Frog Fractions 2/Timeline

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The following is a rough timeline attempting to explain the overall chronological course of events without delving too far into the details of each occurance.

Legend:

JC - Jim Crawford
RS - Rachel Sala
JB - Justin Bortnick
THD - An episode of Train Hot Dog, Jim's weekly podcast.
RPP - Red Pages Podcast, Justin's infrequent podcast
FF2 - Frog Fractions 2 

Clues that are considered open are labeled #Unsolved

Twinbread Era - March 2014 to April 2014

On March 10, 2014, the Kickstarter campaign for Frog Fractions 2 launched. The pitch video for the campaign contained several cryptic clues. These clues first led people to twinbread.com[1] and eventually the discovery [2] of the Obama Shaving Simulator Flash game. Completion of the game provided the following message:

If you want to see PUBLIC_FIGURE alive again, bring the money to 37.871764,-122.265303 at 2014-04-05, 3PM local time.[3]

The coordinates led to the UC Berkeley campus, where several people met on April 5, 2014 with Jim Crawford, who was kidnapped/arrested by time travelers for crimes related to Frog Fractions.See video. While being dragged away, Jim dropped a bag on the ground containing 10 floppy disks. The disks contained a password protected archive of this video recreation of each scene/level from the original Frog Fractions.

11 Mar 2014 – Kickstarter Launch. Contains Kickstarter Video, leading to twinbread.com .

12 Mar 2014 – Recipe on Twinbread.com is entered in Frog Fractions. Leads to Obama Shaving Simulator.

13 Mar 2014 – Obama shaving simulator leads to fake tweet, advising of UC Berkeley Event

14 Mar 2014 – Stuff on twinbread.com leads to castlevania_passacaglia_of_disrepair.rom #Rickroll

05 Apr 2014 – UC Berkeley Meet. Acquired Floppy Disks containing Bug Porn and stinky.arj

11 Nov 2014 – stinky.arj is cracked, unlocking Live Action Frog Fractions

Dormant Period - May 2014 to May 2015

Aside from the floppy disks being solved that lead to a dead end video, the ARG laid dormant for nearly an entire year, with no new clues found or discoveries made.

Train Hot Dog Era May 2015 to October 2015

In this era, majority of clues are found on the Train Hot Dog podcast and the Red Pages Podcast. The only active time-travel.club pages were not fully operational. In September, The Ashby Brewery and Indie Game Studio Fall 2015 Quarterly Brewsletter is posted on Kickstarter and renewed interest in the ARG among backers begins.

28 May 2015 – THD 1: Dorf on Golf - The first episode of Jim Crawford's weekly podcast, Train Hot Dog, in which he (usually) talks to himself on a train.

25 Jun 2015 – THD 7: Keyboard Kato. Red Pages Podcast Extrasode 3: Chatting with Jim Crawford is posted.

16 Jul 2015 – THD 10: Steam Hot Dog - Borg King of Spades visible in spectrum.

30 Jul 2015 – THD 12: Stay On Your Toast - Encoded Message leads to time-travel.club.

06 Aug 2015 – THD 13: Butt Folk - Spectrogram contains gadsby/password123.

13 Aug 2015 – THD 14: Discharge - Contains a Ridermail from Tunisia discussing time travel.

04 Sep 2015 – THD 17: Kitten Gains - Youtube image shows 'Decay Truth' upside down. Missing from YouTube playlist.

24 Sep 2015 – The Ashby Brewery and Indie Game Studio Fall 2015 Quarterly Brewsletter posted on Kickstarter. Leads to decaytruth.info. Admin page found. #Unsolved

30 Sep 2015 – IP Hashes in decaytruth.info decoded, giving the characters 12bzayx. #Unsolved

01 Oct 2015 – THD 21: Shark Lips - Contains slowed-down speech that is found to be a line from Myst mentioning 'Red Pages'.

