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jERRy vs. IT

MacHeist 3 mission 2 accomplished – help on solution, no spoiler!

On 2009/02/28, in How To, MacHeist, by jERRy

Hey, I just finished the new mission 2 on MacHeist3. It wasn’t easy and I needed some help from my team – btw mine is the orange team and it’s currently leading the scoreboard.

The links to the entry pages of each puzzle are at the bottom of this page.

General Hints

Watch out for chronological anomalies, these pages contain the riddles and puzzles which will get you one step closer to your destination.
Look for EMOJIs on each page. Some times you have to browse several pages on the site until you find one.
Each puzzle gives you an image. Download it and remember the correct order of the images. You may rename them to 1.jpg, 2.jpg, … You have to collect all images.
Select (suspicious looking) text to unveil the secret messages.
Resize your browser window to fold and unfold paper – be careful not to crumple it.
Some puzzles only unveil the file name of an image. Try appending the file name to the current url or directly to the site’s root. Keep in mind that some web servers are case sensitive!
Pull the EMOJI crowd away and open the fortune cookie. Then put a single smiley on each corner to get to the image.
Drag the hands of the big clock until all EMOJIs show up at once.

Solving the Puzzles

Briefing

Chris Pirillo wanted to record the solution to the first puzzle on a video. Unfortunately his monkey camera man hit the mirror button and put in the battery the wrong way round. The video ended up completely mirrored and in reverse. This isn’t helpful at all but what could you expect from 9 year old technology…

1-C

i use this has suspicious looking code on its OS X about page. Textual steganography. A graphical text hidden within a real text. Thank CSS for this magic trick – or curse your browser if it doesn’t .

2-O

New Intelligence

L☺LLERSCAPE ~ diggin’ fer gold is just a fun flash game. To get there just click the EMOJI on the freeverse page. This one doesn’t need much explanation. Point, drag, click.

3-A

Molly doesn’t tour anymore but she still teaches you how to unfold an origami to retrieve picture within. Be gentle when unfolding it, otherwise you crumple it and all its content is lost. Fortunately digital things have the power to reset and let you start over in case anything goes wrong.

4-L

About tap tap tap I can only say it was the toughest one from all the riddles because I never used emoji for the MacHeist chat before. Thanks to stevecopley and the Gaijin version of the original lookup table.

5-G

Clock Out is as easy as opening a safe. You just need to know how. You can turn the three hands of the clock in either direction but your actions may affect the others. Let’s start with the short hand. It toggles the numeral it points to and simultaneously erases on the opposite side but doesn’t affect the other hands on passing the 12. The second hand just toggles the odd numerals but moves the minute hand on passing 12 o’clock. The minute hand toggles the numerals before and after where it points to and also moves the short hand when reaching 12 o’clock. It may sound a bit confusing but this is how it works and you’ll figure it out quickly once you’re on the game. Actually there are no numerals there are only emojirals. All you need now is a strategy to show all emojis. Start with the short hand and fill five numerals in a row. Then use the minute hand and fill the rest by moving 1 back and 2 forth. With the second hand you can toggle single numerals until you’re done.

6-O

Urgent Information

In the world of the Mac you should always keep an eye on hints and visit some friends in Memeville. Beware of false friends who will send you right back from where you came from. Only true friends will guide you to the exit. If you don’t remember where your friends live you should take a look at the map of Memeville.

7-T

Awaken 4 from Embraceware is one of my favorite Mac apps, too. I can hear my favorite tunes at night and in the morning – no need for an alarm clock anymore. Let’s check it out. Even if you’d like to hit F10 listen carefully. Each clock has a distinct sound and one of them is telling you the answer. Aye Aye Captain, message decoded, entering code and downloading picture #8. In case you are hearing-impaired or you failed the pirate exam or if you’re just one of those lazy kids using bedeviled cells to text friends instead of blinking and beeping them the only hope for you is – cheating. But if you really have to cheat at least do it with style. Download Audacity and look it up for yourself, sailor!

8-E

The Top 100 Free iPhone apps on Appshopper have actually 101 apps. Although I’m not involved into this treasure hunt over the internet I really like AppShopper. Actually this is the only site I visit when I’m looking for new iPhone apps. And as I already mentioned in an earlier post on item3a I also like sudoku puzzles. This time it’s called item3b and has a little switch from the last one. It works the same way except this time the stones with runes on it have been substituted by emojis. Each emoji represents a different rune.

9-E