April Fool’s Easter Egg Hunt Solutions!
On April 1st, Easter (which coincided with April Fool’s day this year), we gave out a lot of clues on Reddit and our community discord that led to ARK wallets containing goodies. We were originally going to also announce via blog post, but the community solved nearly all the clues before the day was over!
The results are in, and nearly all of the 200 ARK we hid in Easter eggs has been collected. Without further ado, here are the full results and answers to the clues we provided! Every riddle was solved within 72 hours except for the final 55 ARK wallet.
5 ARK Puzzles
10 ARK Puzzles
20 ARK Puzzles
Bruteforce the Greek Easter on the Ark forums
“Pascha” is the word for Easter in Greek. There is a brand new user on the Ark forums with that username. (https://forum.ark.io/user/pascha). In the bio of that account, it should be obvious what the clue means by “bruteforce.”
There’s a 12 word passphrase with 2 words missing as well as the address that corresponds to it. The missing words can be bruteforced using: https://github.com/eugeneli/ark-bruteforcer
Go to Classic and ask Konami for the key to the Greek
“Go to classic” means go to https://classicdelegate.biz
“Ask Konami” means to type in the Konami Code
Doing so will trigger an alert with a key:
So now you have the key. The key to the Greek? The same “Greek” referred to in the previous puzzle of course. This puzzle requires that you’ve at least found the account on the Ark forums.
In addition to the 12 word passphrase, the Pascha account also has a string of numbers in its profile.
The numbers are all within a certain range, 97–122, which to the discerning egg hunter might mean that the numbers are the ascii codes to the lowercase alphabet.
When the numbers are converted to characters, you get the following string:
vbzkgrszvbcylngnddaqpcnzkzwmimnwccfalzfwszp
This is the point where a lot of people got stuck. When that happens, it may help to write down what you know and see if anything clicks in your head.
The person that solved this puzzle said he wrote the string down with the key under it like so:
When he did this, he realized that both the string and the key were the same length! Like the caesar cipher puzzle earlier, he decided to shift each letter of the string. But instead of shifting 3 times, he shifted based on the number in the corresponding position in the key. This kind of shift cipher is known as a Vigenère cipher (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigenère_cipher).
After shifting each letter using the key, the resulting string is the solution:
whatisthedealwitheasterandcoloredeggsanyway
55 ARK Puzzle
This one was the hardest which no one managed to solve.
First, the hint says the clue’s in the image and links to both https://classicdelegate.biz/ and https://privatedelegate.biz/. A few people got the idea of looking into the EXIF data of the flying eggs and ark logos that were on https://classicdelegate.biz/, which weren’t on https://privatedelegate.biz/.
They were on the right track, but looking in the wrong places. The fact that the flying eggs were only on Classic’s website should’ve been a clue. The only images that are on both websites are the logos.
Classic’s logo has “pastebin” embedded in its EXIF.
Private’s logo has “s3TcqSvc” embedded in its EXIF.
Going to that pastebin leads to the next clue.
This is where everyone got stuck. The clue links to the Ark whitepaper (https://ark.io/Whitepaper.pdf) with a “3/17” next to it.
The whitepaper PDF has 17 pages. If we go on page 3, nothing really stands out.
So let’s move on to the next part of the clue.
“Down the lines we go” meant to take the first letter of each line on that page. If you do that, you get “obbcwhcipdibmteftdwwdtfftctetfaccti” which only one person came close to getting. Unfortunately, they forgot to take the “o” in “Overview.”
The last part of the clue, “find it in the archives,” meant to search the 4chan/biz/ archives for that string. Or, you could have just pasted the string into Google which links to the archived thread.
This is the archived post:
Just like the earlier Greek puzzle, you’re presented with a key. In this case, it’s the number of the post which is 8672672.
Now that you have the key, you need the ciphertext (the string to decrypt using the key).
The line under the key states “the deluded pasta will set you free” which might be important. (Spoiler: it is). The last line of the post is a red herring and isn’t relevant.
The “deluded pasta” refers to the “Deluded Arkies” copypasta that became a meme amongst Ark holders. The pasta is as follows:
The conference yesterday revealed to the world the stuttering potheads that run this scam. Price has already tanked 10%. Once it breaks through the $1.50 resistance the panic will begin and small holders and speculators will begin to offload, with the whales already long gone. Once it shoots through the $1 mark, unabated FEAR will ripe through all ARKies. With all those who dumped their current accounts into this scam twitching at their arsehole continuously while refreshing bittrex. The $0.50 mark will be met, the largest panic in history will ensue. The final deluded Nodes will begin to go offline, and wagecuckers with their engineering salaries loaded up in ARK will be left with it stuck in their wallet, unable to move it to bittrex to salvage some self respect. The price WILL tank at this point to sub $0.10, and most probably sub ICO levels. From that day forward the deluded Arkie wagecucking engineering nerds who bought this coin thinking it had fundamentals will go back to their jobs, with no money in their current accounts, to be made redundant by the next wave of pajeets arriving to undercut their wages. Deluded ARKies will hold bags FOREVER, with no job, no money, and no crypto. I warned you ARKies. There’s still time to get out. Sell NOW. Don’t be deluded, don’t be an ARKie.