07 Oct 2015 – THD 22: Ashen Stools - Braile in spectrogram contains the GPS coordinates for Indiecade. The Red Pages Podcasts Episode 55: Frog Fractions 2 is a Yacht and Extrasode 3: Chatting with Jim Crawford are investigated. The line 'And Herbie screamed' is noted.

10 Oct 2015 – Upon further investigation, an image of a borgified painting by Gustav Klimt (suspected to be the borg queen) and binary reading "dispatch 1" is found encoded in the Red Pages Podcast.

10 Oct 2015 – first tweet of the IsTheJigUpYet twitter

11 Oct 2015 – The Red Pages Podcast tweet a borgified King of Spades, and a message from Herbie that "you have the pieces".

Time-travel.club/accesslevelbeta Era October 2015 to February 2016

This era contains 2 meetup events resulting in amiibos (Indiecade and Museum of Jurassic Technology) as well as a smaller event that obtains quartz. Progress was mostly felt by new logins on the website and through information obtained in those events.

13 Oct 2015 – JB tweets Mario Maker level containing PWD:SCREAMED - password for Herbie login on time-travel.club. Contains Requisitions and Operations lists.

26 Oct 2015 – Indiecade 2015. A Luigi Amiibo is aquired directly from JC and JB at the event.

25 Nov 2015 – THD 29: Bumper Sandwich Booger Lips - Leads to slow scan television image. #Unsolved or #Joke

15 Dec 2015 – Polygon posts an article summarising the ARG to date.

16 Dec 2015 – An ad for Bug Mars tourism with the Bug Bros. Travel Agency is posted in the comments of the Polygon article, including a phone number. People call said phone number.

06 Jan 2016 – People who previously called the Bug Bros. Travel Agency receive callbacks advising them of the password "caravanserai". This is found to be valid for the username samuel on time-travel.club. Login contains a list of 'available operatives', which updates daily.

07 Jan 2016 – Typo in the "more" broken link under Scientific Projects on Samuel login is fixed after being noticed on Unfiction.

?? Jan 2016 – Operatives Parker and Arthur disappear from operatives list until late May. Dwayne disappears and is yet to return. Exact date is unknown.

?? Jan 2016 – User Quaxo's appendix is removed. #FF2CausesAppendicitis

14 Jan 2016 – bobobobobobob tweets a borgified horse (suspected knight) at JB.

15 Jan 2016 – The Luigi Amiibo is accessed. It contains a scene from The Legend of Zelda and the address of a pastebin image, leading to the Gustav email account. RS tweets an image of a borg rook.

16 Jan 2016 – Email regarding upcoming delivery of good sent to Gustav email account from Samuel. Dwayne owes Samuel a rematch.

17 Jan 2016 – Email received in Gustav account advising of a delivery of goods to a Amazon locker in Cerrito, El Cerrito Plaza on January 20th.

18 Jan 2016 – JB tweets about Chess.

20 Jan 2016 – Goods from Amazon locker are retrieved. They are a bag of Quartz Healing Crystals. #Unsolved

24 Jan 2016 – The Eye Sigil ARG is discovered (with the earliest discovered sigil being planted on 03 Oct 2014) and GameDetectives dive into solving it. Although some people mention FF2 even on the first day, no official connection is made to it. One of the Game Detectives asks JC about sigils having to do with FF2, recieves a vague negative reply that doesn't state "no" unambigiously, but is interpreted that way.

27 Jan 2016 – THD 37: Top Ten Citrus Fruits - MP3 contains Thumbnail for Museum of Jurassic Technology (MJT)

04 Feb 2016 – THD 38: Odonym - Missing on trainhotdog.cool. Only available on youtube.com

09 Feb 2016 – Red Pages Podcast leads to date and time for MJT Meet

16 Feb 2016 – Map of location of MJT meet emailed to Gustav account. Case codes 042 492 added to the Gustav email account, as a note marked 'contingency'. Case codes origins are unknown.

