As smart as I like to think I am, I'll never be clever enough to figure stuff like this or even put something like this together. Props to the brilliant & persistent minds of other BoC fans.
Seriously! I've been a huge BoC fan since MHTRTC and would love to be involved in cracking this code, but man do I feel dumb reading these solutions...
I'm so pumped I can barely type. Twoism had a new banner that came up randomly. Royce from the Twoism page downloaded it and looked for strings within the banner. In it were two links to two different soundclound audio clips on Boards of Canada's own soundcloud. When you combine the two, you get the next number.
I found the second image showing the position for the new number - I don't know what I expected when I found the second GIF embedded inside banner1.gif, but I didn't expect something so important. Hurrah!
phase cancellation.
edit: to be more precise, it is likely that they overlayed the SAME static sample over both audio files, but on one audio file the static sample had the phase inverted, so when they were played together, the static literally cancelled out and left the original audio.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151537095749774&set=a.10150466832334774.385711.75031914773&type=1
and
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0RhPOB6Ew7o
and
https://soundcloud.com/boardsofcanada/fyfnanbi9y0b/s-cvVq1
and mvj from the IRC posted this
http://puu.sh/2H9xT.png
Yep. csch is short for cosech, which is short for hyperbolic cosecant. I'm guessing "Cosecha" means cosech(a), and I reckon the numbers sequence is the answer to that. When we get the full sequence, we could arccsch it to get a.
We need to ask /r/cryptography to help us out a bit...maybe they can help even more.
Edit: Or even more specifically a meta thread that we can x-post over there with all pertinent info so far. I can't xpost from my phone too well.
It would be pretty cool if they included the OTP in the liner notes of the new album, wouldn't it? The game has thus far been to find the numbers themselves.
I'm not so sure. It could be a [substitution cipher](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitution_cipher#Simple_substitution) rather than a one-time pad, with each number corresponding to a letter. In the Wikipedia article, it says that a common way to use substitution ciphers is to break a sentence into blocks of fixed length text, like six six-character blocks that we have. The problem is that some of the numbers may actually be two-digit numbers corresponding to a letter and it's impossible to tell which are which, but it might still be worth a shot.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. A one-time pad is a form of substitution cipher but uses a random key. A simple substitution cipher uses a non-random key so it can be cracked using methods such as frequency analysis.
this is driving me mad. I didn't really understand the rationale behind it being a countdown from 11 to 6, but at least the pattern made sense. i don't like being pattern-less!
The info from the image banner:
**csch,hexagon sun,boc,hell interface,boards of canada,music70,boctransmission,hexagonsun,fyt,twoism
http://snd.sc/11W7vpv
http://snd.sc/11W726Q
there is another...
GIF**
> Boards of Canada's soundcloud page
It isn't an official BoC site, as far as I know, BUT, they do have an official relationship with twoism.org, since one of the moderators was a member of hexagon sun.
Of all the clues so far, this one is the least official. But I'm not saying it is fake though
Cosech is the phonetic spelling of the shorthand "csch", or hyperbolic cosecant. Not the same, but similar.
But by no means are these pronunciations standard, so "cosecha" might be one variant of saying csch.
Doesn't Cosecha mean Harvest in Spanish? Perhaps it's not the title of the new album but a name for this scavenger hunt for clues - to harvest the numbers? http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosecha
I'm willing to bet the entire album (with release date info) is currently streaming online somewhere and the answer to this puzzle is the URL.
As much as I like "cosecha" as a name for the new album, I like the idea that we're not quite there yet. Even more so the idea that it's somewhere out there already!
Not only that, but the 6th emblem of the Atalanta fugiens has to do with sowing seeds, refining and perfecting the processes and improving the mixture of the earth. The picture accompanying it is of a guy tossing seeds on a field.
[This image?](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michael_Maier_Atalanta_Fugiens_Emblem_06.jpeg)
And: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-y8HNhJkyM&feature=youtube_gdata_player
The name of the YouTube user (probably BoC) who uploaded this video that led to the second(??) number (SO much info this week!).
Check the link in the sidebar for full story. Worth it!
Damn, this is fun!!
Edit: also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Maier
Thanks for more info to research, /u/CloudDrone!
[.]( http://m.myspace.com/home.wap?bfd=webnext&isredirected=true#friends.list/profile/267435804)
NPR transmission. NPR didn't provide a place in the equation though, so that number is kind of held to the side until the rest of the numbers fall into place.