Since all the solutions have no whitespace or special characters, let’s strip out every character that couldn’t be part of the final solution. Doing so yields:
theconferenceyesterdayrevealedtotheworldthestutteringpotheadsthatrunthisscampricehasalreadytanked10onceitbreaksthroughthe150resistancethepanicwillbeginandsmallholdersandspeculatorswillbegintooffloadwiththewhalesalreadylonggoneonceitshootsthroughthe1markunabatedfearwillripethroughallarkieswithallthosewhodumpedtheircurrentaccountsintothisscamtwitchingattheirarseholecontinuouslywhilerefreshingbittrexthe050markwillbemetthelargestpanicinhistorywillensuethefinaldeludednodeswillbegintogoofflineandwagecuckerswiththeirengineeringsalariesloadedupinarkwillbeleftwithitstuckintheirwalletunabletomoveittobittrextosalvagesomeselfrespectthepricewilltankatthispointtosub010andmostprobablysubicolevelsfromthatdayforwardthedeludedarkiewagecuckingengineeringnerdswhoboughtthiscointhinkingithadfundamentalswillgobacktotheirjobswithnomoneyintheircurrentaccountstobemaderedundantbythenextwaveofpajeetsarrivingtoundercuttheirwagesdeludedarkieswillholdbagsforeverwithnojobnomoneyandnocryptoiwarnedyouarkiestheresstilltimetogetoutsellnowdontbedeludeddontbeanarkie
So now we have an extremely long string and a key, 8672672. If you’ve figured out the easier puzzles you might think this is another shift cipher. But which one is it? You could try shifting each letter 8672672 times, looping back when you hit the end of the alphabet..but it won’t give you the solution.
Another possibility is that this is another Vigenère cipher… but the key is too short! You could try “stretching” the key so that every letter in the copypasta has a corresponding number in the key. When you do that, you end up with the following key:
867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728672672867267286726728
Unless you’re insane or just have a lot of time on your hands, you could try shifting each letter in the ciphertext by hand. We recommend you write a program to do it for you. No matter how you’ve managed to do it, you get the following string:
bnleuuhmxlpilamyagxkcgxlxkhnmjaqzogeuynjajmyawzagzouivvvpkhfyajizywtajqyzegtrzojgnhuiryggkabgumkk38uuekpvjxlcqzvpxvwmovpk876ygaozvguemzogvhpqidkrsdmmppgufashnroqtjltyhplywgibnizvtydktrigmppbuvhlsqijdkzovpkdjgsgagstkhfgrvpmnqvkvpilkbyoquaubnyqanjbnl3shtsauchhvmjmggyyqrstowgbnyqanjirscxrkmydkzoctrajuzgenvfatrmjajkptkaytkuviijqauvaouvuajqyzegtveoaenppogavnlkzgyukoqtkjqtakvavwysaenpnkygnxlunppohpvzygfzog622ugymcpnthlokavpkscxngazwctpeqtokyaqzedkrsgvybgzognoucrkgtakgjuqlkzyosnjknktaqouvhlskvkhpjdcokjwirgzydkzovpkptkuiqtlgxppoyhngykmysqgkglawkthtscpnrigtkmvcpvpoauzbesouvnlkzchnrlvcthdrlvwsvxkpvbuikzatmdaqyhndgngyvomylnlygavlezajmvykilyqrsvgumizajozrwouvzvuch736hplsvuzwtwhhdrfuchpeusgdksulyquzoczkcglvtchtlzogjlncjlfgymqkdcmlecirktngvmppkltqtnpkyfacoqhvwonavnpukuppzokvqppmpvpgkhaufislpzhnacpnrnqjgjmzvvpkptpvdacpvnuquuugeppbnlkxjwzxlpzhekubpzzvwhlogkgzkkwtkcvziazogvkevchxmumrgqgmzzcxykdouizvwvjltibvbnlkxdcokzfkswlkkcxrkmydkrsjwrkdgnunuygblteoajtvlwhuqsvpmehpjuqkxfrzvkegypkkawahtqpgazogxluazpnrakukaqmlvwaauksnvudfuuvjkkgrbfmjkqtadmgucxrkm
The string looks like a mess and doesn’t mean anything but it just might be crazy enough to work. If you import a wallet into your Ark client using that as your passphrase, this is what you’ll be greeted with:
That’s it. That’s the last puzzle of our Easter egg hunt. Was it too hard? Did you have fun? Let us know and we’ll take your feedback into account if we ever decide to do another one of these.