18 Feb 2016 – MJT meet. Aquire Mario Amiibo. Contains link to imgur album containing Propaganda Posters. #Unsolved

19 Feb 2016 – RS reposts the Propaganda Posters on her Tumblr. These copies contain additional metadata. #Unsolved

Post Posters Era Feb 2016 to July 2016

While some new logins were acquired during this time period, not much was made of them and no events took place. Justin printed a new business card but it had to be sent in by a good Samaritan. Mostly, the ARG was plagued with questions about the posters and the quartz with little newness to it.

26 Feb 2016 – Anonymous user adds vasquez/jurassic to FF2 Mind Map, vandalizes it. Number 3 wants a sandwich.

?? Mar 2016 – User Irregular Programming's appendix is removed. #FF2CausesAppendicitis

10 Mar 2016 – THD 43: Desolate Clovis - JC talks about DST.

14-18 Mar 2016 – Game Developers's Conference - RS hands out FF2 stickers, JB hands out business cards with history of time travel and clemens/tundra login.

22 Mar 2016 – clemens/tundra login becomes active on time-travel.club. Message from No.3 - Content coming soon message. Deliver report to No.4.

26 Mar 2016 – RS tweets photshopped FF2/Mass Effect 2 screen for Screenshot Saturday

07 Apr 2016 – THD 46: Poison Oak Place - Audio glitches surrounding JC screaming OAK!. #Unsolved

08 Apr 2016 – clemens/tundra login updates on time-travel.club. Contains dead link to email client.

09 Apr 2016 – RS tweets photshopped FF2/Halo (5?) screen for Screenshot Saturday

16 Apr 2016 – The Frog Fractions Facebook page posts photshopped FF2/Dark Souls screen for Screenshot Saturday

23 Apr 2016 – The Frog Fractions Facebook page posts photshopped FF2/Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time screen for Screenshot Saturday

Playscape: Los Angeles Podcast (PSLA) 8: RS is guest. Sound anomalies. #Unsolved

13 May 2016 – New location - Badger Kennels is added to the operatives list on time-travel.club.

15 May 2016 – Party lounge opens(FINALLY!) under Number Six's login. Message hidden in source code.

16 May 2016 – Justin Streams him playing "Spooky" Games. Ends with him flashing a business card from Insomniac Games. https://www.riking.org/webm/LordHuffnPuff%20 May 201616%2014_08-21357932960.mp4

15 May 2016 – 27-May - Agents Arthur and Parker Return to the operative list on timetravel.club.

04 Jun 2016 – RS tweets photshopped FF2/Doom screen for Screenshot Saturday

07 Jun 2016 – JB tweets that he will be at E3 with new business cards. #Unsolved

29 Jun 2016 – Broken link to email client on Clemens login changes from /getanettefunicellohohohohoho.html to /getannettefunicellohohohohoho.html, after discussion about the typo in the Discord.

Age of Decay July 2016 to November 2016

This period begins with new lore on a corrupted new login and seems to have provided a lot of information and possible hints in this time. Notably, Justin's streaming activity seems to have been more frequent and time-travel.club/client.html was made available and a good deal of twitter activity from official accounts happened.

JB Retweets a tweet about Raffi song Joshua Giraffe, which mentions Frogs Size 12 and getting Annette Funicello. Joshua/Giraffe is found to be a login for time-travel.club. The login contains a corrupted library of books about Zagmar.

Additional books are added to the Zagmar library, and random typos that had been discussed in the discord chat are fixed.

JB streams himself playing Boktai II, which is the source of the book titles it the Zagmar library.

JB draws attention to the book 'Eggs as Usual Breakfast etc.', published in 1979 by American-French writer Nidra Poller. #Unsolved

07 Jul 2016 – The ID3 tags for Red Pages Podcast E77 contains the message "The password is behind your eye".

@RESIST_DECAY is noticed. It appears to the the official twitter of time-travel.club.

30 Jul 2016 – JB live streams, apparently from 1901. He reads a newspaper about Annie Taylor going over Niagra Falls in a barrel. #Unsolved

10 Aug 2016 – THD 63: The One Where Jim Doesn't Talk - Train Hot Dog is instead hosted by Justin. He reads out facts from 1901. Some are inaccurate.