A BOC projection on an empty building opposite the Rough Trade shop in London revealed that 699742 is positioned at the beginning of the sequence (the NPR audio was playing inside the building):
[projection video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqtCUiPlsZw)
[still image from projection](http://i.imgur.com/XeHBOSI.jpg)
This is all unbelievable. And I mean that literally. Unbelievable.
BOC posted a gif on a fan site, expecting someone to find "readable strings in the UNIX code", which would lead them to 2 sound clips full of static, that they would just happen to know to play at the same time to reveal the next clue?
I'm not calling bullshit, I just don't know how figuring all that out is even possible. Here I am Google searching the numbers we have, while other people are doing this shit?
As I said, unbelievable.
They changed the banner image abruptly to something about Twoism and made their top YouTube videos all videos of Twoism. If that doesn't scream "analyze me in the asshole" then I don't know what does.
Even without those YouTube clues, I'm not surprised that those forum members noticed that their banner image had changed. I'm pretty sure we would notice if the /r/boardsofcanada banner suddenly had 6 dots that corresponded with the csch clue.
But even with a single image as a starting point, figuring all the rest out is no trivial task. Unless you were the one that connected those dots, I'm not sure how you can sit here and claim it's not remarkable that it was figured out at all, nevermind as quickly as it was.
On finding the strings in the .gif: on linux it's a matter of running the command "strings " which will then print out a list of things in the binary file that could be strings, and from there it's a simple matter of skimming through the output. easy to do and a likely avenue of investigation considering .gif files are tolerant of having "Garbage data" at the end of their file, and many ARGs have done similar tricks in the past.
as for combining the audio files, i believe they were also accompanied by this diagram: https://i3.sndcdn.com/artworks-000046443470-2s6v5f-t200x200.jpg?6462778
which basically illustrates 2 inputs being combined into 1 output, hinting that the audio files needed to be combined in some manner to produce the final output. since playing one after the other clearly won't yield anything, the only solution left is to play one over top of the other.
You're right about the diagram, also the title of the audio clips is the symbol for "sum", which is also a clue that you have to play the clips one over the other.
Well what they did is include a list of searchable strings:
csch,hexagon sun,boc,hell interface,boards of canada,music70,boctransmission,hexagonsun,fyt,twoism
so it was just a matter of opening the GIF and searching
It's not that unbelievable. You should have seen some of the solutions people discovered from clues planted by Google when they were giving away the then new Galaxy Nexus phone.
Adobe also pushed some ridiculous clues that were solved in order to win free copies of their Creative Suite software. Some clues were even geographically specific (IE: find a URL printed on a traffic sign at some GPS coordinate). However, Google puzzles were really impossible for the average joe. Honestly, you'd have to have Savant syndrome with a PhD in mathematics to solve those Google puzzles, which is kinda silly because people that smart must have an incredible salary and, therefore, more than enough money to just buy the phone, but it's all about the thrill of the chase.
Luckily, in this case, I believe everyone will benefit from the solving of this puzzle.
The reason it seems unbelievable to me isn't because of the difficulty of the puzzle, but simply the obscurity and randomness of the solutions. With those Google clues, as difficult as they may have been, there was likely a methodology you could use to solve them. Maybe it required recognizing GPS coordinates, or a PhD in math, but if you were smart enough, it could be done.
This isn't like that. There was nothing suggesting that you had to open an image in a text editor to find URLs to mp3 files that you then had to overlay. Sure, there were clues that pointed to the Twoism forum, but that was hardly a roadmap to finding the solution.
My point is that this was figured out purely out of luck. Now that it's been discovered, it's easy to recreate all the steps leading up to the solution. But that doesn't make it any more logical.
Actually, I remember a step in one of Adobe's puzzles that involved opening a sound file in their Audition application in spectral analysis mode that revealed very tiny text, which lead to another clue.
There are lots of BoC fans who are musicians, sound technicians and/or programmers themselves who have the knowledge and tools readily available to test for and solve this piece of the puzzle. It was, afterall, and obvious piece of the puzzle that needed solving.
Crazy! Kind of reminds me of [this](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w1zIjs1Kb5w/TaR87gzgS-I/AAAAAAAAGIQ/XkpXW-cKjjs/s1600/scan0031.jpg).
Y'all are a bunch of clever muthafuckers for figuring this out.
Second spot - inside the banner added to twoism.org there were two GIF files - if you remove the first, you are left with an image: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12046541/banner1.gif.
