The trail for this ARG starts off from the above image. We can see an eth address ( https://enjinx.io/eth/address/0x72ca453e1f784fdb5711927d2a957c33204b8182/transactions ), which contained 2k ENJ, 5 Age of Rust MFTs, an Ununpentium token and 0.06 Eth in order to be able to claim everything else. On the lower right side we can see 13 lines, each containing a riddle which uncovers a seed word, or, for the 13th line, the seed password.
There is also a steg message on the lamp post which is A1Z26 code for “MAXIMUM PC NOVEMBER 2001” which is the next part of the trail. This is an issue of the Maximum PC magazine which can be found online (https://archive.org/details/Maximum_PC_November_2001).
Now on the original image there’s a huge 71 written so let’s see what’s on page 71:
On page 71 there’s a few different ads, and in order to get find the trail you needed to know that the puzzle maker’s name is Chris LoVerme. And we can see the website www.lovermecases.com . The magazine is dated 2001 so that website likely doesn’t exist anymore… or does it?
A quick whois on that website domain answers this quickly enough:
Registered yesterday so it has to be correct! Now, heading to that website we’re greeted by a site-wide password. As a minor piece of trivia, I had spent 15 minutes guessing various passwords until my dad walked in, saw the puzzle image, and told me to try “71” as password, which is the right one.
So TL;DR: www.lovermecases.com ; password: 71
The seed words
Feel free to browse the website to your leisure, but since the words aren’t scattered in many places with no progression between them, I’ll just write the solutions for the words in the order that they appear in the seed:
Word 1 : scissors
This word was obtainable directly from the puzzle image, there are a pair of scissors on the left of 71 and the hint is “sharp-edged tool”
Word 2 : drum
The hint provided, “7H69PInL-DA” is part of a youtube link for some film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H69PInL-DA . Also, for confirmation, a drum is on the right of 71 in the puzzle image.
Word 3 : pause
For this word you gotta head on to https://www.lovermecases.com/our-impact-mojave and the word is hidden under the “Our Creepypasta” creepy pasta text. It’s a fun little read, and while reading you may notice that some words have letters delimited by periods -> com.p.uter , .a.sked , Nat.u.rally , .s.hattered , m.e. . They spell out “pause” and the tie-in to the 3rd word is the hint “..”
Word 4 : lumber
The 2nd member of https://www.lovermecases.com/our-team holds the answer here, but the solve is a bit convoluted. Mainly because you have to start from the puzzle hint for word 4: “former cat”, and watch the video link posted there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fhh4OYS8zIA . At some point the narrator mentions “Sweetwater, the former cat”. Now take the ciphertext that’s below the link on the website, “ dqqfxk” and vigenere decode it with “sweetwater” as key, and you get “lumber”.
Word 5 : wheat
The puzzle hint for this is “2012” and there’s an image labeled 2012 on the page https://www.lovermecases.com/our-impact-mojave which is of wheat.
Word 6 : arch
Similar to the previous word, the hint is “2016” and there’s an image labeled 2016 right below the 2012 image, of a natural arch.
Word 7 : hidden
For this we’re looking at the 3rd member of https://www.lovermecases.com/our-team . All the members have their names written out with letters but also with Braille. The 3rd name isn’t written in Braille, but instead the text is ⠓⠊⠙⠙⠑⠝ — “hidden”. The place in the order is given by the puzzle text, “can’t see you”.
Word 8 : ticket
This word was the only one except for the first 2 that could be solved from just the puzzle text:
Word 9 : diet
Finally we’re looking at the first member of the team, https://www.lovermecases.com/our-team , namely Alma Peterson (AP). Her description contains the text
“The following text is placeholder known as “lorem ipsum,” which is scrambled Latin: wkh zrug lv glhw”
If you take that ciphertext from above and use Caesar Cipher on it, you get “the word is diet”. The puzzle clue “AP likes this salad” refers to a Caesar Salad (yum).
