Entropy

Entropy ARG
Active since 2018-2-11
Entropy - an ARG revolving around a series of mysterious YouTube videos.
Type	[[List_of_Investigations#Unofficial|Unofficial]]
Creator	Unknown
Discovered	2018-2-11

Main Page > List of Investigations > Entropy

On February 2018, a series of videos depicting cryptic monitors and symbols were found on a YouTube channel named 'RW50cm9weQ'. This page documents the efforts made to decipher the videos and uncover the mysteries behind the channel.

Entropy Begins

Shortly after the discovery of the channel, users quickly found that the channel name, RW50cm9weQ, was base64 translating to Entropy.

The channel consisted of two playlists named |||||||||| and -||||- respectively.

"||||||||||"

The playlist titled |||||||||| contained 10 videos depicting a monitor showcasing a series of symbols. All the videos in the playlist lasted exactly 1 minute and 22 seconds and possessed a similar structure.

 00:00 - 00:08 - Monitor boots up.
 00:08 - 00:13 - Initial symbol (thumbnail) is shown.
 00:13 - 00:18 - A low-quality image is displayed.
 00:18 - 01:03 - A sequence of 15 additional symbols is shown.
 01:03 - 01:07 - Monitor fully lights up.
 01:07 - 01:12 - Channel logo displayed.
 01:12 - 01:22 - Monitor shuts down.

Note: The tenth video in |||||||||| contains 16 additional symbols instead of 15.

The ten videos give us a total of 10 initial (thumbnail) symbols and 151 additional characters. The thumbnail symbols are speculated to be a base 10 number system, and the additional characters part of an elaborate alphabet.

• 

  Note: This chart is for lookup purposes only and should not be used as a translation tool.

"-||||-"

The playlist titled -||||- contained 4 videos lasting around 30 seconds. The video shows the same monitor found in the previous playlist, displaying the channel logo followed by various combinations of the known symbols from ||||||||||. The last video accompanied its strings with background images, possibly hinting towards the meanings behind the strings.

"| _____| _"

In February 14, an additional video went up under the name | _____| _. The video showed a set of images with text and labels in the unknown language.

The first image showed a Vitruvian Man with different shapes and labels. The following items were present:

1.) A Cartesian coordinate system with x, y and z axes.	
2.) An expanded version of the numeral system found in the first playlist.
3.) Cardinal directions.
4.) A circle with a single dot, presumed to represent a hydrogen atom.

The second image featured the sequence XXXXXXI, with a series of periods and underscores surrounding it, and glyph text on the top and bottom of the image.

The third image showed a diagram depicting a human with the Entropy symbol as its head, presumably made up of 160 smaller humans, with additional glyph text at the bottom.

The fourth image features what can be interpreted as a projectile exiting a wormhole, directed towards a planet. This is also accompanied by glyph labels.

The fifth image shows a Gmail logo and glyph text with a portion underlined.

Glyph Translation

Upon further inspection, it was noted that the XXXXXXI sequence found on the second image of | _____| _ had exactly 26 "ends", which coincides with the number of letters in the English alphabet. Once lined up with every letter from the English alphabet, the sequence was discovered to be the key for a substitution cipher, where every letter was substituted by the one of the opposite "end".

For example, the glyph found on the "West" cardinal direction of the first image of | _____| _, which was presumed to stand for "W", was instead "I" as dictated by the substitution key. Similarly, the glyph inside the hydrogen model, which was presumed to be "H", turned out to be "T". Using this method, most of the glyphs on the first image were solved.

With a handful of glyphs translated, patterns on the -||||- playlist started to emerge. First, ends of certain glyph words were identified as "-ing" verb endings, and eventually, words and entire sentences were completely translated.

• 

  This is the table used by solvers to assemble the translations.

CODE:INIT

After acquiring a complete translation of all the glyphs in | _____| _ and -||||- (see Resources), it was deduced that players were expected to send an e-mail to a specific address.

Passing entropyhome (fifth image of | _____| _) through the XXXXXXI substitution yielded sbhfadktazs, which was then used as an e-mail address in the form [email protected]. Players sent emails mentioning CODE:INIT in the body, as was also suggested by the fifth image in | _____| _, and quickly got an image with glyph text as a response. The image translated to CODE RECEIVED PLEASE WAIT.

Resources

Translated transcript for | _____| _ video: https://pastebin.com/8nbNbdfa

Translated Transcript for -||||- playlist: https://pastebin.com/y6mE1h39

This page will be updated as the ARG progresses.