Leading up to the April 2nd Obsidian finale weekend, Verum Inveniri made a G+ post with a link to the Wargames section of VI’s website. This site had 11 links with their releases staggered.
Remember, all the codes for this series eventually solve to the format xxxxxxxx#keyword#. This is a typical format for passcodes distributing volatile intel around anomalies.
Tic Tac Toe
Link
Observations
A Peanuts character would likely find the hidden order.
Solution
Looking at the two pictures, we see a 3×3 and a 2×2 tic-tac-toe board. These resemble a
pigpen cipher, which is sometimes called a Tic-Tac-Toe cipher. Zoom into the images, we see the numbers from 0 to 9 and a to f. Some numbers have dots beside them. Use the position (and dot) to determine the letter; use the number to determine the order.
0. 1. 2 3. 4. 5 6 7. 8. 9. A. B C D E F.
K Y T P P H U P N I L E A D F O
KYTPPHUP9LEAD4
Connect Four
Link
Observations
What is in a name? Only the winning moves.
Solution
A
Connect Four board is 7×6. Note all three picture file names are 42 characters long:
SPmCbsh7gsluif9ItGqYQeVHNDRhudvnpGZHuVycKP
3iGXgP0Jo1QiAHBbRrkA47AiOojhWNDlkJiLjDFQvh
IrwVOSkdiUboQl3kHA0s96UpWHpVe9ExvWzSNVnO9C
Arrange the filenames into a 7×6 grid. Highlighting the winning moves.
SPmCbsh
7gsluif
9ItGqYQ
eVHNDRh
udvnpGZ
HuVycKP
3iGXgP0
Jo1QiAH
BbRrkA4
7AiOojh
WNDlkJi
LjDFQvh
IrwVOSk
diUboQl
3kHA0s9
6UpWHpV
e9ExvWz
SNVnO9C
Concatenate by reading only the highlighted letters top to bottom, left to right:
YRGKBADF3kHA0s9
Correct the keyword spelling:
YRGKBADF3CHAOS9
Scrabble
Link
Observations
After eliminating the obvious, whatever remains, however invisible, must be the answer.
Solution
In Scrabble, each letter appears a set number of times in the bag and has a point value denoted in the bottom right of each tile.
For the English-language editions of Scrabble they are:
1 point: E ×12, A ×9, I ×9, O ×8, R ×6, N ×6, T ×6, L ×4, S ×4 U ×4
2 points: D ×4, G ×3
3 points: B ×2, C ×2, M ×2, P ×2
4 points: F ×2, H ×2, V ×2, W ×2, Y ×2
5 points: K ×1
8 points: J ×1, X ×1
10 points: Q ×1, Z ×1
If we take out the tiles that are on the board, we are left with the following pieces:
A B B C D E F H J L M N O T U V
There are 16 missing letters and 16 tiles across the top of the picture.
Figuring out which tile is which by only the bottom requires some guesswork, but you will eventually get:
TNVOJUBHCBEDLAMF
Converting c and f to numbers by their alphabet positions comes up invalid, so take their tile values for:
TNVOJUBH3BEDLAM4
Thermonuclear War
Link
Observations
Machines can feel stacks of numbers.
Solution
A quick google image search will find the original image. We see that the yellow lights have been changed.
Write them down in two rectangles of 8×4 dots.
78688876 57678865
97632915 37584355
Knowing the format used for volatile media (xxxxxxxx#keyword#), we can see that the number spaces are different. We expect numbers in decimal to be in the 48-57 range. The digit right after the split looks like a braille 5 (5), and the one below it like a braille 3 (3). So, they’re stacked braille numbers, and just lack the extra top row of spaces that normal Braille characters have.
78688876 57678865
97632915 37584355
Reading the stacks down:
79 87 66 83 82 89 71 65 53 77 65 78 84 82 65 55
Convert from decimal to ASCII:
OWBSRYGA5MANTRA7
Gomoku
Link
Observations
White and black are the only possible values.
Solution
Taking white as 0 and black as 1, read horizontally skipping the spaces:
01101101011101100110010001110011011000010111000101101011011110000011100101100100011010010110011001100110011010010110001101110101011011000111010000111001
Binary to ASCII:
mvdsaqkx9difficult9
Checkers
Link
Observations
Symmetry (n.): It adds up.
