ARG Puzzle with 3.5 BTC Private Key Prize, Game Over

[S4VV4S]

F### it, I am going to sleep.

Shorena it's up to you girl/man.

PS: "Alice", some more clues would be useful......  

EDIT: Follow the white rabbit 

[1715664813]

1715664813

[1715664813]

1715664813

[rock_collector]

If it helps, I was the one who added .09 btc to the bitcoin address, so disregard that donation--which I assume you have done, obviously not a clue.  The other 1-0 deposits are certainly curious, though.

Also, before coin_artist silenced her twitter account last night, she made a few references to Alice in Wonderland. Wonder if there is a simple alphabet cipher involved a la Lewis Carroll. I'm not a cryptographer, so forgive the naivete. Perhaps all ARG puzzle constructors use Alice in Wonderland metaphors.

One more thing: in one of her tweets, she used the phrase "...what meets the eye." I can't remember--and it's driving me crazy--if she said "it's not what meets the eye," but I really don't think so because I was struck by her phrasing enough to write it down. What is it about the eye and what would be meeting it?

Good luck--you all are so smart!

Yeah it seems that "we need to go down the rabbit hole"

EDIT: Nice of you to join and help us out.... much appreciated

EDIT 2: got her twitter account link?

Glad you found Coin_artist's (dormant) twitter account link. She tweeted about this puzzle quite a bit yesterday, simultaneously posting on reddit and here. I wish I had screenshot her tweets--they held many clues, I assume, arggh. At some point last night, after she made some cryptic comments referencing Alice in Wonderland, I went on Twitter to ask her a question and couldn't find her account. Another Twitter user informed me that she had tweeted that she was silencing her account until the puzzle is solved. Like Alice, she disappeared down the rabbit hole. She is otherwise quite active on Twitter. A talented artist and stunning woman, super generous and kind.
 

You seem to know a lot about her.....

Only because I follow her on Twitter and she's well-known in the bitcoin community. Hope you will wake up with new insights!

[mirth23]

Greetings, I'm crashing the party too! A few data points:

1) Is this the character string everyone else is using? I'm a little dubious about some of the m's, w's, 9's, g's, and other things:

Code:

S7ovY8tcakz3CmiuN2rh51HXUobwcB19cGDrghuh42HDdJdJvrJUEraOP4iDcIxbMy2nLi31nmtHdEhirLbwb5yufe3TCSvjwoAUrk9FzRe7aeJ62YTo6ABDiFt

2) I've taken a stab at a few plaintext segments to see if I can find a ToR address, but nothing's worked. That was a long shot since everything's mixed-case.

3) The obvious bitcoin address is before a 'O'. 'I' is the only other non-base58 character in the puzzle so perhaps something right before/after it is also important.

4) The last 30 digits are not a valid private minikey, nor are any other 22 or 30 character string following any 'S' in the puzzle.

5) Currently working on various approaches to interpreting the dots.

Cheers!

[e1ghtSpace]

In column 28 - 30 you can see the letters like this:

28 29 30 - columns
     
          E
L
     U
C

= CLUE

Just a coincidence?

Edit: Also, the red and green dots remind me of minesweeper. And maybe if you worked out the positioning of the bombs, it could form a picture.

Green - 1
Red    - 2
Orange - 3

Just a thought.

[moinen]

A row of transactions to the address spell out an interesting ascii message:

0.01010011 BTC
0.01001111 BTC
0.01000011 BTC
0.01001100 BTC
0.01001111 BTC
0.01010011 BTC
0.00100010 BTC
0.01000101 BTC

If you ignore the one for 0.00100010, it spells "SOCLOSE"

0.00100010 is the smallest of the bunch, and the most likely to be an outside prankster sending confusing messages perhaps. It is a double quatation in ascii

[shorena]

In column 28 - 30 you can see the letters like this:

28 29 30 - columns
      
          E
L
     U
C

= CLUE

Just a coincidence?

Edit: Also, the red and green dots remind me of minesweeper. And maybe if you worked out the positioning of the bombs, it could form a picture.

Green - 1
Red    - 2
Orange - 3

Just a thought.

Hmm I noticed these "snakes" of symbols. One even has 16 chars, but I had no time to look further into it. This
https://67ak9osvfebhh1nc.tor2web.org/
from the right is no valid tor address though.
I spend most of the time yesterday on this with a friend while we should have worked on a homework paper. "unproductive days" indeed.

