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Save the Date by Google (savethedate.foo)
78 points by jdutoit on Jan 24, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 174 comments



Answer to last puzzle:

You can put the names of the countries into the spaces on the board and add/subtract from letter values appropriately.

This gives you:

L IN E

THEATRE

SHO RE

AM P H I

(Shoreline Amphitheatre)

5/17, 5/18, 5/19 are the dates of Google I/O, at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, CA.

EDIT: Haha, I guess we're faster than they expected or this leaked early, since completing it links you to https://events.google.com/io/ which just says "check back soon".


B E S U R E T O D R I N K Y O U R O V A L T I N E


Well, that was a brief burst of fun! Wish the final payoff was a bit flashier, but c'est la vie. Good work, all!


Agreed :)


> Shoreline Amphitheatre

That's really too bad. I've been going to Google IO for five years and that venue they moved to last year, Shoreline Amphitheatre, was a disaster.

They had insufficient room for all the talks. So I waited an hour for the first talk I wanted to attend, just to get kicked out of line due to the room reaching capacity. Then I gave up my next time slot to wait in line 1 time slot ahead of time for the third time slot, but once I got in they kicked me out saying I couldn't come in one time slot before, everyone is kicked out at the end of each.

Throw in a really bad set of key notes - the Android one did have some useful content for developers, but everything else, Allo, Duo, Google Assistant was just Google's marketing arm exploiting a captive audience to try to get future users and wasn't anything useful for me as a developer.

Add in a ton of VR talks all citing their special remote control, but they didn't give us one of them, so we all kept developing on our Gear VRs anyway. This was the first Google IO I'd been to with no development hardware.

At the end I asked for a refund since I had really gained nothing as a developer and just spent a long time waiting in lines and not getting any content and Google refused.

As far as I can tell, it is their intention to make it a music festival from now on and not developer focused. Going to something like AndDevCon would be much more valuable. It's too bad, really, because professional conferences like GDC make sure to poll users to find session interest ahead of time and make sure they plan capacity correctly. Google IO was just useless amateur hour co-opted by Google marketing to exploit some captive press and potential users of their new chat apps no one likes.


that was... anticlimactic, to say the least.


What did you expect from a very simple ARG called 'save the date'?


Anything except... sigh, I guess nevermind. I fell for it.


I'm more impressed that they actually created those numbers to be seen by satellites


They didn't. Go to the actual coordinates on Maps and they're not there.

It's Photoshop.


Actually look at the videos on the ending page. You can see that they actually did create them. There are people in some of the gifs.


Source for those interested - https://twitter.com/Firebase/status/823966937835192320


So what's the final lat/long to type into the site?


You type in "Shoreline Amphitheatre" instead of another lat/long


Final solution is not a lat/lng, just put in "Shoreline Amphitheatre".


"Shoreline Amphitheatre" is the answer.


Meh...


Boo.


Thailand, https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMNGiEkdfeZKK5uus5iOmt-...

Pic is called base64

(upvote this so we can start a new subthread)


Numbers on top half of board

  White     Black
  +10       -12
  + 8       - 7
  - 6       +15
  -11       - 2
  + 4       +19
            + 1
  --------------
  bottom half 
  +3        - 7
  +3        + 1
  +4        -19 
  +5        
  +7        
  +7        
  +5


You're overthinking it.

The number of spaces in each row matches the lengths of something you've seen.

Answer is posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13476200


ok, so what's the final set of coordinates then? searching that on google maps and putting the center point into savethedate.foo did not work.


They broke our expectations. I put in coordinates too, but it's just "Shoreline Amphitheatre".


Yeah I tried that too! It bucks the trend and just wants you to enter the name.


"you" are black (have been capturing white pieces)...what legal moves could have led to that position?


How dare you assume my ethnicity! /s


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICCF_numeric_notation

not all the way there but it uses decimals in move representation.


Shoreline Amphitheatre

"Answer to last puzzle:

You can put the names of the countries into the spaces on the board and add/subtract from letter values appropriately.