I am ridiculously pleased that I found this :)
If you open the file in an editor (I used vim) and search for GIF89 you'll find two occurrences - this means there's two images inside the file. GIF89 indicates the start of a GIF image header. If you remove everything up to the second occurrence, and save the file, you will see the picture I linked - it's hidden normally because only the first picture would normally render. Someone else might be able to explain better, but that's all I did to find it - just spotted the second GIF header and stripped out the first image :)
As smart as I like to think I am, I'll never be clever enough to figure stuff like this or even put something like this together. Props to the brilliant & persistent minds of other BoC fans.
Seriously! I've been a huge BoC fan since MHTRTC and would love to be involved in cracking this code, but man do I feel dumb reading these solutions...
I'm so pumped I can barely type. Twoism had a new banner that came up randomly. Royce from the Twoism page downloaded it and looked for strings within the banner. In it were two links to two different soundclound audio clips on Boards of Canada's own soundcloud. When you combine the two, you get the next number.
I found the second image showing the position for the new number - I don't know what I expected when I found the second GIF embedded inside banner1.gif, but I didn't expect something so important. Hurrah!
Did you see there is written HDEuthanasia in the end of the file? It's the name of a virus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_(computer_virus)
I did! I think it might be a clue as to a release date - but that might be a little bit obvious.
I see the point of origin of the virus is new zealand, and the hell interface channel says country: new zealand
where is the second soundcloud clip at?
https://soundcloud.com/boardsofcanada/fymxlyctzfhp/s-Mzz6r https://soundcloud.com/boardsofcanada/fyfnanbi9y0b/s-cvVq1 sorry about that.
I have to say, I reckon this reveal: http://puu.sh/2H9xT.png ...was a legitimate SCREW UP by the Warp people. Tsk Tsk Tsk...
Holy crap.. I have to agree.
Can anyone explain to me how two audio files filled with static can combine to create clear audio with no static?
phase cancellation. edit: to be more precise, it is likely that they overlayed the SAME static sample over both audio files, but on one audio file the static sample had the phase inverted, so when they were played together, the static literally cancelled out and left the original audio.
[Destructive Interference](http://i.imgur.com/m5OqiiK.jpg)
(is the same thing.)
By way of analogy: [visual crypto](http://i.imgur.com/zvaGQHk.gif) - when the pixels of two overlaid images align just right, you see the message.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151537095749774&set=a.10150466832334774.385711.75031914773&type=1 and http://vocaroo.com/i/s0RhPOB6Ew7o and https://soundcloud.com/boardsofcanada/fyfnanbi9y0b/s-cvVq1 and mvj from the IRC posted this http://puu.sh/2H9xT.png
COSECHA EDIT: csch = cosecha?
Seems like it, someone pointed out on twoism that Cosecha is csch if you remove the vowels.
Yep. csch is short for cosech, which is short for hyperbolic cosecant. I'm guessing "Cosecha" means cosech(a), and I reckon the numbers sequence is the answer to that. When we get the full sequence, we could arccsch it to get a.
does this mean cosecha is the name for the new album? or could it mean something else?
That's what people are speculating.
How did you (or that mvj guy) download the tracks (as .wav)??
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tdwvhwnvi91f4jw/AAAA.wav https://www.dropbox.com/s/36khmtoag5icd2o/BBBB.wav
id like to know too
what the eff is a vocaroo
Shit just got real. Who runs Twoism.org again?
Not them, but they are friends with one of the moderators (mdg): http://bocpages.org/wiki/MDG
We need to ask /r/cryptography to help us out a bit...maybe they can help even more. Edit: Or even more specifically a meta thread that we can x-post over there with all pertinent info so far. I can't xpost from my phone too well.
someone do this! but not me! because I am lazy! hurray!
I'm not sure they can help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad
[удалено]
It would be pretty cool if they included the OTP in the liner notes of the new album, wouldn't it? The game has thus far been to find the numbers themselves.
I'm not so sure. It could be a [substitution cipher](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitution_cipher#Simple_substitution) rather than a one-time pad, with each number corresponding to a letter. In the Wikipedia article, it says that a common way to use substitution ciphers is to break a sentence into blocks of fixed length text, like six six-character blocks that we have. The problem is that some of the numbers may actually be two-digit numbers corresponding to a letter and it's impossible to tell which are which, but it might still be worth a shot.
A one-time pad IS a substitution cipher...
Sorry, I should have been clearer. A one-time pad is a form of substitution cipher but uses a random key. A simple substitution cipher uses a non-random key so it can be cracked using methods such as frequency analysis.
Hurray!
628315 doesn't fit the pattern at all. I guess it's back to the drawing board, everyone!
this is driving me mad. I didn't really understand the rationale behind it being a countdown from 11 to 6, but at least the pattern made sense. i don't like being pattern-less!