Some things that stood out:

Just the chars:

Code:

S7ovY8tcakz3CmiuN2rh5
1HXUobwcB1qcGDrghuh42HDdJdJvrJUEra
OP4iDcIxbMy2nLi31nmtHdEhirLbwb5yufe3TCSvjwoAUrk9FzRe7aeJ62YT06ABD1Ft

We took the address out:

Code:

S7ovY8tcakz3CmiuN2rh5
OP4iDcIxbMy2nLi31nmtHdEhirLbwb5yufe3TCSvjwoAUrk9FzRe7aeJ62YT06ABDiFt

let our fantasy ride a bit and got:

Code:

Soviet cakez ease me onto rage
My second lie(line) you feet(feed) work 

those are no wallet if used within the darkwallet though.

Also there is

Code:

YT06ABDiFT

which might hint towards a youtube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06ABDiFt
but it does not.

It would also totally ignore the dots and IMHO the dots are the next step.

7. from left 1 line is a 7
42 start on 6,7 and 6*7 = 42
bottom right is a 6 on the 6. row from the bottom there also is a 7 close on the 7. row from the bottom.
Maybe we ought to flip the picture upside down. This would also "correct" the pyramid.

The pyramid has some colors in it from outside to inside (the iluminati eye thus the ilumination and the solution? or maybe its the other way around because it iluminati not sure)
RED -> YELLOW -> GREEN/BLUE* -> BLUE

* I had a lengthy argument yesterday whether its green or blue, I watched the picture on at least 4 different screens now and to me its blue.

A row of transactions to the address spell out an interesting ascii message:

0.01010011 BTC
0.01001111 BTC
0.01000011 BTC
0.01001100 BTC
0.01001111 BTC
0.01010011 BTC
0.00100010 BTC
0.01000101 BTC

If you ignore the one for 0.00100010, it spells "SOCLOSE"

0.00100010 is the smallest of the bunch, and the most likely to be an outside prankster sending confusing messages perhaps. It is a double quatation in ascii

Had the same idea, but I had a typo on the E.

Code:

પ èSOCLOS"/do/t¦ž¦€

Also: the number of dots (from left to right, top to bottom)

Code:

4 1 4 3 1 4 2 5 1
1 3 1 1 3 1 5 1 1 6 3
2 1 5 5 5 5 2 4
5 2 5 8 1 6 3
3 12 2 10 5
1 2 1 1 4 2 2 4 3 4
2 2 2 1 1 2 3 2 1 3 4 2
3 2 2 1 15 3 2 1
8 3 5 3 4 2
5 5 1 7 1
2 9 3 3 2
9 1 1 4 3
1 5 2 2 1 4
4 1 5 1 4 1 1
3 8 4 3 2
1 5 3 1 5 1 1
3 1 3 2 3 1 2
2 4 1 1 5
5 1 4 1 1
2 3 2 4
1 3 6
4 1 3 2
6 6

I dont have much time today, but I will see what I can do.

Also: new transactions coming in:

Code:

00101101
01011000
00101100

Code:

-X,

Not sure if clue or troll.

2 coming from these 1BoRHtJva2L9YyqB1aS1zqgFUjjftNuZtJ

One of the inputs is from
1CJVmcgoxiTApQxWoADGEFJ2Q73sgpGdyJ

hmmm, gotta go.

[Lauda]

How does this even work?

[shorena]

How does this even work?

Starring at the picture for hours. Write stuff from it down and stare at that for hours. Copy some of the stuff into about 500 different "cover X to Y" pages on the internet.[1] Mostly starring at stuff and pondering

Also on a totally unrealated note:

...
Look ahead but keep on turning
Do I have the strength, or do I let go?
...
Keep searching
Keep on searching
This search goes on
This search goes on
Keep searching
Keep on searching
This search goes on
On and on
Frantic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-toc
Frantic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-toc
Frantic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-toc
Frantic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-toc
...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I6y5-GuLPM

Just had this in my head and had to share it.



