Thursday, April 2, 2015

Mystique 4.0 Demystified: Answers and Explanations



Mystique, the online treasure hunt of BITOTSAV- BIT Mesra's annual techno-cultural fest returned this year in its fourth edition.

After more than 33 hours of mind boggling cryptic questions and a total of 1128 participants battling it out, the final results of the hunt were-
1st- Debasmita Bhowmik (Hitchhiker)
2nd- Tushar Gupta (battlemonger)
3rd- Popescu Mihai (MishuAnubis)
This post provides answers and explanantions for all 30 levels of the game. Source code hints are mentioned along with the questions. For hints that were provided during the game, you can visit : Mystique Forum. As of the writing of this post the game can still be played at www.bitotsav.in/mystique15.



 Level 0



Answer : mystique
Explanation : The morse code translates to "Who am I?"


Level 1


Inspect Element hint: buccae
Answer : fairelabise
Explanation : This is a map of the number of kisses given on the cheek (buccae) during faire la bise in France.

Level 2



Page Title : Greatness
Answer : nelsonmandela
Explanation : The Chinese numerals spell out 18.07.1918 – 5.12.2013, the life span of Nelson Mandela.

General Hint : The first letters of the answers of level 3 to 10 spell s-h-e-r-l-o-c-k.

Level 3



Inspect Element Hint : valar morghulis
Answer : seanbean
Explanation : The first line shows Lorde and Olympic Rings. This gives Lord of the Rings. The second line shows gold bars and I (movie). This gives Goldeneye. Sean Bean dies in Lord of the Rings by arrows and in Goldeneye by falling from a satellite dish.

Level 4



Inspect Element hint : prince
Answer : hitopadesha
Explanation : The first pic is of the chemical "DHA". The second pic is of Vajubhai Vala. His family name is "Vala". The third pic is of the "Chandra" observatory. Together they give "Dhavalachandra", who commissioned the writing of the Hitopadesha.


Level 5
Inspect Element hint : +(111101)
Answer : ellysealexandraperry
Explanation : 111101 in decimal is 61. +61 is the ISD code for Australia. Ellyse Perry is the only Australian to have played in both the cricket and football world cups.



Level 6

Inspect Element hint: convenience
Answer : retcon
Explanation : All three are examples of retroactive continuity or retcon in short.




Level 7


Inspect Element hint : 232101
Hidden Page hint : vijay
Answer : lalbahadurshastri
Explanation : Gibraltar and Grand Slam were two operations carried out during the 1965 Indo-Pak war. 232101 is the pincode of Mughalsarai, birthplace of Lal Bahadur Shastri. Vijay Ghat is where he was buried.

Level 8


Answer : opium
Explanation : Golden crescent and Gollden Triangle are two large regions of illicit opium production.



Level 9


Inspect Element hint : LA gang
Answer : cripwalk
Explanation : The image is statistics of Grand Slam wins for Serena Williams. (Women Singles- 19, Women Doubles- 13, Mixed Doubles- 2). Her connect with an LA gang is a dance called the Crip Walk, credited to the Crips gang of Los Angeles.


Level 10


Answer : krypton
Explanation : 1st name of Prince William is William and 2nd name of Gordon Ramsay is Ramsay. William Ramsay discovered krypton, which at one time was used to define the meter as 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of light emitted by the krypton-86 isotope. 1,650,763.73 is encoded in the barcode.

Level 11



Image Name hint: book
Inspect Element hint: Favet Neptunus eunti
Answer : julesverne
Explanation : The Green ray by Jules Verne described the Green flash. Favet Neptunus eunti is the motto of Nantes, where Jules Verne was born


Level 12

Image Name hint: cryptography
Answer : johncage
Explanation : Enigma (character in Batman universe) was the name of the cipher that Alan Turing worked on at Hut 8 at Bletchley Park.

Level 13


Hidden Page hint: Community & Business Team Leader
Answer : marcbodnick
Explanation: The image stands for the url quora.com/about/team. Community and Business Team Leader in Quora is Marc Bodnick


Level 14


Inspect Element hint: 1C8cslt
Answer : anagram
Explanation : The image stands for bit.ly. bit.ly/1C8cslt takes you to a sequence of Google Forms that makes you solve certain anagrams.