Word 10 : advice
The 10th word can be obtained from a clue on the main website page, https://www.lovermecases.com/ . Under the label TEN there’s an image (which is not relevant) and the text
EYVR / PKOSOY / :051 / OTNWOHEMS / XXIIV / poedEis
These are all anagrams, and while initially I thought they referred to a tv show (because the last word is Episode), the correct anagram for all of it is:
150: VERY SPOOKY HOMETOWNS XXVII
That’s the name of a youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eN4t6ebOcw) and the puzzle text is “20:44–20:45” so if see what happens at those 2 seconds in the video, the narrator says only 2 possible bip39 words: “advice” and “spirits” (but bip39 contains the singular “spirit”).
Word 11 : sound
The 11th word is presented in the form of an audio message which is at the bottom of all the pages on the website, labeled “Doom and Gloom”. The message is simply:
“You’re listening to it. Spooky isn’t it? Am I alive? No. Listen to this and you know the word.”
To be honest, I couldn’t get this word, I was stuck on “message”, but in the end I bruteforced it. *shrug*
Word 12 : gown
The puzzle hint for this is “It’s private”. It took me a while to figure out what that was relating to, but in the end I was sure it had to hint at the https://www.lovermecases.com/privacy-policy page. The only out of place thing on this page was an image. A reverse google search of that image gives “gown” as the first few hits, so that seemed to make sense.
The Password : ARG halloween puzzle
Finally, we needed to find a password. The puzzle hint for this said “3 parts”. We can find these 3 parts on the website at various places:
One part is right at the bottom of all the pages on the website:
8030b66bed2b0279fb88d36bb1555170f9f1c7d939eba2670e9fff6d24516c69c2b424186137e3e9dfb2509ffec285ac023573595c2f43c7bfefe925d1770e13b73a5052d4db4955f0487db2c315f1c28a7bc537be5efe8a2c52e2eff4d4a62c3b8591ec62a7744af15ca110803480eb9918a6aa6de423aac8f6ad7002365121939
One part is on the page https://www.lovermecases.com/our-impact-mojave towards the end, over the last image:
8026979cf33f19c85f41347ded61f75315a68d9d7c1981d007896021340770ecbfa7fe8f6e486d5a965e8f0a07e4f72b88f6b783d8987f1b4b8dcdd826e8ebdd6da50e161a47ae8351f77bcfc40479565385baac144809f7594ad450b397630c078d0e48c227ae0369f844875370cfa20405dd48f0713c203de95787cb0fa74d72a
And one part is on the https://www.lovermecases.com/donate page:
801621f71e141bb1a4c9e7165c34a623ec574a4445f223b709169f4c10561c857d13da970f7f8eb349ecdf95f92672878ac3c4da84b73cdcf46224fdf79fe5ceda9f5e44ce9ce7d6a1bf067d07118894d9fe7f9baa16f77d750830ef4183c2803ba898f4a780d8499e44e3c7d51448399bed7d229b55199af39ff8f7cd49f34ce52
Initially, I thought you’d have to use Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme for these 3 parts, but that didn’t work so in the end I did the 2nd best thing: XOR.
XOR’ing all 3 gives us
800000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000010065006c007a007a007500700020006e006500650077006f006c006c006100680020004700520041
and it’s easy to see there’s a bit of ASCII text in there. It turns out the text is “elzzup neewollah GRA” in Unicode, so if we just reverse that we get “ARG halloween puzzle”, the actual password.
Solution TL;DR
Seed:
scissors drum pause lumber wheat arch hidden ticket diet advice sound gown
Password:
ARG halloween puzzle
Derivation:
m/44'/60'/0'/0/0
Acknowledgements
Big thanks for this very fun and fast paced (well, it was!) puzzle/ARG by Chris LoVerme, former custom PC cases maker and currently lead developer of the upcoming (now in Pre-Alpha) blockchain game Age of Rust. For more stuff made by him, and the main Age of Rust discord, join this server: https://discord.gg/TVmeAa
For some other great and active puzzle-filled communities, check out:
ARG Solving Station: https://discord.gg/uYAXsww
Crypto_puzzles: https://discord.gg/bSn85h5
Neon District: https://discord.gg/RB7pKHz
