Save the Date by Google

http://www.savethedate.foo/

by jdutoit • 9 years ago

78 174 9 years ago

savethedate.foo

tmaly• 9 years ago

I am not really sure what this is.

The first thing that popped in my mind was the contest from the book Ready Player One

Ajedi323• 9 years ago

The "Go" tile links to a GitHub user with a single repo named "trailhead": https://github.com/kzuse201?tab=repositories Whatever it is, it seems like it's happening right now...

rch• 9 years ago

From the js file:

this.secret = `http://${num}.foo/`;

Wish I had time to play.

quirkot• 9 years ago

Who doesn't love a nice scavenger hunt

NotSteve• 9 years ago

I had no idea foo was a tld

abeisgreat• 9 years ago

I believe it is owned / controlled by Google, along with many other interesting TLDs https://www.registry.google/

fredley• 9 years ago

Seems Google have grabbed most of the land: http://bar.foo

endgame• 9 years ago

gTLDs : for when you need to conjure up a new namespace to sell to people.

ofcrpls• 9 years ago

They announced this as part of their Google Domains launch at I/O 2014.

Ajedi323• 9 years ago

5 puzzles. Each gets more difficult.
5 clues. Take notes. Each puzzle is gone after it's solved.
5 places. Think numbers.
Enter all answers at savethedate.foo.
You must know where you've been to get where you're going.

Oooo, this sounds like fun.

caffeineninja8• 9 years ago

This JS instantiates a marker at these coordinates:

this.markers = [{ lat: -28.092472, lng: -52.419667 }];

which points to a field in southern Brazil. Anyone wanna go see what's there? :)

https://www.google.com/maps/place/28%C2%B005'32.9%22S+52%C2%...

VuWall-Matt3• 9 years ago

Enter the lat/long as your first answer on savethedate.foo, it links to an unlisted youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N9K898TtWQ&feature=youtu.be...

Turn on closed captions and help me figure out the next step.

ChrisBland2• 9 years ago

Magic I. See _ a beach, -yes. _ I explore daylight

working on it now

midhir• 9 years ago

Video appears to be at least 50% speed :)

ucaetano• 9 years ago

Google Developers watermark pops up at 0:20 in the video.

iplaw6• 9 years ago

There is muffled audio at the end of the video. What is it from? That's a clue.

morhope2• 9 years ago

The image is did not produce anything on google image search.

magic I. See_abeach,-yes.-I explore daylight

chowes• 9 years ago

There's a road on the right hand side - you can see cars driving by.

wmblaettler3• 9 years ago

The crop circle after the first clue also shows us a number: '5'

berberous• 9 years ago

What format do you input?

caffeineninja8• 9 years ago

MagicI.See_abeach,-yes._Iexploredaylight

we need to convert these to numbers to get the lat/lon of this location.

amacalac2• 9 years ago

13 1 7 9 3 9.19 5 5 1 2 5 1 3 8, 25 5 19.9 5 24 16 12 15 18 5 4 1 25 12 9 7 8 20

siddarthd29193• 9 years ago

Is there a specific way you inputed the latitude and longitude?

ekr• 9 years ago

any idea why "-28.092472,-52.419667" would not work? does it need special formatting, or is my firefox incompatible?

EDIT: thanks, the adblocker was the issue.

iraphael2• 9 years ago

same issue on chrome, so not a firefox thing. I think we're missing something

CiPHPerCoder• 9 years ago

This reminds me of another puzzle which requires being able to afford to travel to specific geographical locations (Cicada 3301). I really hope this isn't how Google intends to find new employees.

mercur1o• 9 years ago

@jdutoit, where did you find this?

jdutoit3• 9 years ago

Twitter, the Firebase team tweeted it out https://twitter.com/Firebase/status/823966937835192320

samfisher83• 9 years ago

It doesn't seem to work on firefox.

jafhdjkashdfj4• 9 years ago

Thailand, https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMNGiEkdfeZKK5uus5iOmt-...

Pic is called base64

(upvote this so we can start a new subthread)

xur172• 9 years ago

File info decodes to: Where have you been?

dkonofalski6• 9 years ago

Conversion of the filename is "Where have you been?"

batrofin• 9 years ago

Well, we've been to brazil, england, poland, and thailand so far?

jat2557• 9 years ago

5, 17, 18, 19, numerically

piker5• 9 years ago

Like scrabble with the piece values? e.g. white rooks are -14 and 10?

dkonofalski6• 9 years ago

Note the pawns on the left hand side of each color, maybe?

