just wanted someone to win it.  I'd would have hated to see the prize go unclaimed. :)

cp1 and shaw can you both post your wallet. I'll send 0.01BTC each to both of you.

1KtjFJD4JtZ7hoqvgAYySUE7CoyNgZwbeA

Thanks escrow.ms!

Sent, You guys are better than Sherlock Holmes lol  ;D

edit: sorry forgot to change fees, anyways it should get confirmed in a minute.

1QK8w1RZrpKR4K3FuR2W15kNX8B5YRZrWd

I'm glad that jackjack and pirateat40 were both correct, I should have zoomed in more on tomato!

Very kind of you.
I'm tempted to double it, but I'm not that rich, and would prefer putting that 2$ back as a bonus in the next chest I'm probably going to post next week.

I'm trying to think about rules to avoid such an ending, and that's pretty tricky.

SteveB, can you please at least answer this ?
Did you spend a bit of time trying to figure out the solutions, or did you just jump on the occasion when cp1 posted 5/6 answers ?
I won't hate you, whatever your reply, just need a bit of feedback.

Also, Kris, if you still read this, can you confirm you had 3/5 answers within 10 minutes ?

Anyone got ideas about how to mitigate this final-solution-stealing issue ?

Hence the glasses "hint" :)

It's OK, it was a community effort -- thanks for setting it up!

Just got 0.01 BTC, thanks :)

sent :)


No problem bro and you have already given 0.05 btc.
I'll wait for your next riddle game and will donate some amount.

Ps: It's 5:19 AM here now, Night guys.. ;) and i'm also not rich (I have around 0.5 USD in my bank acc now lol) but a wise man said, "Happiness is a byproduct of an effort to make someone else happy".

Your reply crossed a PM I sent to thank you...
Very appreciated, anyway!  :)

I sent both cp1 and shaw 0.01BTC each as a thank you, as without them I would have never been able to solve all the riddles.
I was only able to solve one riddle and #4 was a lucky guess after looking at the usernames in the lending subforum.

Kouye, please let me know when you start another game and I will add 0.02BTC to the pot.

Sorry I missed out on this, but I'm glad to see someone doing it - I've been thinking it'd be fun do do Bitcoin "scavenger hunts".

Wow, I wasn't expecting this kind of answer, haha!
That's really nice of you, thanks.
And so, as I thought, you didn't really try, just waited until only the 4th one was left.

Gotta try to think about some ways to avoid that (hashes ?  ;D)

Please send me any thought to make it more difficult for a late-comer to burn the last one and get the loot.

Oh, and SteveB, I'm not sure how you claimed the loot. But remember to get rid of the winning address private key so it won't ever be used as change one by QT.

You could have 5 brain wallets, each with 0.01 BTC in them.  But I don't know if people would just guess random user names.

Received another 0.01 :) thanks

I am working on bring back "Buried Keys" in a new form. It should be interesting if it works.

Thanks SteveB!

Yes, thanks for sharing -- I usually do puzzle hunts for free (actually I pay to do them), so it's nice to get paid :)

Some final words, as promised.

It took me about 2h30 to design the riddles and secure the wallet to hold the loot.
That explains why some where a bit ill-designed, and why I regret riddle #3 which was both shabby and frustrating as it had no intrinsic confirmation.

All in all, the first riddle is the only one I would keep in a serious hunt game. Without the typo, for which I apologize again.

I was shocked when Kris posted he had solved 3 riddles out of 5, ten minutes after I had them posted, and thought my 2h30 work would vanish within half an hour, at that moment. Not cool.

I was very amused when cp1 posted a false solution for riddle #1 and still chose to reverse the letters, without any hint about that in the riddle itself, that was incredible... Great intuition, there!

shawshankinmate37927 empiric resolution of the #5 was pretty impressive, though it's actually doable to crack 1 to 1 letter scrambling, just counting occurrences, assume the most frequent letter is a 'e', spot patterns (as he did) etc. Nevertheless, congratulations!

I really appreciated the overall collaboration, and even more, the fair play in the end when SteveB ninja'd the loot.

Thanks again, expect a better designed hunt next week, which might not even need Brainwallet, thanks to cbear (I PM'ed him and begged for details  ;D)

And... Tomato is a fruit, yes!

That was a pretty complicated game.  Some well thought out puzzles in there.

I did not get #1 correct. For some reason I came to the conclusion that it was "DeathAndTaxes"
But again this would have been to easy no ?  ;D