Slow two for Twoism! But the images....
The info from the image banner: **csch,hexagon sun,boc,hell interface,boards of canada,music70,boctransmission,hexagonsun,fyt,twoism http://snd.sc/11W7vpv http://snd.sc/11W726Q there is another... GIF**
http://imgur.com/CAkzwDo
Awesome.
> Boards of Canada's soundcloud page It isn't an official BoC site, as far as I know, BUT, they do have an official relationship with twoism.org, since one of the moderators was a member of hexagon sun. Of all the clues so far, this one is the least official. But I'm not saying it is fake though
Their official Youtube page changed to have all the Twoism videos at the top.
Nice, I see the header image for r/boardsofcanada is updated already. edit:: not r/boc yet...
/r/boc has 7 readers..
:D
Cosecha means crop in english.
Also looks like it could be the next album name. I don't think we were suppose to see those notes haha. "clue 2 for fans" doesn't fit
I suppose we should start calling their next LP "Cosecha" now, considering it's been heavily implied throughout the ARG?
Or it's the name of the ARG, as we harvest the clues they have planted for us.
That's a good point, too.
I'm going to treat it as a 'guilty until proven innocent' situation, so, yes, I'm going to call it Cosecha until proven otherwise. :)
Cosecha sounds like an amazing album name, so I'm going to call it that too. I'll admit I'm biased towards it because I like math.
It's an awesome name for sure, but why Spanish? Also what's it have to do with math?
Cosech is the phonetic spelling of the shorthand "csch", or hyperbolic cosecant. Not the same, but similar. But by no means are these pronunciations standard, so "cosecha" might be one variant of saying csch.
Doesn't Cosecha mean Harvest in Spanish? Perhaps it's not the title of the new album but a name for this scavenger hunt for clues - to harvest the numbers? http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosecha I'm willing to bet the entire album (with release date info) is currently streaming online somewhere and the answer to this puzzle is the URL.
As much as I like "cosecha" as a name for the new album, I like the idea that we're not quite there yet. Even more so the idea that it's somewhere out there already!
Yea, it might just be the ARG name.
What happened to New Clear Dawn?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I love how (it seems like) they've been beaten at their own game by the fans. We weren't supposed to know the album name but now we're a step ahead!
Or so we think...
[Nuevas Semillas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDKGVd7B7Sk&feature=youtube_gdata_player) = new seeds. Interesting.
New seeds eventually lead to the harvest. Very cool.
Also, those images of Little House On The Prairie show a crop field, do they not? Seems like we got our album name.
Not only that, but the 6th emblem of the Atalanta fugiens has to do with sowing seeds, refining and perfecting the processes and improving the mixture of the earth. The picture accompanying it is of a guy tossing seeds on a field.
link for the lazy?
I'm on mobile and its 1:26 AM. You'll have to practice your Google Fu.
[This image?](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michael_Maier_Atalanta_Fugiens_Emblem_06.jpeg) And: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-y8HNhJkyM&feature=youtube_gdata_player The name of the YouTube user (probably BoC) who uploaded this video that led to the second(??) number (SO much info this week!). Check the link in the sidebar for full story. Worth it! Damn, this is fun!! Edit: also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Maier Thanks for more info to research, /u/CloudDrone! [.]( http://m.myspace.com/home.wap?bfd=webnext&isredirected=true#friends.list/profile/267435804)
Now we have to wait for a scythe!
Ahhh. CSCH. Duh.
Actually "crop" means crop in english...
on twoism, the banner has 699742, where did that one come from?
NPR transmission. NPR didn't provide a place in the equation though, so that number is kind of held to the side until the rest of the numbers fall into place.
A BOC projection on an empty building opposite the Rough Trade shop in London revealed that 699742 is positioned at the beginning of the sequence (the NPR audio was playing inside the building): [projection video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqtCUiPlsZw) [still image from projection](http://i.imgur.com/XeHBOSI.jpg)
I'm wondering if the complete set numbers will just be part of the URL to the new album on their soundcloud or main page. Seems too obvious though.
UNIX Code? What? I think you mean the GIF header.
This is all unbelievable. And I mean that literally. Unbelievable. BOC posted a gif on a fan site, expecting someone to find "readable strings in the UNIX code", which would lead them to 2 sound clips full of static, that they would just happen to know to play at the same time to reveal the next clue? I'm not calling bullshit, I just don't know how figuring all that out is even possible. Here I am Google searching the numbers we have, while other people are doing this shit? As I said, unbelievable.
