Hi everyone! I'm a little late, I'm here only because I have 1FLAMEN6 address on watchlist and is empty. What a surprise. I'm happy for the winner and a little sad because it's not me.

Someone still call me a SCAMMER, I'm not. You can only call me "greedy", because I didn't share with you what I had discovered. Somehow I hoped I could do it alone.

I couldn't edit the video due to personal problems that kept me away last month. While we wait for the official solution, I want to share what I did time ago and let you understand why I was so sure and arrogant, why I said that (ACCORDING TO ME, but now I don't really know...) flames are not involved from the start and why I insisted that every useful element was in front of us, clearly visible even in low resolution image.

So, let's start with this image: https://imgur.com/a/SWpa2

Yari Shogi. A lot of people said that this chessboard is from Yari Shogi (japanese chess variant) because is 7x9 or 9x7. You was right. So why not going further? There is a black Knight in the upper right of the image, so I assumed that it had to start moving very close to it. It turns out that ribbons (1A) are useful for write down coordinates and leaves are the places in the chessboard where pieces could moves. So, I counted 8 rays and I try to move Yari Knight 8 times touching every possible chess square only one time.

A5 C4 E5 G4 I3 G2 E3 C2

Using 1337 (leet) is something like: ASCHES GF IS GREECK or whatever.
To me seem ASCII'S GIRLFRIEND IS GREEK.

I haven't so much time right now, so I can't post other images but I will write down as much as I can on the next step and later I hope to post another couple images.

Next thing I did was to move the queen piece, you have to change the way you look at chessboard, standard chessboard is 8x8. You have to assume that under the upper side of the puzzle (yes, under the flames) part of the chessboard is hidden. But you can clearly see leaves, so pieces could move in every leaf you see, even there. White Queen starts on D1, so you have to invert coordinates (the 1 now is where the upper right spiral is placed) to match chess square color. Moving the queen you have:

D1 C7 A4 C5 E4 E3 E6

If you search those HEX values on differnt extended ASCII tables (greek table for instance, I will post links to those tables later) you will find this:

Ρ  Η  ¤  Ε  δ  γ  ζ

P H O E N I X. So you have to move phoenix (waffle). And so on.



Sorry but I'm late, I will write another post when I will be at home later or tomorrow and I have more material handy. Hope you understand what I'm talking about, my english is very weak.

Have nice day everyone.

Oh god, it hurts so much. I'm crying now.

Adios 

Reading some of your replies disappoint me a little.

Stop taunting others. There are not only stupid people or trolls or scammers here. I only see frustrated people.

For those looking to solve it, stop trying to decode flames, you don't have what you need to decode them for now. It's like you are trying to solve this puzzle from the end, obviously you can't and you are wasting your time this way.
Focus on the whole image instead, there is everything you need to start the right way.

I'm not stuck anymore, only going on slowly because of my job and because this is getting harder every step I make forward. So I will still try to solve it alone for all this month and if I can't, the 1st day of february I will upload a video with the first two or three steps I made and I will post the link here for you all.

I will leave the last steps out from the video purposely, because I want to cooperate only with serious people and so I will test you all.

Next, I will make a private team formed only by all the people who are able to PM me the correct answer (that I already know) obtained from the step right after those I will show you in the video. If you are able to do that, I will reveal only to the team everything I know and we will try to solve this together, without all the frustrated people here complaining, taunting and believing that this puzzle is broken by purpose.

It's not coin_artist fault if you are blind or if you are so attracted by flames. She is happy that way.

Maybe we started on different A. I don't know, honestly I consider more realiatic my workflow because involves what you clearly see. This has to be solved with low res jpeg, always think about that.

The answer is YES. From A you can go to B, from B you can go to C and so on. At first, once you have done A, there are no other ways you can follow. But I've been on D for 3 - 4 days now, I went off the road a couple of times, I thought I found something useful like an IP address (a server with something else to solve, like the old puzzle?), maybe a game to play (remember minecraft?) and other stupid things that made me waste time.

