Keys

The following are keys for the Countdown page.

Summary

Key	Puzzle	Resulting URL
wh0isl0ki	9x9 letter grid	http://vanishingpointgame.com/biography/
iw4nttwinyou	phone number	http://vanishingpointgame.com/antepenultimate/
3scap3grav1ty	20x20 letter grid	http://vanishingpointgame.com/zenith/
imm0rtaliz3m3	audio file	http://vanishingpointgame.com/FILE/
wh3r3t0g0	HTML code	http://vanishingpointgame.com/CIRCUMAMBULATION/

wh0isl0ki

Method of discovery: Somebody named "lokivanishes" posted<ref>http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=523893&st=75&p=588161174&#entry588161174</ref> a hint in a forum at neowin. The content of that hint is this:

Well, I don't normally do this, but since you guys were first on the scene, here's a cypher key for you. Impressive job!

More to come....but not delivered like this. Keep your eyes on the Post.

Good luck!

~L

Taking the highlighted letters (from Vanishing_Point2.jpg on the IE Blog) and shifting them gives the key.

Result:

N < R > C     I < C > O     R > D < J
^   v   ^     ^   v   v     ^   ^   ^
Q > B < L     J < N > B     I > O < S
v   ^   v     ^   v   v     v   ^   ^
B > U > S     Z > E > P     G > B > I


J > Y < D     E < M < R     D > N < B
v   ^   v     ^   v   ^     v   ^   v
Z < O < C     Y > J < N     S < R > A
^   ^   ^     v   v   v     ^   v   v
U > R < G     R < A < U     N > I > I


P < B < N     D < O > Y     S < Y > P
^   ^   v     ^   ^   ^     ^   v   v
U < J > S     H < I > H     A < O > Y
^   ^   ^     v   v   v     v   v   ^
R > D > C     U > R < S     M < I < J

Ymgve at Unfiction posted<ref>http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=290762#290762</ref>:

I partially solved the Sudoku puzzle, and got the first letters. I got the idea from earlier in this thread, about the arrows being greater than/less than signs. If you completely remove the letters, and only contentrate on the greater than/lesser than, it's possible to recreate the Sudoku puzzle. When you've done that, you use the numbers in the lower right to "map" it to the puzzle.

To explain better, this is my sudoku grid after some a few tries:

592 487 613
817 563 924
643 921 875
           
428 156 739
135 749 286
769 238 541
           
256 374 198
371 895 462
984 612 357

Now, take the number in the lower right, which was 142966259 - out of the grid, I got b_og_____, and as I looked at the upper right corner, I realized that "biography" matched and had letters in all the correct sections.

http://vanishingpointgame.com/biography/

Note: By 'take the number in the lower right... out of the grid', Yngve meant that for each of the 3x3 squares of the Sudoku, write down the letter that is represented by the number correspondingly indexed in '142966259'. The first 3x3 box (the upper left) has a '1' in the middle, which the original puzzle labels 'B'. The second box (to the right) has an 'I' where the '4' is, and so forth. They spell out BIOGRAPHY. Thanks to KonaMouse for explaining this. --Vraal

And this gives us:

THE SET-UP

I was always smart. That was my first mistake.

My parents gave me everything: books, puzzles, games, tutors and tests. They quit their jobs and put me on game shows.

So I learned Chinese and English and Latin and Greek. I learned that music was a kind of astronomy and that pure light was infinite but invisible.

I figured out on my own that:

Which brought me to:

and the fact that small secrets govern the universe, and we approach them by vanishing. Most of all I learned to escape.

Vanishing Act

Once I realized I didn’t have to give the right answer, even when I knew it, life got easier. Without prize money to pay tutors, I got to return to regular school. I could learn what I liked, instead of what other people told me to.

My parents went back to work.

I learned the trick of sliding by: did just well enough to get into an exclusive college and then kept my head down, graduating with a GPA of exactly 3.1415. That’s harder to do than you might think.

One of my professors didn’t buy my vanishing act. He called a friend in a certain large corporation. Now I have the job of giving stuff away to the smartest people on the planet.

When the countdown hits zero, we’ll find out if you’re one of them.

iw4nttwinyou

Method of discovery: A poster at a Halo site received a mysterious Puzzle Box Package containing a grid<ref>http://halowars.heavengames.com/key</ref>:

12/23/2006: Earlier today I received a package from Microsoft containing a puzzle box, which after figuring out the puzzle and opening it, contained a small 256MB USB Key. The Key contained a video, a letter, and a cipher key, which I have attached below ... the key seems to be related to the image on the Internet Explorer blog. Anyone figure it out?