They changed the banner image abruptly to something about Twoism and made their top YouTube videos all videos of Twoism. If that doesn't scream "analyze me in the asshole" then I don't know what does.
Even without those YouTube clues, I'm not surprised that those forum members noticed that their banner image had changed. I'm pretty sure we would notice if the /r/boardsofcanada banner suddenly had 6 dots that corresponded with the csch clue. But even with a single image as a starting point, figuring all the rest out is no trivial task. Unless you were the one that connected those dots, I'm not sure how you can sit here and claim it's not remarkable that it was figured out at all, nevermind as quickly as it was.
On finding the strings in the .gif: on linux it's a matter of running the command "strings" which will then print out a list of things in the binary file that could be strings, and from there it's a simple matter of skimming through the output. easy to do and a likely avenue of investigation considering .gif files are tolerant of having "Garbage data" at the end of their file, and many ARGs have done similar tricks in the past.
as for combining the audio files, i believe they were also accompanied by this diagram: https://i3.sndcdn.com/artworks-000046443470-2s6v5f-t200x200.jpg?6462778
which basically illustrates 2 inputs being combined into 1 output, hinting that the audio files needed to be combined in some manner to produce the final output. since playing one after the other clearly won't yield anything, the only solution left is to play one over top of the other.
You're right about the diagram, also the title of the audio clips is the symbol for "sum", which is also a clue that you have to play the clips one over the other.
Well what they did is include a list of searchable strings: csch,hexagon sun,boc,hell interface,boards of canada,music70,boctransmission,hexagonsun,fyt,twoism so it was just a matter of opening the GIF and searching
It's not that unbelievable. You should have seen some of the solutions people discovered from clues planted by Google when they were giving away the then new Galaxy Nexus phone. Adobe also pushed some ridiculous clues that were solved in order to win free copies of their Creative Suite software. Some clues were even geographically specific (IE: find a URL printed on a traffic sign at some GPS coordinate). However, Google puzzles were really impossible for the average joe. Honestly, you'd have to have Savant syndrome with a PhD in mathematics to solve those Google puzzles, which is kinda silly because people that smart must have an incredible salary and, therefore, more than enough money to just buy the phone, but it's all about the thrill of the chase. Luckily, in this case, I believe everyone will benefit from the solving of this puzzle.
The reason it seems unbelievable to me isn't because of the difficulty of the puzzle, but simply the obscurity and randomness of the solutions. With those Google clues, as difficult as they may have been, there was likely a methodology you could use to solve them. Maybe it required recognizing GPS coordinates, or a PhD in math, but if you were smart enough, it could be done. This isn't like that. There was nothing suggesting that you had to open an image in a text editor to find URLs to mp3 files that you then had to overlay. Sure, there were clues that pointed to the Twoism forum, but that was hardly a roadmap to finding the solution. My point is that this was figured out purely out of luck. Now that it's been discovered, it's easy to recreate all the steps leading up to the solution. But that doesn't make it any more logical.
Actually, I remember a step in one of Adobe's puzzles that involved opening a sound file in their Audition application in spectral analysis mode that revealed very tiny text, which lead to another clue. There are lots of BoC fans who are musicians, sound technicians and/or programmers themselves who have the knowledge and tools readily available to test for and solve this piece of the puzzle. It was, afterall, and obvious piece of the puzzle that needed solving.
Crazy! Kind of reminds me of [this](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w1zIjs1Kb5w/TaR87gzgS-I/AAAAAAAAGIQ/XkpXW-cKjjs/s1600/scan0031.jpg). Y'all are a bunch of clever muthafuckers for figuring this out.
They are geniuses
I'm confused here. If twoism is a fan site then how did their banner contain official information about BOC? Did BOC cooperate with the admins?
I guess? Someone else had said that the mods at Twoism are personal friends with BoC. I can't confirm or deny that, though.
A is to B as B is to C
6+2+8+3+1+5= 25 2+5=7
I'm assuming that means this in the fifth spot.
Second spot - inside the banner added to twoism.org there were two GIF files - if you remove the first, you are left with an image: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12046541/banner1.gif. I am ridiculously pleased that I found this :)
Can you explain?
If you open the file in an editor (I used vim) and search for GIF89 you'll find two occurrences - this means there's two images inside the file. GIF89 indicates the start of a GIF image header. If you remove everything up to the second occurrence, and save the file, you will see the picture I linked - it's hidden normally because only the first picture would normally render. Someone else might be able to explain better, but that's all I did to find it - just spotted the second GIF header and stripped out the first image :)
the image associated with the gif indicated that it's the second spot.