This gives you:

L IN E

THEATRE

SHO RE

AM P H I

(Shoreline Amphitheatre)

5/17, 5/18, 5/19 are the dates of Google I/O, at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, CA. :|"


Google IO on 5/18-20th, announced 1/12, launchDate in site JS is 2017-01-13T07:00:00-08


The description ("V2hlcmUgaGF2ZSB5b3UgYmVlbj8") translates to "Where have you been?"


Here are the numbers written out in text:

+10 ___ +08 -12 ___ -07 ___ ___ +15 -06 -02 -11 +19 +04 +01 ___

+03 -07 +03 ___ +04 +01 ___ ___ -19 +05 ___ +07 ___ +07 ___ +05

edit: copy and paste it into a fixed width text editor - the formatting is getting messed up here.


Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

More knowledge to you.

  +10 ___ +08 -12 ___ -07 ___ ___ +15 -06 -02 -11 +19 +04 +01 ___
  +03 -07 +03 ___ +04 +01 ___ ___ -19 +05 ___ +07 ___ +07 ___ +05


The account belongs to a J Polgar reference to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polgár


Conversion of the filename is "Where have you been?"


Collecting all the "places we've been" by named place, integer given to that place, and the lat/long solution

-28.092472, -52.419667; 5; brazil

51.3015, -3.0178; 17; england

52.1821, 20.9965; 18; poland

14.2981, 101.2189; 19; thailand


5, 17, 18, 19, numerically


Do the number of pawns correspond to the puzzle number?


do these somehow correspond to chess move notation?


Note the pawns on the left hand side of each color, maybe?

3.

7.

Maybe we add or subtract from 0 to get the numbers after the decimal?


Well, we've been to brazil, england, poland, and thailand so far?


place the 3 black pawns and 7 white pawns to add to the appropriate numbers?


My guess would be black/white corresponds to lat/long? (or vice versa)


Something to think about: chess notation is 1-8 and a-f., with a1 on the bottom left and h8 on the upper right.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Scholars...


If we use chess notation, could that give us a lat/long using the special instructions from the last puzzle?


or maybe position the white rooks and black rooks in their spots to remove those numbers from the board?


Like scrabble with the piece values? e.g. white rooks are -14 and 10?


Chess pieces sometimes have values assigned to them: Pawns: 1, knight/bishop: 3, rook: 5, queen: 9. Might help (?).


Since the numbers appear where the pieces usually are I think this makes sense.


Note the remaining pieces on the board.

Two pieces = '.' one piece is ','.

Each row contains a value to fill these blanks: _._ , _._


good spot. Maybe all the space between, is a space?


Where have you been? Black's in check so we must have just moved -- where from?


I'm not sure it's possible to get to this position in chess from the starting point.


V2hlcmUgaGF2ZSB5b3UgYmVlbj8 --> "Where have you been?"


$ echo V2hlcmUgaGF2ZSB5b3UgYmVlbj8 | base64 -d Where have you been?


File info decodes to: Where have you been?


something to note. 7 white pawns and 3 black pawns on the left.


so far : 5 - Brazil, 17 - England, 18 - Poland, 19 - Thailand


This JS instantiates a marker at these coordinates:

this.markers = [{ lat: -28.092472, lng: -52.419667 }];

which points to a field in southern Brazil. Anyone wanna go see what's there? :)

https://www.google.com/maps/place/28%C2%B005'32.9%22S+52%C2%...


Enter the lat/long as your first answer on savethedate.foo, it links to an unlisted youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N9K898TtWQ&feature=youtu.be...

Turn on closed captions and help me figure out the next step.


Magic I. See _ a beach, -yes. _ I explore daylight

working on it now


I think "you can always count on a good time at the beach" refers to actual counting.

