Frog Fractions 2/Indiecade2016box

Main Page > List of Investigations > Frog Fractions 2 > Indiecade2016box This is a page describing the box obtained from the Indiecade 2016 event

Solving the puzzle

The numbers on the lid of the box seen with UV light read:

9730098228905583
269874686586084998
81637310991215244

175564364133957374
51648068005811729
13136598424620810

However, inside the box, there is a "ha ha, that was a ruse" message with the corrected first line. The mistake could have been done deliberately or accidentally, but it any case, after this correction the numbers read:

97300982289905583
269874686586084998
81637310991215244

175564364133957374
51648068005811729
13136598424620810

The Yes/No on one side of the box suggests binary. Turning each of these numbers into their binary representation and padding with zeroes to get the same lengths makes them strings of 58 bits (this was also hinted by an anonymous — presumably one of the PMs — came to the FF2 Discord and posted several times that bits mean 0/1 and LVIII bits):

0101011001101011101011101001010101101011111011011110101111
1110111110110010011001100011111011110101010101111010000110
0100100010000010001011001110101010000011001010101010001100

1001101111101110101101101111100111011010111111111011111110
0010110111011111011010010011101010110100100101011000010001
0000101110101010111010101010101010101010000000111100001010

The do you see on the other side of the box suggests Braille. Taking those bits in 2x3 blocks and decoding them from Braille gives:

WITHSHAPELYBUTTSTHEYDONTPLAYF
AIRYQOQRZPSOMQLSPTOKFDDYVCDMO

Or, in one line: with shapely butts they don't play fair yqoqrzpsomqlsptokfddyvcdmo

This suggests using the Playfair cipher for the unreadable string. The password to it turned out to be callipygian — that's the adjective that means to have a nicely shaped butt. The result of the decryption (note that with playfair j=i):

GOTOTWITTERATISTHEIIGUPYET

Or in other words, we should go to Twitter at IsTheJigUpYet

Speculation

The skulls and the El Dia de los Muertos Maze game might be references to the Sombra ARG and Eye Sigil ARG that were actively solved by Game Detectives at the time. Thus, russian letters for cardinal directions on the skulls might have been a clue to how to rotate the maze-looking map on the letter soup in the Eye Sigil ARG that turned out to be part of the FF2 ARG. The actual solution had the map rotated 90° clockwise and the "compass" of the skulls is kinda rotated clockwise in the box too.

Images and Descriptions

Item	Image
Initial appearance of plain box via twitch stream
Box being weighed, 65.6 grams
Box being measured in cm
Box opened
A close up shot of the bottom of the open box
Sand found in the bottom of the box was sifted through
The sand buried an item at the bottom
The bottom of the box cleared of sand
A closeup of the maze found at the bottom of the box
The maze was taken apart but nothing was inside
The bottom of the baby bottle pop
The tape removed from the inner lid of the box
On No 6, UV writing was discovered. Here is the top of the UV box. With the following numbers: 9730098228905583 269874686586084998 81637310991215244 175564364133957374 51648068005811729 13136598424620810
One width side of the box with Cyrillic that translates to "See"
The opposite width side of the box with Cyrillic that translates to "Yes/No"
Skull marked with the letter Ю was in the upper left corner
Skull marked with the letter C was in the lower right corner
Skull marked with the letter З was in the upper right corner
Skull marked with the letter B was in the lower left corner
Underside of box picture 1 Thought to say "zagmar knows what you are doing and we don't want your help"
Underside of box picture 2
Underside of box picture 3
Underside of box picture 4
Inner lid of box picture 1 The first line says "Ха ха ха! Вас разыграли!", which means "Ha ha ha! You got played!" The second line almost matches the first line of the numbers on the lid, 9730098228905583, but contains an extra 9 as 97300982289905583. The third line says "мы умираем со смеху", which means "We are dying from laughter"
Inner lid of box picture 2
Inner lid of box picture 3