MystIQue 2.0 Demystified : Answers and Explanations

Mystique 2.0
Online Treasure Hunt (Part of Bitotsav 2013)
No. of levels: 21
Date started : March 9th, 2013 ; 1900 hours.

To play click here or go to http://mystique.bitotsav.in .

After a grand run in the year of its inception, the online treasure hunt of the annual fest Bitotsav; Mystique was back. A total of 54 colleges participated from all across the country. After nearly 30 hours of continuous 'treasure hunting', we had our winner in 'Utsav Giri' from BIT, Mesra followed very closely by 'Shaurya Shahi'. Efforts put in by 'Vishal Singh' also deserves cognizance.
The hunt was hot from the word go and remained so until the very end. In the final moments there were as many as 17 hunters in the final level and it seemed any of them could have walked away with the 'treasure'. Cheers to their passion. The same goes out to the other 500 hunters who were in the fray and made this quest a memorable one.


Following are the answers and explanations to all the 21 levels which made up the hunt.
(The game is still available at http://mystique.bitotsav.in . Hints are mentioned here along with the question. For additional hints given in course of the game visit http://mystique.bitotsav.in/forum/ .)

Visit http://mystique.bitotsav.in/forum/discussion/2/rules#Item_1 for detailed rules of the game.
General Hint: The first letter of the answers of level 1 to 8 spell the word m-y-s-t-i-q-u-e.

Note: All answers are to be given in small letters and without using spaces.

*****   

                                      
LEVEL 1

How many ways can you hit the spot ?

Hints: me(page-url)

Answer: misteeq

Explanation: Simply googling the given lines would tell you that it is from the song 'scandulous' by a band called 'Mis-teeq'. The hint 'me' points towards the game being played i.e. Mystique itself.

***

LEVEL 2

Hints: grey crowned babbler (page source)
Answer: yahoo
Explanation: The given pictures spell out the full form of yahoo i.e. 'Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle'. Grey crowned babbler is a bird also known as yahoo.
***

LEVEL 3

Hints: ice, fire (page source)

Answer: stark

Explanation: The images represent the dialogue by IronMan ~ Tony STARK from the movie The Avengers : "engineer, playboy, billionaire, genius........."

The hint points toward the tv series 'A Game of Thrones' based on the book 'A Song of ICE and FIRE'. One of the central charaters in it are the STARKS of Winterfell.

***

LEVEL 4

Hints: 1. zlin (page source)   2. the man (page url)

Answer: tomasbata

Explanation: The pictures point to different brands of BATA shoes ~ Power, North Star, Safari and Ambassador. Tomas Bata was 'the man' from 'Zlin' in Czech Republic who started the Bata Shoe Company.

***

LEVEL 5

Think of the shore,
The answer is number 4.

Hints: <none>

Answer: ivorycoast

Explanation: The pictures numbered 1,2 and 3 depict three items, namely 'gold' (Uncle Scrooge digging gold), 'pepper' (Pepper Potts, Ironman's squeeze) and 'slavery' (what would Lincoln be saying no to?). Here shore implies 'coast'. In colonial Africa gold, pepper slaves and ivory were the priciple exports and had various coasts named after them. Hence the answer i.e. no. 4 is Ivory Coast.

***

LEVEL 6

Hints: <none>

Answer: quibbler

Explanation: The flag code used above is Semaphore. The translation would give two words : i) GBF and ii) SINBAD. Googling would easily lead one to Evanna Lynch who is known to have played the role of Luna Lovegood in Harry Potter series of movies. Since the answer has to be from Q, one can relate it to 'Quibbler', a magazine associated to Luna Lovegood in the story.

***

LEVEL 7

a) 13-5-14-15-20-2-15-20-19
b) 18-5-4-12-9-16-22-9-18-5

Hints: punisher (page source)

Answer: undertaker

Explanation: This is a simple number-letter substitution. ( A=1. B=2....and so on.) The two words thus found would be i) menotbots which is an anagram of tombstone and ii) redlipvire which is an anagram of piledriver. The two word together form the famous finishing move of WWE wrestler Undertaker.