And here's the transcript, with some numbers:

    0:00Magic
    0:03I.
    0:06See
    0:10_
    0:12a
    0:16beach,
    0:19-yes.
    0:21_
    0:25I
    0:28explore
    0:30daylight


I believe:

latitude: MagicI.See_abeach, longitude: -yes._Iexploredaylight

Not sure what the encoding is. I've tried the "letter to number" encryption which gives:

13 1 7 9 3 9.19 5 5 1 2 5 1 3 8, 25 5 19.9 5 24 16 12 15 18 5 4 1 25 12 9 7 8 20

Simply adding the numbers, grouped before + after decimal point leads to:

42.2920, -49.120

but this isn't the correct answer


its lat,lng with the . representing the decimal point


Count the characters in each word, _ means 0


That takes us to this[1] Google doc with this embedded video[2]

[1] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11uA9a5wgoY9w9vOyx3C7...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8uV0dCTKrE


The "Transmission" video is using TunesToTube.com.

It is a bunch of numbers being recited (though I don't know the significance of the static image):

"053 050 046 049 056 050 049 044 032 050 048 046 057 057 054 053" It then pauses and repeats for exactly 5 minutes.

Translated (by others in this thread), it turns into 52.1821, 20.9965, which brings you to the number 18, in Poland. It also links to this Google Drive folder titled "Latest Discoveries":

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B2BGioksxQiRc2hpTDJ1...

This has a few photos of statues of the Buddha and a couple of temples. I find the photo that looks corrupted the most interesting, as I think there is data hidden in there (similar to 4chan.js if you've ever heard of that).

The file names of the photos are shrine.jpg, statue.jpg, spire.jpg, pillar.jpg, and cave.jpg.


The owner is named G Marconi maybe after Guglielmo Marconi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guglielmo_Marconi


The doc with video gives us numbers:

053 050 046 049056050049044032050048046057057054053

These represent the ascii codepoints of the next lat/long.


I recognized that right away, and tried entering in the number, but it didn't seem to like it.

Edit: Had an extra number in it. Oops.


"52.1821, 20.9965"

points to poland (18 on the map)

hint url here is https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B2BGioksxQiRc2hpTDJ1...


51.3015, -3.0178


Ahh thanks. Any idea on the next one? :P

EDIT: Nevermind 3 should be easy for most HNers. Wrote that before I even saw it.


There is an hexadecimal block hidden in caves.jpg:

4e 75 6d 62 65 72 73 20 61 72 65 20 61 6d 61 7a 69 6e 67 2e 20 46 6f 6c 6c 6f 77 20 74 68 65 20 63 6f 75 6e 74 2e 0d 0a 0d 0a 0d 0a 20 20 56 20 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 0d 0a 3e 20 31 20 20 37 20 20 38 20 20 35 20 20 34 20 20 31 30 20 31 20 20 32 20 20 36 20 20 33 20 20 36 20 20 31 2e 20 39 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 34 2e 20 32 20 20 39 20 20 34 20 20 32 20 20 37 20 20 39 20 20 38 20 20 35 20 20 36 20 20 35 20 20 32 20 20 37 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 34 20 20 31 30 20 39 20 20 37 20 20 34 20 20 32 20 20 35 20 20 39 20 20 36 20 20 38 20 20 31 30 20 37 20 20 39 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 38 20 20 35 20 20 33 20 20 35 20 20 33 20 20 35 20 20 34 20 20 37 20 20 32 20 20 39 20 20 36 20 20 31 20 20 38 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 32 20 20 37 20 20 31 20 20 33 20 20 34 20 20 31 20 20 35 20 20 38 20 20 34 20 20 39 20 20 38 20 20 38 20 20 33 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 36 20 20 31 20 20 39 20 20 34 20 20 35 20 20 35 20 20 37 20 20 33 20 20 31 20 20 32 20 20 36 20 20 31 30 20 34 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 31 30 20 38 20 20 37 20 20 31 20 20 32 20 20 34 20 20 35 20 20 38 20 20 32 20 20 35 20 20 37 20 20 39 20 20 31 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 32 20 20 33 20 20 35 20 20 37 20 20 31 20 20 34 20 20 36 20 20 39 20 20 35 20 20 33 20 20 34 20 20 35 20 20 36 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 39 20 20 31 20 20 34 20 20 34 20 20 38 20 20 33 20 20 37 20 20 36 20 20 32 20 20 35 20 20 31 20 20 36 20 20 37 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 32 20 20 31 20 20 39 20 20 33 20 20 37 20 20 34 20 20 35 20 20 37 20 20 33 20 20 36 20 20 38 20 20 37 20 20 38 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 38 20 20 33 20 20 38 20 20 35 20 20 38 20 20 34 20 20 36 20 20 31 20 20 35 20 20 39 20 20 31 2c 20 31 30 20 36 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 36 20 20 33 20 20 35 20 20 37 20 20 37 20 20 31 20 20 31 30 20 34 20 20 38 20 20 36 20 20 33 20 20 35 20 20 39 20 3e 0d 0a 20 20 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 76 0d 0a