Maybe we add or subtract from 0 to get the numbers after the decimal?

sja8• 9 years ago

Collecting all the "places we've been" by named place, integer given to that place, and the lat/long solution

-28.092472, -52.419667; 5; brazil

51.3015, -3.0178; 17; england

52.1821, 20.9965; 18; poland

14.2981, 101.2189; 19; thailand

kernald• 9 years ago

The description ("V2hlcmUgaGF2ZSB5b3UgYmVlbj8") translates to "Where have you been?"

hadriendavid• 9 years ago

$ echo V2hlcmUgaGF2ZSB5b3UgYmVlbj8 | base64 -d Where have you been?

siddarthd29193• 9 years ago

so far : 5 - Brazil, 17 - England, 18 - Poland, 19 - Thailand

HebrewToYou• 9 years ago

V2hlcmUgaGF2ZSB5b3UgYmVlbj8 --> "Where have you been?"

yggda• 9 years ago

The account belongs to a J Polgar reference to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polgár

alejoriveralara• 9 years ago

Chess pieces sometimes have values assigned to them: Pawns: 1, knight/bishop: 3, rook: 5, queen: 9. Might help (?).

abe_duarte2• 9 years ago

Since the numbers appear where the pieces usually are I think this makes sense.

dzolvd• 9 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICCF_numeric_notation

not all the way there but it uses decimals in move representation.

jat2557• 9 years ago

Numbers on top half of board

  White     Black
  +10       -12
  + 8       - 7
  - 6       +15
  -11       - 2
  + 4       +19
            + 1
  --------------
  bottom half 
  +3        - 7
  +3        + 1
  +4        -19 
  +5        
  +7        
  +7        
  +5

espeed2• 9 years ago

"you" are black (have been capturing white pieces)...what legal moves could have led to that position?

XaspR8d5• 9 years ago

You're overthinking it.

The number of spaces in each row matches the lengths of something you've seen.

Answer is posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13476200

xur172• 9 years ago

Here are the numbers written out in text:

+10 ___ +08 -12 ___ -07 ___ ___ +15 -06 -02 -11 +19 +04 +01 ___

+03 -07 +03 ___ +04 +01 ___ ___ -19 +05 ___ +07 ___ +07 ___ +05

edit: copy and paste it into a fixed width text editor - the formatting is getting messed up here.

amingilani3• 9 years ago

Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

More knowledge to you.

  +10 ___ +08 -12 ___ -07 ___ ___ +15 -06 -02 -11 +19 +04 +01 ___
  +03 -07 +03 ___ +04 +01 ___ ___ -19 +05 ___ +07 ___ +07 ___ +05

serkanyersen• 9 years ago

something to note. 7 white pawns and 3 black pawns on the left.

jafhdjkashdfj4• 9 years ago

Shoreline Amphitheatre

"Answer to last puzzle:

You can put the names of the countries into the spaces on the board and add/subtract from letter values appropriately.

This gives you:

L IN E

THEATRE

SHO RE

AM P H I

(Shoreline Amphitheatre)

5/17, 5/18, 5/19 are the dates of Google I/O, at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, CA. :|"

che_shirecat• 9 years ago

Google IO on 5/18-20th, announced 1/12, launchDate in site JS is 2017-01-13T07:00:00-08

Ruphin• 9 years ago

Note the remaining pieces on the board.

Two pieces = '.' one piece is ','.

Each row contains a value to fill these blanks: _._ , _._

anotherturn2• 9 years ago

good spot. Maybe all the space between, is a space?

piker5• 9 years ago

Where have you been? Black's in check so we must have just moved -- where from?

piker5• 9 years ago

I'm not sure it's possible to get to this position in chess from the starting point.

sja8• 9 years ago

As requested: answer to puzzle 4 (I think):

14.2981, 101.2189

Start from top-left, move the number of spaces given by the number of your current square:

down right left down right right up down down right down

It's a maze; worked backwards from the numbers that have commas and points next to them.