***

LEVEL 8

Hints: feanor (page source)

Answer: erebor

Explanation: The given text is in the elvish language 'Tengwar' found in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Feanor is known to have developed the Tengwar script. The given text translates to the following message:

"Found here was arkenstone,

Before being lost and gone."

The reference to 'arkenstone' can be found in the movie 'The Hobbit'. It was found in the Lonely Mountain which is known as Erebor.

***

LEVEL 9

Lose the burger in hamburger.
Let the gummer be without gum.
The word that you seek now -
Is nothing but simply the sum!

Next word is a thing that
Edward would not survive.
Usually 42 is the answer,
But this once its 42 + 5.

Final word is a person
who physically found -
How Andre, Carl and Michael
were together bound!

Now use the three words,
To find your final clue.
Go cross the road.
Do what you must do!

Hints: <none>
Answer: abbeyroad
Explanation: Each of the first three paras refer to a unique word.
The first para points to the word HAMMER (ham : hamburger without burger and mer: gummer without gum. Their sum, ham + mer = hammer).
The second para to the word SILVER (Edward Cullen from Twilight series is a vampire and vampires cannot survive silver <atomic no. is 47>).
The third para leads to MAXWELL who unified electricity and magnetism by his four equation involving ANDRE Marie Ampere, CARL Johan Gauss and MICHAEL Faraday).
Using the three words together, we get a song by the Beatles called Maxwell's Silver Hammer featured in the album Abbey Road whose cover shows the beatles 'crossing the road'.
***

LEVEL 10

 

Hints: past (page url)

Answer: spyker

Explanation: Though the images seem hidden, still on reverse searching they yield positive results. The images are identified as Pual di Resta (a driver for Force India F1 team), Michiel Mol (co-owner of Force India) and Subroto Roy of Sahara Group (they also hold stake in the Force India F1 team). Force India was known as 'Spyker' in the past.

***

LEVEL 11

 

Hints: john doe (found on saving the image)

Answer: kevinspacey

Explanation: In the given image, the seven deadly sins are shown in form of the Morse code. It is being observered by a detective (silhoute of Sherlock Holmes). It all points to the movie 'Seven'. The character of John Doe was played by Kevin Spacey in that movie.

***

LEVEL 12

Across:
1. MKG said its self-suffering.
2. (Perform + sister) – former

Down:
1. 99% ~ genius
3. Cussecs
4. Alien 0.5 life 2

Hints: the namesake (page source), quote(on saving the image).
Answer: bonaparte
Explanation: Solving the given crossword:
1 across : patience (as per quote by Mahatma Gandhi).
2 across: persist (<perform-form=per> + <sister-er=sist>)
1 down: perspire (Edison's quote, a geniuse is..............)
3 down: success (cussecs is an anagram)
4 down: combine (the alien in game half life 2)
Googling these words together lead to a famous quote by Napoleon Hill : " Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success."
The noable namesake of Napoleon Hill is Napoleon Bonaparte.
***

LEVEL 13

Hints: second (page source)
Answer: elguaje
Explanation: The images show the last four winners of the Silver Boot ('SECOND' highest goal scorers in the FIFA World Cup). The fourth and the missing one is David Villa, also known as 'El guaje'.
***

LEVEL 14

1. Soft and warm is your bed,
Close your eyes, rest your head.
Lay you down now and rest,
May thy slumber be blessed.

2. One, a poem, a raven,
Midnight's so dreary.
Tired and weary.

Hints: one plus two (page url) , mani's flick (page source)
Answer: bombayjayashri
Explanation: The first verse is a famous lullaby known as Brahm's Lullaby. The second verse is the openning lines of the book Cadaeic Cadenza whose words represent the value of 'PI'.
The first hint says 'one plus two' which gives lullaby plus pi. The movie 'Life of Pi' had a song named Pi's Lullaby which was also nominated for oscars but it lost to the Adele's song for Skyfall. The song was sung by Bombay Jayashri. (mani's flick ~ Mani Ratnam's movie Bombay).
***