  Numbers are amazing. Follow the count.

    V -----------------------------------
  > 1  7  8  5  4  10 1  2  6  3  6  1. 9|
   |4. 2  9  4  2  7  9  8  5  6  5  2  7|
   |4  10 9  7  4  2  5  9  6  8  10 7  9|
   |8  5  3  5  3  5  4  7  2  9  6  1  8|
   |2  7  1  3  4  1  5  8  4  9  8  8  3|
   |6  1  9  4  5  5  7  3  1  2  6  10 4|
   |10 8  7  1  2  4  5  8  2  5  7  9  1|
   |2  3  5  7  1  4  6  9  5  3  4  5  6|
   |9  1  4  4  8  3  7  6  2  5  1  6  7|
   |2  1  9  3  7  4  5  7  3  6  8  7  8|
   |8  3  8  5  8  4  6  1  5  9  1, 10 6|
   |6  3  5  7  7  1  10 4  8  6  3  5  9 >
    ------------------------------------v


Here is better format:

  Numbers are amazing. Follow the count.

    V -----------------------------------
  > 1  7  8  5  4  10 1  2  6  3  6  1. 9|
   |4. 2  9  4  2  7  9  8  5  6  5  2  7|
   |4  10 9  7  4  2  5  9  6  8  10 7  9|
   |8  5  3  5  3  5  4  7  2  9  6  1  8|
   |2  7  1  3  4  1  5  8  4  9  8  8  3|
   |6  1  9  4  5  5  7  3  1  2  6  10 4|
   |10 8  7  1  2  4  5  8  2  5  7  9  1|
   |2  3  5  7  1  4  6  9  5  3  4  5  6|
   |9  1  4  4  8  3  7  6  2  5  1  6  7|
   |2  1  9  3  7  4  5  7  3  6  8  7  8|
   |8  3  8  5  8  4  6  1  5  9  1, 10 6|
   |6  3  5  7  7  1  10 4  8  6  3  5  9 >
    ------------------------------------v


14.2981, 101.2189

Start from top-left, move the number of spaces given by the number of your current square:

down right left down right right up down down right down

It's a maze; worked backwards from the numbers that have commas and points next to them.

Number: 19; Title: Thailand https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMNGiEkdfeZKK5uus5iOmt-...


Image name is base64 encoded: V2hlcmUgaGF2ZSB5b3UgYmVlbj8 = Where have you been?

So, maybe where the chess pieces have been moved from?


This has been bugging me for days...trying to figure out how you knew to go down, right, left, etc. I finally figured it out.

Start at the end. That's a 9. The only way that we could have landed on that 9 is either moving down or right. So, look at each number on that path and see which one would have got us there. There is an 8 that is 8 squares above 9, so that's the second last number. Now, how did we land on the 8? There is a 1 that is one square to the left, so the next number is 1. And so on.


It looks like the king on the white side is sitting dead on the side?


I cannot reply the sibling comments yet, but "where have you been?" could refer to where we were for the past 4 clues: 5 - Brazil, 17 - England, 18 - Poland, 19 - Thailand


V2hlcmUgaGF2ZSB5b3UgYmVlbj8

base64 decode "Where have you been?"


Damn I was going to bed before I found this. Now I need to solve it. Did anyone solve the chess board?

I feel the pawns on the left are somehow significant 4-3-2-1...


Can someone confirm what chess pieces are on the board? It looks like black has knight, rook, king and white has rook and queen?