Number: 19; Title: Thailand https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMNGiEkdfeZKK5uus5iOmt-...

neogodless2• 9 years ago

Sheesh I'm dense, I think I need an animated GIF of how you're moving through the maze. I can see 1-4.-2 but then do you keep moving right a second time, two spaces, to that 9? And then you move... nine spaces to... where?

sja8• 9 years ago

Nine spaces down, I believe

1-down

4-right

2-left

9-down

8-right

etc

kaoD4• 9 years ago

I explained it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13476158

wes-k3• 9 years ago

How did you work out the movement sequences?

sja8• 9 years ago

I'll draw it out when we finish up the game :) - what the guys above me said (process of elimination)

graeham• 9 years ago

You work from the key stops (decimal and comma), then go backwards to the only steps that can get you to these stops.

kaoD4• 9 years ago

If you start at the bottom-right you can count either up or left. Going 8 places up lands on an 8 (this is the only square where delta from bottom right = number in the square) which means that square was the previous one.

Rinse and repeat.

dkonofalski6• 9 years ago

File name for #5 is base64. Converting the filename from base 64 gives you "Where have you been?"

anotherturn2• 9 years ago

Chess image. if you download it it's called base64.jpg

XaspR8d5• 9 years ago

Answer to last puzzle:

You can put the names of the countries into the spaces on the board and add/subtract from letter values appropriately.

This gives you:

L IN E

THEATRE

SHO RE

AM P H I

(Shoreline Amphitheatre)

5/17, 5/18, 5/19 are the dates of Google I/O, at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, CA.

EDIT: Haha, I guess we're faster than they expected or this leaked early, since completing it links you to https://events.google.com/io/ which just says "check back soon".

akappa• 9 years ago

that was... anticlimactic, to say the least.

oldstrangers• 9 years ago

What did you expect from a very simple ARG called 'save the date'?

jat2557• 9 years ago

I'm more impressed that they actually created those numbers to be seen by satellites

packetized• 9 years ago

B E S U R E T O D R I N K Y O U R O V A L T I N E

iplaw6• 9 years ago

Boo.

sja8• 9 years ago

Well, that was a brief burst of fun! Wish the final payoff was a bit flashier, but c'est la vie. Good work, all!

jdutoit3• 9 years ago

Agreed :)

dkonofalski6• 9 years ago

So what's the final lat/long to type into the site?

nikisweeting• 9 years ago

Final solution is not a lat/lng, just put in "Shoreline Amphitheatre".

wes-k3• 9 years ago

"Shoreline Amphitheatre" is the answer.

sja8• 9 years ago

You type in "Shoreline Amphitheatre" instead of another lat/long

abe_duarte2• 9 years ago

Meh...

jdutoit3• 9 years ago

Source for those interested - https://twitter.com/Firebase/status/823966937835192320

lnanek2• 9 years ago

Shoreline Amphitheatre

That's really too bad. I've been going to Google IO for five years and that venue they moved to last year, Shoreline Amphitheatre, was a disaster.

They had insufficient room for all the talks. So I waited an hour for the first talk I wanted to attend, just to get kicked out of line due to the room reaching capacity. Then I gave up my next time slot to wait in line 1 time slot ahead of time for the third time slot, but once I got in they kicked me out saying I couldn't come in one time slot before, everyone is kicked out at the end of each.

Throw in a really bad set of key notes - the Android one did have some useful content for developers, but everything else, Allo, Duo, Google Assistant was just Google's marketing arm exploiting a captive audience to try to get future users and wasn't anything useful for me as a developer.

Add in a ton of VR talks all citing their special remote control, but they didn't give us one of them, so we all kept developing on our Gear VRs anyway. This was the first Google IO I'd been to with no development hardware.

At the end I asked for a refund since I had really gained nothing as a developer and just spent a long time waiting in lines and not getting any content and Google refused.

As far as I can tell, it is their intention to make it a music festival from now on and not developer focused. Going to something like AndDevCon would be much more valuable. It's too bad, really, because professional conferences like GDC make sure to poll users to find session interest ahead of time and make sure they plan capacity correctly. Google IO was just useless amateur hour co-opted by Google marketing to exploit some captive press and potential users of their new chat apps no one likes.

bevacqua• 9 years ago

Well that was underwhelming. http://i.imgur.com/XiKIoBZ.png

Save the Date by Google

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