13 Aug 2016 – @RESIST_DECAY taken over by Pontiff Zagmar. time-travel.club/accesslevelbeta.php changed from login page to white screen with only the plaintext "help". Zagmar posts picture of Jim Crawford, saying that the prisoner has offered to join their cause in exchange for freedom.

15 Aug 2016 – @RESIST_DECAY reclaimed by the Resistance. Says that the intruders are receiving assistance from prisoner JC101-B, and to contain and eliminate them if necessary. accesslevelbeta returns to prior login page. A patron contributor for the Red Pages podcast receives a note in the mail, with some eyes on the front, and the message "The eyes have you" on the back.

16 Aug 2016 – A terminal becomes active under Number Six's login on Time-travel.club. The login details are found to be Number Six and "theeyeshaveyou". Typing dir provides console commands, including an email client. 2 emails are available, discussing the recent incursion by Pontiff Zagmar.

17 Aug 2016 – Several Easter Eggs are found in the http://time-travel.club/client.html terminal.

27 Aug 2016 – New emails arrive on the terminal and the gustav email discussing suits, Justin streams and drinks a ginger beer (recipe made in 1901) he claims is from his friends at Ashby Brewery ad Indie Games Studio, https://twitter.com/AshbyBrewery becomes active after questioned. Gustav email implies he has terminal access #Unsolved x 2

28 Aug 2016 – Terminal receives a Sombra Skull after discussion of the game detectives in the FF2 discord #Joke

18 Sep 2016 – Justin streams and discusses a mystery box, hints heavily that someone should attend Indiecade 2016.

27 Sep 2016 – The communities of GameDetectives and people solving the ARG are joined together with links to each other discord servers, info being filled in on the GD wiki (the one you're reading right now) and a permanent #arg-frog-fractions-2 channel in GD. Since then the ARG generally has more and more people working on solving it.

28 Sep 2016 – Kickstarter Update #12 for backers only: Jim asked people who had pledged at the level to be included as a character to make sure he had their picture.

11 Oct 2016 – Soupertasters Youtube channel was originally created at this date and the videos uploaded, so they were produced about this time.

12 Oct 2016 – Justin streams again and tells people to go to Indiecade

15 Oct 2016 – The box is claimed at Indiecade 2016

24 Oct 2016 – Box finds its way to the community, it's opened and contents are uploaded online

03 Nov 2016 – IsTheJigUpYet twitter starts to make typos in the tweets.

04-05 Nov 2016 – Youtube channels From Russia With Love and Denizens of Bug Mars wer created on these dates. First Bug Denizens video is uploaded on 7th.

06 Nov 2016 – Box is put under UV light and UV Writing is discovered

07 Nov 2016 – Justin writes a message in Cyrillic on his stream

Souper Sigil Era November 2016 to The End?

This era begins with the Jig Is Up stream and features Jim's Soupertasters as well as the merging with the Eye Sigil ARG

09 Nov 2016 – Firewatch updated on PC with the Free-Roam mode, starting the trail that will eventually lead to the Eye Sigil ARG conclusion.

10 Nov 2016 – Justin tweets that the Jig Is Up and hosts a twitch stream to "answer questions". Later comes to the FF2 Discord and says he hasn't streamed since Oct 8

13 Nov 2016 – Justin streams with time travel shenanigans again.

15 Nov 2016 – the Letter Soup is solved in the Eye Sigil ARG leading to the Number One login and to the Soupertasters videos, the Sigil Master contacts the journalists at Waypoint that cover the ARG in press; Justin streams, titled "a confluence of universes", and flashes the Eye Sigil at the end

16 Nov 2016 – more correspondence from the Sigil Master Lorakis, both revealing him being a character from FF2 lore and proving his identity as the one who "planted" the sigils.