How did you figure out the directions? (i.e. down, right, left...)


we should concentrate on the numbers in the board


Here's the caves.jpg fixed:

http://imgur.com/a/WBqiL


FBMD is found in metadata: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31120222/iptc-metadata-au...


Number maze. Move East and South. Possibly along the lines of 1, 2, 3... haven't quite solved the meaning of moving through the maze yet.


looks like a maze which shows you where to enter and leave. must not cross your own path, and the .s and , would work well in creating a geolocation


number paths wrap down and right...first move down and right 1 step, then down and right 2 steps...?


should we play the chess and use the moves as an entering point ?


All you need to do is sum up the numbers on each row/column. Horizontal will produce the latitude (except after the 1,), and vertical will produce the longitude.


I think for the chess game we have the play the game backwards.. I am trying to play the game forward, but not clear what is the delineation for the comma or period in the lat lon.. maybe black can put white into check?


Hint: it can't be a valid game since one of the kings has been removed. :-)


So you have 12 groups of numbers, two with decimals, one with a comma. Just need to figure out where to put them. :)


To those looking into FBMD: https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/726-Fa...


FBMD01 000a 9c0d0000 ec4f0000 55df0000 b5e80000 fcfa0000 5cb20100 13ef0200 69fc0200 3d110300 942b0300 b0ce0500

Is the converted meta data for facebook


Special instructions: FBMD01000a9c0d0000ec4f000055df0000b5e80000fcfa00005cb2010013ef020069fc02003d110300942b0300b0ce0500


it looks like a grid where you enter from the top left (>) and exit to the bottom right (>).


There are two numbers with dots after them as well as one with a comma. Any ideas?


Numbers up to the first decimal add up to 54, which feels navigationey...


Numbers after the comma add up to 90.


so the images have been uploaded to facebook ? I wonder why google do this


The page says 18?


the numbers when sum up should represent a location at the map


Here's 4: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B2BGioksxQiRc2hpTDJ1...

Looks like caves.jpg has something wrong with it, but I'm not sure what to do with it.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunung_Kawi


Interesting: the author of the image is "Pei Xiu"

Pei Xiu (224–271)... was a minister, geographer, and cartographer of the state of Cao Wei during the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pei_Xiu


Okay, for four open caves.jpg in Notepad. Inside is some hex:

4e 75 6d 62 65 72 73 20 61 72 65 20 61 6d 61 7a 69 6e 67 2e 20 46 6f 6c 6c 6f 77 20 74 68 65 20 63 6f 75 6e 74 2e 0d 0a 0d 0a 0d 0a 20 20 56 20 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 0d 0a 3e 20 31 20 20 37 20 20 38 20 20 35 20 20 34 20 20 31 30 20 31 20 20 32 20 20 36 20 20 33 20 20 36 20 20 31 2e 20 39 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 34 2e 20 32 20 20 39 20 20 34 20 20 32 20 20 37 20 20 39 20 20 38 20 20 35 20 20 36 20 20 35 20 20 32 20 20 37 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 34 20 20 31 30 20 39 20 20 37 20 20 34 20 20 32 20 20 35 20 20 39 20 20 36 20 20 38 20 20 31 30 20 37 20 20 39 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 38 20 20 35 20 20 33 20 20 35 20 20 33 20 20 35 20 20 34 20 20 37 20 20 32 20 20 39 20 20 36 20 20 31 20 20 38 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 32 20 20 37 20 20 31 20 20 33 20 20 34 20 20 31 20 20 35 20 20 38 20 20 34 20 20 39 20 20 38 20 20 38 20 20 33 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 36 20 20 31 20 20 39 20 20 34 20 20 35 20 20 35 20 20 37 20 20 33 20 20 31 20 20 32 20 20 36 20 20 31 30 20 34 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 31 30 20 38 20 20 37 20 20 31 20 20 32 20 20 34 20 20 35 20 20 38 20 20 32 20 20 35 20 20 37 20 20 39 20 20 31 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 32 20 20 33 20 20 35 20 20 37 20 20 31 20 20 34 20 20 36 20 20 39 20 20 35 20 20 33 20 20 34 20 20 35 20 20 36 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 39 20 20 31 20 20 34 20 20 34 20 20 38 20 20 33 20 20 37 20 20 36 20 20 32 20 20 35 20 20 31 20 20 36 20 20 37 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 32 20 20 31 20 20 39 20 20 33 20 20 37 20 20 34 20 20 35 20 20 37 20 20 33 20 20 36 20 20 38 20 20 37 20 20 38 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 38 20 20 33 20 20 38 20 20 35 20 20 38 20 20 34 20 20 36 20 20 31 20 20 35 20 20 39 20 20 31 2c 20 31 30 20 36 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 36 20 20 33 20 20 35 20 20 37 20 20 37 20 20 31 20 20 31 30 20 34 20 20 38 20 20 36 20 20 33 20 20 35 20 20 39 20 3e 0d 0a 20 20 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 76 0d 0a