LEVEL 15

Hints: <none>
Answer: mockingjay
Explanation: The first set of images point to the movie Silver Linings Playbook. The female symbol denotes the lead actress i.e. Jennifer Lawrence. Similarly, the second set of images point to the movie 'Little Manhattan' whose central character was played by Josh Hutcherson'. These two were cast together in the movie The Hunger Games. (iii) in brackets denotes the third part of the trilogy i.e. Mocking Jay.
***

LEVEL 16

Hints: <none>
Answer: enki
Explanation: The numbers denotes the pincodes of the four places where the Kumbh mela is held. The zodiac signs represent the position of the sun and jupiter during the time when it is held. The missing zodiac is Capricorn whose sybol is a combination of a goat and a fish which is derived from the sumerian god Enki who is represented as a union of a goat and a fish.
***

LEVEL 17

I love you
મને તમે પ્રેમ
আমি তোমাকে ভালোবাসি
ਮੈਂ ਤੈਨੂੰ ਪਿਆਰ ਕਰਦਾ ਹਾਂ

Hints: baba (page source)
Answer: padikkadavan or padikkathavan
Explanation: The question is a cryptic representation of the hindi song "angrezi me kehte hain i love you, bengali me kehta hain............" from the movie Khuddar which was remade into the movie 'Padikkadavan' starring Rajinikanth (who also starred in the movie 'Baba').
***

LEVEL 18

Hints: pizza (page source)
Answer: thethreefountains
Explanation: The hint pizza was given as a reference to ITALY. The first image points to the nine circles of hell depicted by Italian poet Dante. The second image points to the book 100 tales by 10 men by Boccaccio and the third image to Petrarch who wrote a book called 366 poems. These three were great Italian Poets and were collectively known as 'The Three Fountains'.
***

LEVEL 19

232443 52344225 231143 442315 43113215 33113215 1143 3254 52344225

Hints: philopoemen (page source)
Answer: herodotus
Explanation: The above code can be broken using the Polybius cipher. Polybius was a Greek historian who was given the honour of carrying Philopoemen's Urn. Using Polybius cipher the message found is "his work has the same name as my work". Polybius wrote 'the Histories'. There exist another more famous work with the same name which was written by 'Herodotus'.
***

LEVEL 20

Nine sets of squares
within another nine.
Focus on those with
that yellowy shine.

Each pair in a square
beckons to an alphabet.
Hence a nine letter word,
is what you must get.

Dont jump to conclusions.
Its not the answer.
This game is a dance,
So be the dancer!

Hints: con (page url), x3.2 (page source)
Answer: baauer
Explanation: On solving the sudoku, we get a two digit no. from each square. This no. points to a letter using the ASCII code (x3.2 was the group that developed ASCII). The nine letters so found form the word 'terrorist'. The last para of the question riddle stresses on a dance. On searching terrorist with con and dance, one gets 'The Harlem Shake'. The opening lines of the song in it are 'los CON TERRORISTas'. It is by Baauer, which is the answer.
***

LEVEL 21

Hints: <none>
Answer: margaretcousins
Explanation: The first set of images are of Gangasagar, Yamuna, English August and Dharamshala Cricket Stadim in Himachal Pradesh. These four images cryptcally point to Vindhya (main charachter in English August is Agastya, the namesake of the sage who crossed Vindhya for the forst time), Himachal, Yamuna and Ganga. Taken together, 'vindhya himachal yamuna ganga' forms a line of the National Anthem 'jana gana mana'.
The second set of images can be used to form the word Central Hindu College which was started by Annie Besant.
Searching Annie Besant and National Anthem together gives us the name of a placeknown as Madanapalle. Here the music of the National Anthem was created in the Besant Theosophical College by Margaret Cousins.
*****************************

Vote of thanks to the team : Siddharth Sahu, Achal Gupta, Pranshumaan Singh and Debjit Roy. Special thanks to the people who started this 'little game' in the first place : Vrashank Jain and Utsav Raghuvanshi.

: Abhishek Kumar
QBIT