CoinArtist told me "The art piece is the final puzzle. It’s all you need now" and then I stopped looking for an answer out from this art piece. The answer on how to decode flames, or what to do next, is in the art piece, waiting to be read. For now, this is all I can tell you.

Okay, I misunderstood. For a moment I believed you had interpreted the very first clue differently from me, trying to do the thing I wrote to you (which I have excluded immediately when I found that word). Now I know you didn't see the same clue, so we are on two different tracks. I wish you a good luck with your ideas. I will continue to follow my path 

Exactly as you said.

You could refer to all these small drawings spreaded throughout all the art piece: https://imgur.com/a/5z9WL

They are thousands and more, they are people, animals, creatures... I noticed them the third day spent on this hi-res image at 200% zoom, I thought I was visionary. Thanks for noticing them too.

By the way, they are not the very first step that lead to something useful, they could be only funny easter eggs, or maybe they become useful later. I don't know. My workflow is much simpler and straightforward, it involves only what everyone can see without the need to zoom. You will eat your hands when I, or someone else, will reveal it to you.

I hope to solve this before being forced to tell you.

To do the first steps, just to let you know, you don't have to know about vanity address, it's everything in the art piece and all you need is to think different and to use your brains.

I don't mind if you think I have nothing or you don't want to wait. You waited 2.5 years, I think you could wait 1 month more    bye

First of all, sorry for my english, I'm not native speaker but I hope to be understood.

I've read almost everything I could read in 36 pages.

I'm working on this puzzle since the week after CoinArtist uploaded the high-res TIF on her Drive and posted on Twitter. I didn't know she and her works before.

So, I have made progress recently. I can safely say that you are all so far away even from the start (yes, the start! Figure out how much you are far from the solution).

Someone is very close to the first clue to follow, but he/she is also slightly blind and did not see it in the proper way, so this clue was left behind.

White Rabbit, I don't know what your goal is, but from what I know you are saying random things. If you knew more, you could simply solve this puzzle and go away with money. You probably, as 99% of people here, don't even know where to start and why. So, do you want tips? Do you want to bring people out of track just to have more time to solve this? I don't really know but I don't think you are in some way related to this puzzle as someone guessed before.

Now, I am exactly 4 big steps ahead of you all. I'm stuck, and this is why I'm here. I don't know how far I am from solving, I think 2 or 3 more steps before knowing exactly how to fully decode flames, which surely (as many of you have rightly understood) they have what we are looking for.


I really need to win the prize, but I can't win if I'm stuck like now. So I decided to reveal to you what I know, only if I will not be able to solve this in 1 month from now.
I will do a video and I will upload it on youtube or vimeo the 1st february 2018 with details of all the steps I did before getting stuck.

I would like to see this puzzle solved. Maybe some of you, with help to get started, can show me how to go forward.

I will not ask for a part of the winnings, or something. I only ask the possible winner not to run away with the money without explain to all of us how to solve the final steps.
This is the only condition.


For now, open your minds. Good luck to everyone and happy new year 

Thanks for reply.

Damn, it could be everything.

The whole image reminds me a QR Code, maybe the flames could supply all the bits needed to generate a QR Code with a private key inside or something else.
How many bits for a QR Code with a private key? 400?

Hi everyone, nice to meet you.

I'm working on this puzzle, obviously I'm far away from the solution. I read a lot about this art piece in this discussion and I like some of your ideas. I have so many questions now, I would like to know more.

What are we searching for?
I have read many times that 1FLAMEN6 is a "vanity" address, so the flames "couldn't" be the private key because when they were drawn (more than 2 years ago) the bitcoin address with the prize was different. Is it right? So, what do we expect to find?

Now, let's pretend we are able to find a pattern, knowing how the heights and colors work together, the same for inner and outer flames meaning, the path to follow reading data (where to start, CW o CCW, ecc) and so on... we would probably have a bunch of zeros and ones. What to do with them?

How we could translate binary data in something useful? It depends on how many bits?
Is possibile to make a WIF or Base58 with it in some way? An HEX key or raw private key maybe? A readable text?

Please, explain to me.

I would really like to know more, because if I can't solve this puzzle, at least I would like to deepen my knowledge.

Thanks to everyone!