Convert it to a string and you get:

??Numbers are amazing. Follow the count.

  V -----------------------------------
> 1 7 8 5 4 10 1 2 6 3 6 1. 9|

|4. 2 9 4 2 7 9 8 5 6 5 2 7|

|4 10 9 7 4 2 5 9 6 8 10 7 9|

|8 5 3 5 3 5 4 7 2 9 6 1 8|

|2 7 1 3 4 1 5 8 4 9 8 8 3|

|6 1 9 4 5 5 7 3 1 2 6 10 4|

|10 8 7 1 2 4 5 8 2 5 7 9 1|

|2 3 5 7 1 4 6 9 5 3 4 5 6|

|9 1 4 4 8 3 7 6 2 5 1 6 7|

|2 1 9 3 7 4 5 7 3 6 8 7 8|

|8 3 8 5 8 4 6 1 5 9 1, 10 6|

|6 3 5 7 7 1 10 4 8 6 3 5 9 >

  ------------------------------------v


14.2981, 101.2189 Start from top: down right left down right right up down down right down It's a maze; worked backwards from the numbers that have commas and points next to them. Number: 19; Title: Thailand https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B2BGioksxQiRc2hpTDJ1...


its not showing the best here but > and < are pointing into #1 in top left and away from 9 bottom right maybe a clue?

Pei Xiu outlined six principles that should be observed when creating a map. He then defended his position and each of the six principles with a short explanation as to how they provide better accuracy in map-making and cartography. The first three principles outlined the use of scale (fan lu), direction (zhunwang), and road distance (daoli), while the last three principles are used to properly calculate distances on uneven terrain as represented on a flat, two dimensional map


ah interesting...like a maze! if we get a count from somewhere, we hop that many steps, and you end up at the exit at the bottom right.


Ascii 7 bit encoding - 52.1821, 20.9965


Using this thread to say that the page names may mean something, but I didn't notice initially.

5 -

17 -

18 - Poland


5 - Brazil 17 - England 18 - Poland


should we count the numbers or something ?


Is the caves.jpg broken for everyone?


the caves has instructions in the metadata FBMD01000a9c0d0000ec4f000055df0000b5e80000fcfa00005cb2010013ef020069fc02003d110300942b0300b0ce0500


Facebook metadata?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31120222/iptc-metadata-au...


It shows a 17 on the page. Just a note.


So far: 5 - Brazil, 17 - England, 18 - Poland


caves.jpg is broken for me too. I'm on mobile - has anyone checked the JPG metadata?


Yep


checked out caves.jpg with a hex editor, i'm thinking the next clue is embedded in the jpeg, which is causing the corruption


yes the image is broken


51.3015,-3.0178


What's the red thing in the upper-left?


I was thinking maybe it was part of a chip bag. Then you could run that fancy subpixel-motion sound extraction algorithm on it pretty easily (fitting with "See What Cannot Be Heard").

But the timecodes are probably a more likely thing...


Looks like a Maoam wrapper (type of sweet)


Same boat. My head hurts. Red Herring: there are 5 punctuations in the sentence


Possibly related to the big '5' that appears on the savethedate.foo site after entering the latlong?