18 Nov 2016 – the cipher on the box is solved (binary, braille and playfair ciphers), points to IsTheJigUpYet twitter account. This account was noticed before, but not deemed official until now – it posts automaded "is somthing FF2?", "No" tweets daily at same times. Typos from the tweets of this twitter are written down, recognized as base64 and decoded into "hackeE hac" at this point.

18-19 Nov 2016 – Within a day of solving the box, the next tweet in it contains a link (encoded with a simple ROT cipher) to the From Russia With Love youtube channel and the silent film about russian cilantro-loving time travellers that want to bring the decay and glue Ashby Beer labels to the bottles. Multiple clues found: the channel description has a trail of clues that end in a joke, the Denizens of Bug Mars youtube channel is discovered by being featured in the video. That channel has few videos, including a great song Bugs Eat Bread and some still images with no sound and interesting description. The videos are gradually added to the channel since then.

19 Nov 2016 – Resistance members adminbrown1 and sci_hen have a conversation in Twitch Chat of JB's stream.

20 Nov 2016 – second song (Dirge: Decay) is posted in the youtube with some clicks that are not deciphered at this point yet. The description of the videos will be updated several times until we notice the clicks and solve them.

22 Nov 2016 – JB streams with time shenanigans (the video jumps to prerecorded sections from different times) and reads a mad-sounding rants that turn out to be from some prose.

23 Nov 2016 – The list of coordinates from the description of the russians' channel is analised again and the old solution turns out to be a red herring. The discovered solution has a "Your Jim is in danger" text and leads to a datamoshed image of Zagmar with some ominous text in the file.

24 Nov 2016 – The third music track is uploaded to Youtube. This time the description contains a link (encoded with a simple ROT cipher) to a pastebin with a Befunge program – the PMs congratulating us with Thanksgiving. Soon after the solution @RESIST_DECAY tweets about the success of the operation.

25 Nov 2016 – clicks from Dirge:Decay are decoded. They are a binary stread that reads "We are beyond help, but your timeline's Jim is not safe. Save him. Save him."

27 Nov 2016 – Fourth music track is uploaed to Youtube. Sofia, the Space Traveling Argentine Horned Frog. The description initially contained no lyrics, but the transcription made in discord is later added there and credited. Also, all the musicians for the four songs are now credited properly in the videos' descriptions. Some theories are postulated about DS/LaS numbers from the descriptions and they are monitored much closer since then.

29 Nov 2016 – the first video with undamaged artifact number is uploaded on the bugs youtube channel. The number is quickly recognized to be a call number for an entomological book.

02 Dec 2016 – after five videos with various books call numbers, an unusual "Closed for repairs" video is uploaded. It contains a puzzle that when solved points to the youtuber RockLeeSmile. He uploaded a video at the same time that contains slowed background sound of "boxing: a history" and two barely visible coordinates at different moments of the video. Those coordinates point to a library in at a branch of the University of Tennessee that has all those books on the same shelf.

03 Dec 2016 – the IsTheJigUpYet typos produce "EBARD2N" as extra letters on top of repeating "hacked" string. #Unsolved

03 Dec 2016 – our agent goes to the library and all those books contain identical strips of sparkly cardboard with a code on them – which links to the pastebin titled "A note forever voyaging". It's a message from a time traveller that is seeking our help and gives an email address to contact and to use the password associated with the indicade 2016 box. When contacted, he responds with french messages.

04 Dec 2016 – IsTheJigUpYet tweets a soundcloud link (encoded with Vigenere, using letters from Ashby website as a key). The puzzle behind the track is solved to be a time and location for a real-life event: 10 Dec 2016, at the location from the Ashby website (Berkely Bowl grocery store). The soundcloud belongs to user "Castor Griffon" (anagram for Frog Fractions 2) and there's also a "Castor Griffon II" found.

05 Dec 2016 – IsTheJigUpYet speeds up with the typos, "releasing" the last of them for the data that we had on 3rd. This seems to be the last day of the typos.