[1] http://brainwallet.org/#converter

1HintKjyvJF1oDwnTJtCKHKJKeCx1JXTSQ
1HereH3QmbzN28euegCAK2w4JJ3RzgHZMZ
1Ask2vPsScbo5HPMvdcyvSTo2DfATo2z7L
1MeDSMUfwSTGbnyG1dHWSkwFRFeRMJykJS
1ForABQpoFtSWjYG1yYZpUfoZc3xGv3wLr

Wow!


https://blockchain.info/de/tx/b05f4616bd91ac6be896abc7102598498695376f129ccbcc04d3449537b1c997


Apparently we can ask for hints on the blockchain.

[S4VV4S]

1HintKjyvJF1oDwnTJtCKHKJKeCx1JXTSQ
1HereH3QmbzN28euegCAK2w4JJ3RzgHZMZ
1Ask2vPsScbo5HPMvdcyvSTo2DfATo2z7L
1MeDSMUfwSTGbnyG1dHWSkwFRFeRMJykJS
1ForABQpoFtSWjYG1yYZpUfoZc3xGv3wLr

Wow!


https://blockchain.info/de/tx/b05f4616bd91ac6be896abc7102598498695376f129ccbcc04d3449537b1c997


Apparently we can ask for hints on the blockchain.

6. Thou shalt not feed the trolls.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1egi51/there_is_currently_over_10000_unconfirmed/
http://xkcd.com/936/

[S4VV4S]

In column 28 - 30 you can see the letters like this:

28 29 30 - columns
      
         E
L
     U
C

= CLUE

Just a coincidence?

Edit: Also, the red and green dots remind me of minesweeper. And maybe if you worked out the positioning of the bombs, it could form a picture.

Green - 1
Red    - 2
Orange - 3

Just a thought.

Right below it the letters w o r k appear

EDIT: And I shouldn't be doing this today. I have a huge leaflet with 200+ products to design....

[S4VV4S]

In chapter 2, "The Pool of Tears", Alice tries to perform multiplication but produces some odd results: "Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is—oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!" This explores the representation of numbers using different bases and positional numeral systems: 4 × 5 = 12 in base 18 notation, 4 × 6 = 13 in base 21 notation, and 4 × 7 could be 14 in base 24 notation. Continuing this sequence, going up three bases each time, the result will continue to be less than 20 in the corresponding base notation. (After 4 x 12 = 19 in Base 39, the product would be 4 x 13 = 1A in Base 42, then 1B, 1C, 1D, and so on.)


And I really should get back to work now......

[Lauda]

How does this even work?

Starring at the picture for hours. Write stuff from it down and stare at that for hours. Copy some of the stuff into about 500 different "cover X to Y" pages on the internet.[1] Mostly starring at stuff and pondering

Also on a totally unrealated note:

Or in other words: waste hours and hours of your life for nothing?

[S4VV4S]

How does this even work?

Starring at the picture for hours. Write stuff from it down and stare at that for hours. Copy some of the stuff into about 500 different "cover X to Y" pages on the internet.[1] Mostly starring at stuff and pondering

Also on a totally unrealated note:

Or in other words: waste hours and hours of your life for nothing?

No, in other words follow the rules, share information and play fair

It doesn't matter if you are technical or not, so long as you are part of the team and share your findings.
Playing games like this I have come to the conclusion that technical guys/girls usually get stuck because they think of things well, too technical....

That being said, if (and that's a big IF), I find the solution I will share the spoils with everyone who has actively participated.

[e1ghtSpace]

That being said, if (and that's a big IF), I find the solution I will share the spoils with everyone who has actively participated.

That's what I will do too. And that IS a big if.

[S4VV4S]

That being said, if (and that's a big IF), I find the solution I will share the spoils with everyone who has actively participated.

That's what I will do too. And that IS a big if.

That means that you are a true team player and I am very happy for it

[david123]

Anyone thought about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille?

[micaman]

Anyone thought about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille?

Yep... and morse too... but no luck.

[S4VV4S]

1P1easednix73qDimELQFPWwXg6NrDv3Yz
1GiveRqozxuYDhfSkyd71TvGehoZVw4tQd
1hintKVc56csvsngEY1Qz1sgJeuspQC3o


LOL 

[micaman]

As anyone can send transactions to that address, we could end with some fake hints... i'm not saying this is the case.

[S4VV4S]

As anyone can send transactions to that address, we could end with some fake hints... i'm not saying this is the case.

It is a problem though.
That is why I asked the OP to confirm which transactions should we consider part of the game - coming from her.