Solution
Take the number values added to the image:
20 1 11 5
14 15 21 20
6 15 18 1
19 16 9 14
43 60 66 66
79 59 58 48
64 46 55 57
77 58 89 65
Take the first 16 numbers, and convert to letters via Alphabet Index:
TAKENOUTFORASPIN.
From that, let’s rotate the bottom half of the numbers 180 degrees:
65 89 58 77
57 55 46 64
48 58 59 79
66 66 60 43
Notice that if you do that with the image (rotate the bottom half 180 degrees), the blocks with and without checkers line up perfectly on both sides, pointing to the hint of Symmetry (n.): It adds up.
Using the hint further, add each number pair together in the two sections.
E.g. first half first number is 20, second half first number is 65. Added up it is 85.
85 90 69 82 71 70 67 84 54 73 77 80 85 82 69 57
Decimal to ASCII:
UZERGFCT6IMPURE9
Go
Link
Observations
Order of play is important.
Solution
Note that the board looks unusually similar to the final result of the first game of Lee Sedol vs AlphaGo. The description further confirms this:
The final board position of the first game, an unexpected victory for AlphaGo, is shown below.
Let’s try and manipulate the image with free image editing tools. Go to Adjustments > Curves and select the Red channel. Drag the line to the top left, select the Green channel, and drag that line to the bottom right. Now we can see several letters.
Use the play order of that game to get an order for the letters, using only the plays with letters and splitting between black moves and white moves.
An interactive play order can be found here at the bottom of the blog post.
Black: foxtrotoscaruniformsierrafoxtrotdeltaquebeczulu
White: threegolfromeoalfavictorindiatangoyankeeeight
Convert from the NATO alphabet to letters and numbers:
fousfdqz3gravity8
Reversi
Link
Observations
Stop Dithering, by Vera Invernine
Solution
In the image along the top, there are pixels of white, black, and blue. Part way through this is a section that does not follow the pattern.
The top row is black and every other column is blue, so they can be removed.
Now, every other row is white and can be removed. What we are left with is a 7×19 grid of blue and black.
If we assume each column is a character, we can read the columns vertically with black becoming 0 and blue becoming 1.
1001110 1010110 1000010 1001110 1011000 1000001 1010110 1011010 0111001 1000001 1001100 1001001 1000111 1001110 1001101 1000101 1001110 1010100 0110111
Add a 0 onto the front, and convert from binary to ASCII:
NVBNXAVZ9ALIGNMENT7
Jeopardy!
Link
Observations
Highlights will question the answer.
Solution
QUITE WEST OF HOUSTON, THE GENTLE HOME OF THE CHINATI FOUNDATION IS THIS TOWN IN TEXAS
What is Marfa?
So, now that we have a keyword, for the letters and numbers apply a filter to differentiate between #FFFFFF and #F9F9F9:
And, take the slightly darker letters:
QWHGMEFEFOUSIX
FOU becomes 4 and SIX becomes 6. Insert the keyword:
QWHGMEFE4marfa6
Chess
Link
Observations
Hexed by pieces of the name?
Solution
The filename of the picture is
chess-bbrbnkbbnnkrbnbbbnbnpbpknrnbpkbpnbnkbbpbbknbk.jpg.
The phrase bbrbnkbbnnkrbnbbbnbnpbpknrnbpkbpnbnkbbpbbknbk groups well into threes. We only see 5 different letters (bknpr). Base 5 doesn’t give anything meaningful, but note that the characters represent chess pieces. Add the missing piece (queen) to the index, sorted by chess piece value (pbnrqk). Base 6 decode.
bbr bnk bbn nkr bnb bbn bnp bpk nrn bpk bpn bnk bbp bbk nbk
223 215 221 153 212 221 210 205 131 205 201 215 220 225 125
87 83 85 69 80 85 78 77 55 77 73 83 84 89 53
Convert from decimal to ASCII:
WSUEPUNM7MISTY5
Brute Force
Link
Observations
That which is valid is constant; much is old, but new is there four finding.
Solution
Note that upon refresh the list changes. Only the valid codes remain constant.
Full solution list. Most of these codes did not contain volatile media, however it is impossible at this time to determine which.
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