06 Dec 2016 – fifth music track – Spider Base 3 – uploaded to youtube. Contains a small puzzle the answer to which is "Gemini and Janus salute you" – an official greeting from people that allegedly joined the ARG development in October 2016 (and another one: Monsieur le Baroni in November 2016, this is edited in by someone called SooperDogBowWow to the old FF2 wikia)

06-07 Dec 2016 – jiggy withit a.k.a. TimeTraveler0451 starts to respond a lot to the emails people sent to them.

08 Dec 2016 – festival of yellowrumps a.k.a. jiggy withit a.k.a. TimeTraveler0451 sends a mass-email to everyone that provided the correct password about "moving forward".

09 Dec 2016 – festival of yellowrumps sends a mass-email with a "sacre.png" image. It's decoded from several layers of ciphers to point to the "60minutesto" twitter and to say the password "french butts". That is a room escape games facility in Portland, OR (that has some ties to the ARG too) and they invite sets up a free run for us through a modification of one of their special room escapes – the one that has a lot of obvious references to FF2 arg judging from description. The people that can go there arrange to do this run on 12 Dec 2016 19:00 PST.

10 Dec 2016 – festival of yellowrumps sends another mass-email in regards to Portland (calling it The Land of Portals). There are no puzzles in the message, but a warning to destroy the artifacts that we will retrieve there.

10 Dec 2016 – The Berkley Bowl event happens – people meet Beeman there that passed on two bricks of beeswax and a bucket. The bucket contains a link to a puzzle on imgur and a physical printing of that puzzle with extra stuff amongst other things.

11 Dec 2016 – we completely solve the "ashbylimited" puzzle from the Berkely Bowl / Ashby event (solving 42 crossword-like clues, connect the dots to make places names, look up timezones and their names, and semaphore flag code). It points to a specific book (Slithy toves by Sally Haines) in the library in the Marian Koshland Bioscience & Natural Resources Library (University of California, Berkeley)

12 Dec 2016 – People attended the room escape game. The group helps a double agent escape from a Russia-like country and receive a key attached to a frog keychain as well as a piece of paper with Number One's "elmourouj" password on it

12 Dec 2016 – Marian Koshland Library is visited and inside we find a letter from Ashby, a time traveller and creator of Asby Brewery. The letter also contains a code that leads to the Google Drive folder with 3D models.

14 Dec 2016 – Probably late, but Denizens of Bug Mars Facebook page discovered. Found a code there from 19 Nov 2016 post, solved all ciphers in it to get a trail that ends in shimmering Sparkles.

15 Dec 2016 — Unboxing Story discovered.

16 Dec 2016 — Unboxing Story solved for the secret video; Randomiser, who did it, sent his physical address as the NA co-conspirator.

19 Dec 2016 — FF2 Launch Box arrived to the specified address! It's a box with a big red button with a sticker saying "Launch FF2" and a key slot. We've sent the key from the room escape to its location too.

23 Dec 2016 — The key was supposed to arrive and we were going to stream pressing the button, before Randomiser is off to the real-life Christmas obligations. Alas, USPS didn't hold us up.

24-25 Dec 2016 — The key arrives. Randomiser has a bit of time to dedicate to the thing, so by our request he records the video instead of waiting for longer for a possible stream. The key and button make the box say "Launch Sequence Initiated". Soon after that Jim tweets "Merry Christmas", a congratulatory video is added to a quasi-russian youtube channel and an update is made on the Denizens of Bug Mars Facebook page, saying "What you want already exists and it's just a question of finding it, somewhere out there!".

26 Dec 2016 — The game was found, but Jim asked to spread it with word of mouth for now!

26 Dec 2016 - Several gaming news outlets revealed the game and interviews with Jim on Waypoint and Giant Bomb suggest the ARG is at an end

Watch Radio Era March 2017 to DLC?

30 Mar 2017 - An update to GMG added a Watch Radio message

01 Apr 2017 - Second Watch Radio message found, Resistance twitter is active again (April Fools?)

03 Apr 2017 - Third Watch Radio message found

09 Apr 2017 - Fourth Watch Radio message found