If you take out the other text, we're left with "._,-.-". Removing the comma leaves us with 5 characters "._-.-" Morse code?


From the description:

>You can always count on a good time at the beach...


Video appears to be at least 50% speed :)


The image is did not produce anything on google image search.

magic I. See_abeach,-yes.-I explore daylight


There is muffled audio at the end of the video. What is it from? That's a clue.


It sounds like the surf to me.


The crop circle after the first clue also shows us a number: '5'


That might not be a clue. It's 5 puzzles, so maybe it's just counting down 5,4,3,2,1.

EDIT: Haha, oops, nevermind.


There's a road on the right hand side - you can see cars driving by.


Google Developers watermark pops up at 0:20 in the video.


That's not part of the video itself though, it's just the usual branding watermark shown by YouTube. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6147757?hl=en

It probably appears in all videos on the Google Developer channel.


What format do you input?


Is there a specific way you inputed the latitude and longitude?


MagicI.See_abeach,-yes._Iexploredaylight

we need to convert these to numbers to get the lat/lon of this location.


13 1 7 9 3 9.19 5 5 1 2 5 1 3 8, 25 5 19.9 5 24 16 12 15 18 5 4 1 25 12 9 7 8 20


any idea why "-28.092472,-52.419667" would not work? does it need special formatting, or is my firefox incompatible?

EDIT: thanks, the adblocker was the issue.


same issue on chrome, so not a firefox thing. I think we're missing something


it could be your adblock whatever plugin you use to disable trackers


that was it! thanks!


As requested: answer to puzzle 4 (I think):

14.2981, 101.2189

Start from top-left, move the number of spaces given by the number of your current square:

down right left down right right up down down right down

It's a maze; worked backwards from the numbers that have commas and points next to them.

Number: 19; Title: Thailand https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMNGiEkdfeZKK5uus5iOmt-...


Sheesh I'm dense, I think I need an animated GIF of how you're moving through the maze. I can see 1-4.-2 but then do you keep moving right a second time, two spaces, to that 9? And then you move... nine spaces to... where?


I explained it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13476158


Nine spaces down, I believe

1-down

4-right

2-left

9-down

8-right

etc


How did you work out the movement sequences?


If you start at the bottom-right you can count either up or left. Going 8 places up lands on an 8 (this is the only square where delta from bottom right = number in the square) which means that square was the previous one.

Rinse and repeat.


Deduction at it's finest - thanks!


You work from the key stops (decimal and comma), then go backwards to the only steps that can get you to these stops.


I'll draw it out when we finish up the game :) - what the guys above me said (process of elimination)


Well that was underwhelming. http://i.imgur.com/XiKIoBZ.png


I am not really sure what this is.

The first thing that popped in my mind was the contest from the book Ready Player One


The "Go" tile links to a GitHub user with a single repo named "trailhead": https://github.com/kzuse201?tab=repositories Whatever it is, it seems like it's happening right now...


From the js file:

this.secret = `http://${num}.foo/`;

Wish I had time to play.


This reminds me of another puzzle which requires being able to afford to travel to specific geographical locations (Cicada 3301). I really hope this isn't how Google intends to find new employees.


I had no idea foo was a tld


I believe it is owned / controlled by Google, along with many other interesting TLDs https://www.registry.google/


Seems Google have grabbed most of the land: http://bar.foo


They announced this as part of their Google Domains launch at I/O 2014.


gTLDs : for when you need to conjure up a new namespace to sell to people.


> 5 puzzles. Each gets more difficult.

> 5 clues. Take notes. Each puzzle is gone after it's solved.

> 5 places. Think numbers.

> Enter all answers at savethedate.foo.

> You must know where you've been to get where you're going.

Oooo, this sounds like fun.


Who doesn't love a nice scavenger hunt


File name for #5 is base64. Converting the filename from base 64 gives you "Where have you been?"


It doesn't seem to work on firefox.


@jdutoit, where did you find this?


Twitter, the Firebase team tweeted it out https://twitter.com/Firebase/status/823966937835192320


Chess image. if you download it it's called base64.jpg




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