cloudmakers.org

Q: Are there hidden pages on this site?

Q: I don't understand this Red King page! What does it say?

Q: How do I solve the "One Good Move" puzzle?

Q: How do I solve the "Mann to sea" puzzle?

Q: How do I decode BrutusConv?

Q: How do I solve the bupstream puzzle?

Q: Are there hidden pages on this site?

A: Yes.

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A: The most important one is hidden in the Most Wanted page.

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A: Isn't this page odd? What sort of "persistent technical difficulties" could replace all of the "Most Wanted" pictures with gorillas???

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A: Perhaps an expert HTML programmer like yourself needs to look at it. (Actually, you don't need to be an expert!)

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A: Save the source of that page to disk.

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A: Examine it carefully.

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A: It appears to have a hidden hack page, commented out.

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A: Edit it in a text editor like Notepad.

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A: Delete everything up to the three-dash comment, which looks like this: <!---

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A: Now replace all the  s and all the ---> s with <!--- s.

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A: Now add in at the top: <BASE HREF="http://www.spcb.org"> so all of the links will work.

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A: Or you could just view our version (as of July 3rd).

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A: There's another hidden file here, too.

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A: Don't try to find the second hidden file until you've read the first one pretty carefully.

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A: One of the SPIDs changed at one point. Earlier, it was SPID-CTP-43G1S8-E, but now it's SPID-BAH-42RKD1-H.

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A: Look closely at that new code.

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A: See anything you recognize?

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A: Look for initials.

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A: You should recognize the initials RK.

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A: That stands for Red King!

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A: The Red King hides messages on SPCB often.

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A: How would you find the SPID-BAH-42RKD1-H file on SPCB.org?

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A: He put it in its own directory.

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A: Last chance!

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A: http://www.spcb.org/SPID-BAH-42RKD1-H

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Q: I don't understand this Red King page! What does it say?

A: Well, first off, the sound file says "Destruction, by Red King."

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A: Secondly, the Red King writes in a style of writing called "hacker-sp33k." It's actually quite prominent today.

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A: He replaces a lot of words with their phonetic equivalents (writing secret as "Ccret") and replacing letters with numbers that look similar.

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A: If you're having a hard time with his spelling, try sounding it out.

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A: Also, words that have been ~~struck out~~ are negated, so ~~one~~ would be "no one."

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A: The messages that appear to be in Greek are in Symbol, which merely looks like Greek. Copy and paste them into a text editor like Notepad and they'll look fine.

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A: And, often where you see a question mark (?), that should be replaced with some preposition, like up, on, under or over. Usually up.

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A: But there are other strange messages on this page as well.

Q: What does all the binary code mean on this page?

Q: What does it mean when RK says that Sophia knows 7/22nds of everything?

Q: Can you just translate this whole page for me, please?

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Q: What does all the binary code mean on this page?

A: We have no idea. This is one of the great unsolved mysteries of this game.

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Q: What does it mean when RK says that Sophia knows 7/22nds of everything?

A: We have no idea. This is another one of the great unsolved mysteries of this game.

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Q: Can you just translate this whole page for me, please?

A: Are you sure you don't want to do it yourself? This game only gets harder from here.

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A: Yeah, well... OK.

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Q: How do I solve the "One Good Move" puzzle?

A: Take a close look at the newspaper advertisements in the Incoming Materials.

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A: What could they be?

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A: They fit on a grid.

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A: Can you figure out the size of the grid?

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A: They fit on an 8x8 grid.

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A: So what are they?

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A: What could the letters P, N, B and K mean?

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A: They're chessboards.

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A: LA times presents its board.

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A: Then the NY times presents its board.

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A: Here's what they look like together.

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A: It's LA's turn.

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A: What's LA's next best move? (Use notation X[a-h][1-8], where the columns are lettered from a-h from left to right, and the rows are numbered 1-8 from bottom to top.)

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A: LA's king is out in the open.

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A: It needs to be better defended.

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A: It also needs to make sure that NY's pawn doesn't promote.

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A: How can you accomplish both goals at once?

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A: Last chance!

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A: Kh1

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Q: How do I solve the "Mann to sea" puzzle?

A: Be a good Traveler and don't read this until you know what it's referring to.

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A: It's a connect the dots problem.

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A: The Red King tells you what the dots are.

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A: You've got to find the dots and connect them.

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A: The dots are: "Mann" "sea" "HUMANS" "fish"

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A: There's a page that contains all of the above words.

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A: It's a page referring prominentnly to the Mann act.

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A: It also talks a lot about animals.

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A: It's pretty creepy.

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A: And the cyclops only makes it creepier.

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A: It's on Familia Salla.

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A: It's the page you get when you click on Laia.

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A: What happens when you connect the dots?

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A: No, really. Print it out (or something) and draw lines in between those words.

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A: Of course, there's more than one mention of the word "Mann" on this page.

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A: Use the biggest. (Or let us connect the dots for you.

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A: Look at where the lines intersect.

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A: What word is that?

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A: We're going to give it away now.

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A: The word is "god"

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A: How can you use that word?

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A: RK was referring to something hidden.

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A: Where does he hide things?

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A: On the SPCB of course.

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A: How could you find the God file hidden on the SPCB?

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A: Last chance!

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A: http://www.spcb.org/god

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Q: How do I decode BrutusConv?

A: It's a simple substitution cipher.

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A: That means that each letter stands in for another letter; the same letter throughout the message.

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A: Look for the most common character. That's an e.

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A: The other most common characters are other vowels.

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A: In fact, there's a pattern to the substitution.

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A: Once you guess a few letters it should be pretty easy.

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A: The pattern is in alphabetical order.

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A: That means that it's rotX, where X is some number. rot0 is unencrypted. rot13, a common substitution cipher, translates A -> N, B -> O, C -> P.

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A: But this is using something other X.

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A: It's using rot19.

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A: Based on that, the rest of the puzzle should be easy. (Though there are some mistakes.)

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A: Or you can just look at our translated version.

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Q: How do I solve the bupstream puzzle?

A: Looks like it's a code.

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A: It is. Each symbol stands for a letter.

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A: But before you start working on that, it might help to know the order of the messages.

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A: In what order do the positions come in baseball? (We'll tell you if you don't know.)

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A: In baseball, each position is assigned a number.

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A: They go in order: pitcher, catcher, first base, second base, third base, short-stop, left field, center field, right field.

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A: That's the order for this message as well.

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A: OK, now all you have to do is figure out which symbol goes with which letters.

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A: Look for the most common character. That's an e.

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A: The other most common characters are other vowels.

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A: Unfortunately, there's no real pattern to the substitution. You just have to sweat it out.

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A: Alternately, we can just give you the answer, which is...

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A: HI THINGS WEIRD BIG TROUBLE DAD SAYS LADY SENATOR GONNA DIE HIS FRIENDS WILL KILL WHAT SHOULD WE DO

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