Level 15

Inspect Element hint: LBSC
Answer : thomasthetankengine
Explanation : The area encircled in the ma is the location of the fictional island of Sodor, where Thomas and Friends is set. LBSC is the names of the type of engine on which Thomas the tank engine was modeled.


Level 16


Inspect Element hint: origins
Answer : backrub
Explanation : The image on the left is of Google pagerank. Stanford University was where Google started as a research project called "backrub".


Level 17


Page Title: Babaji ki Booti
Answer : splhcb
Explanation : All these people were featured on the album cover of the Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (splhcb) album by The Beatles.


Level 18


Page Title: Father
Inspect Element hint: MDCCLXXVI
Answer : thewealthofnations
Explanation : The QR code gives the coordinates of Canongate Kirkyard where Adam Smith is buried. Adam Smith, in 1776 (MDCCLXXVI) published The Wealth of nations, because of which he is known as the Father of Economics.

Level 19



Inspect Element hint: Make music not violence
Answer : escopetarra
Explanation : Escopetarra is a guitar made from a modified gun. 

Level 20


Image Name hint: hiddeninplainsight
Answer : prembeharinarainraizada
Explanation : In this scan of the original Constitution of India, only one think has been blanked out in the lower left corner. That is "PREM". Prem Behari Narain Raizada was the calligrapher who wrote the Constitution on the condition that he would sign his name at the bottom of each page.


Level 21


Inspect Element hint: malus
Answer : isaacnewton
Explanation : Google Scholar home page has the quote "Standing on the shoulders of giants", a quote attributed to Isaac Newton. Malus is the genus name of the apple, a fruit closely associated with Isaac Newton. 


Level 22


Inspect Element hint: 650000
Answer : mtgox
Explanation : The image is of Magic: The Gathering, a trading card game. mtgox.com was originally an exchange for that game (Magic The Gathering Online eXchange). mtgox.com later became an exchange for bitcoins. 650,000 bitcoins were stolen from Mt. Gox after which it was shit down.


Level 23


Image Name hint: trip
Answer : thedivertinghistoryofjohngilpin
Explanation : The Diverting History of John Gilpin is a poem that has the protagonist, John Gilpin travel through the places shown in the map and come back again .

Level 24


Inspect Element hint: Astas ‘M’athchomaroon’ okeosaan naqisa anni
Answer  : imp
Explanation : The image is a description of tyrion Lannister, the imp. The Inspect Element hint is Dothraki for "Say hello to my little friend". The imp is the connect.

Level 25

Page Title: Rise and Rise
Image Name hint: Caesar
Inspect Element hint: MbnPjh-RASI
Answer : nawazuddinsiddiqui
Explanation : The image when solved by the ROT-13 Caesar cipher gives Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim , the founders of YouTube. The Inspect Element hint is a video ID on YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbnPjh-RASI). The clip is Nawazuddin Siddiqui's debut scene in Bollywood.

 Level 26


Inspect Element hint: porta
Answer : wolfgandamadeusmozart
Explanation : The image uses a musical cryptography technique given by Giovanni Porta. (Porta Encryption). On decoding, the four words are paris, haffner, prague, linz, all symphonies by Mozart.

Level 27




Answer : avoirdupois
Explanation : The images stand for grain, drachma, ounce (of bread), pound, stone, quarter, hundredweight (Roman number C) and ton. All these are measurement units in the Avoirdupois system.

Level 28

Page Title: Look closely
Hidden Page hint: http://i.imgur.com/Z952wYl.png
Answer : venice

Explanation : The URL takes you to an image of the world where certain cities are marked in red. All these cities are given the sobriquet of "Venice", such as Venice of the East, Venice of the North etc.


Level 29


Image name hint: bride
Answer : killbillvolume1

Explanation : 1st Image : Klingon for "Revenge is a dish best served cold"
2nd Image : Japanese for Shurayuki-hime
Kill Bill is inspired from the Japanese movie Shurayuki-hime (Lady Snowblood). the opening credits of Kill Bill Vol. 1 shows "Revenge is a dish best served cold- An old Klingon proverb".


****

Final Leaderboard :





All content researched and prepared by Team Q-BIT : Utsav Giri, Vishesh Dokania, Kanishka Ganguly

    Website credits : Kanishka Ganguly, MLN Koushik



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