Result:

Check your sources to find

THe STaNDaRD

800-736-9085

And in the source code (PIN=5813):

Calling the number and entering 5813 as the PIN: http://vanishingpointwiki.com/w/images/7/72/Phonecall.mp3

Calling the number and entering 35813(?) as the PIN: http://vanishingpointwiki.com/w/images/c/c6/Callwithpin.mp3

"Good job! Now go to the anti-penultimate directory." This leads to here: http://vanishingpointgame.com/antepenultimate/

Getting to this page means you're paying attention. Keep it up when the countdown hits zero and you could win high-end laptops, gaming computers, media centers, software, gaming consoles, media players, and games

3scap3grav1ty

Method of discovery: Another key was posted at neowin based on the first post from lokivanishes (that was later removed and changed for the key above).

Result:

It looks like this is a nonogram/griddler/picross puzzle. Solving it reveals a maze. Solving the maze gives some text. "it was cearly over his head the monk who screwed up the transliteration samt ar-ras"<ref>http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=290748#290748</ref>

Konamouse on Unfiction points out<ref>http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=290749#290749</ref>:

Googling samt ar_ras leads to a few interesting pieces of information.

Quote:
zenith
1387, from O.Fr. cenith (Fr. zénith), from M.L. cenit, senit, bungled scribal transliteration of Arabic samt "road, path," abbreviation of samt ar-ras, lit. "the way over the head." Letter -m- misread as -ni-. The M.L. word may as well be influenced by the rough agreement of the Arabic term with classical L. semita "sidetrack, side path" (notion of "thing going off to the side"), from se- "apart" + *mi-ta-, suffixed zero-grade form of PIE base *mei- "to change" (see mutable).

Quote:
samt ar-ras = [Arab] the way of the head

The zenith is the point in the sky that is straight above your head. The altitude of the zenith is 90°. The opposite point is the nadir, and the horizon is midway between the two.

This leads to the URL: http://vanishingpointgame.com/zenith/ , giving:

The vanishing point is the boundary between Something and Everything; between What Is and What Can Be. Fewer than a thousand people have ever been there to see the ultimate vista. The grand prize winner will be one of them.

The race for that destiny will begin when the countdown hits zero.

imm0rtaliz3m3

Method of discovery: Doug Stockwell from neowin performed rot 13 on the entire ciphertext. He then stared at it and noticed "mmortalize" in the middle row, and put it all together.<ref>http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=523893&view=findpost&p=588167738</ref>

Result: http://vanishingpointgame.com/assets/sound.mp3 (mirrored here: File:1234.mp3)

Ehsan at Unfiction discovered<ref>http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=290920#290920</ref> that a graphical mapping of the tones in the image shows that the tones form the word "FILE."

This led to http://vanishingpointgame.com/FILE:

Here’s a riddle for you:

At the end of our journey together, I will be discovered—and I will disappear.

One person will find me at my vanishing point. I will make that person famous in a way the world has not seen before. Their name will be repeated as many times as there are stars in—

No. Let’s be more precise. That name will be repeated as many times as there are grains of sand on a beach. That’s my promise.

Your chance to be that person will start when the countdown hits zero.

In the text, my is italicized. There is a parked Go Daddy site http://www.myvanishingpoint.com/ which may or may not be in-game.

wh3r3t0g0

Method of discovery: Laughing Squid received a Puzzle Box Package containing the following key:

Entering wh3r3t0g0 returns the following HTML fragment:

...which, loaded in a browser looks like:

█▀▀ ▀█▀ █▀█ █▀▀ █░█ █████ █▀█ █████  █▀█ █░█ █░░ █▀█ ▀█▀ ▀█▀  ███ ███ 
█      ░█░ ██▀ █  ░ █░█ █░█░█ █▀█ █░█░█ █▀█ █░█ █░░ █▀█ ░█░ ░█░ █░█ █░█ 
▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀░▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀░▀░▀ ▀  ▀ ▀░▀░▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀  ▀▀▀ ▀░▀ ░▀░ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀░▀ 

...spelling out CIRCUMAMBULATION. (Note: I don't see the text aligned correctly past the third or fourth letter in either Firefox or Safari, but I can sort of see it's there. -Brian)

...leading to http://vanishingpointgame.com/CIRCUMAMBULATION/

...leading to a bunch of countdown timers:

Las Vegas, Nevada

Monday, 8 January 2007, 6:30:00 pm

Los Angeles, California
Saturday, 13 January 2007, 9:08:00 am

Sydney, Austrailia
Miami, Florida
Austin, Texas
Saturday, 13 January 2007, 1:00:00 pm

Phoenix, Arizona
Saturday, 13 January 2007, 1:02:00 pm

Singpore
20 January 2007, 4:30:00 am

Berlin, Germany
Saturday, 20 January 2007, 10:00:00 am

London, England
20 January 2007, 11:00:00 am

Toronto, Canada
20 January 2007, 4:00:00 pm

San Francisco, California
20 January 2007, 7:00:00 pm

Seattle, Washington
Saturday, 27 January 2007, 6:00:00 pm

References

<references/>