Introduction
In the depths of the internet, a mysterious and enigmatic puzzle emerged, captivating the attention of curious minds around the world. Known as Cicada 3301, this elaborate online challenge presented a series of complex riddles, ciphers, and mysterious clues, all seemingly designed to recruit individuals with exceptional intelligence and problem-solving skills.
The Emergence of Cicada 3301
In January 2012, a post appeared on 4Chanw, inviting users to embark on a challenging intellectual journey, claiming they required highly intelligent people, most people speculating that this was a gateway to the illuminati or what they call it now "The Matrix". The message, signed by "3301" stated that there is a hidden message in the image itself that will take you to the next puzzle. In this article, we will take you through the journey of solving the cicada 3301 puzzles.
Stage 1
The Cicada 3301 puzzle starts from the image itself. At first, we can't seem to find anything by our naked eyes. However, by opening the image in a text editor like the notepad on your pc, you will find a "caesar cypher link" at the very bottom. Basically, a cryptic hyperlink to an image.
Stage 2
The Cypher link takes you to an image of a duck, which may seem as a dead end. However, by taking a hint from the words "out" and "guess" from the image, puzzle solvers used an application called "outguess". Outguess is an application by which the users can extract hidden files or text encrypted onto an image.
The Outguessed text lead to a subreddit and a series of ratios. We will use the ratios later in the puzzle.
Stage 3
An anonymous user had uploaded not one, not two but 128 random posts with nothing but pure gibberish. None of the posts had any content or comments. However, out of the 128 posts, we find two posts with images.
The outguessed information had nothing useful but a signature of Cicada. With it's rise to popularity, Cicada also came across people trying to create fake puzzles. It was to ensure the solvers that they were on the right page.
Back on the reddit website, one user noticed the Maya numerals at the top of the subreddit. By using these exact codes, we can decypher the gibberish of the 128 to meaningful sentences. Combining all the sentences together, we get a full page out of a book called "The Mabinogion".
Now, about the ratios we outguessed from the previous image. These ratios are nothing but book codes. With decoding all the book codes, we finally get a meaningful sentence.
"Call us at telephone numBer two one four three nine oh nine six oh eight"
By calling on this phone number, the puzzle solvers hear a pre-recorded message:
"Very good, you have done well. There are three prime numbers associated with the original final .JPEG image. 3301 is one of them. You will have to find the other two. Multiply all three of them together and add a .com to find the next step. Goodluck. Goodbye"
Stage 4
Back at the very first image, we do not find any number except of course "3301". Neither opening the image in a text editor or outguessing the image seemed to do the trick. They were the dimensions of the image, The length and the width of the image. By multiplying all three of the numbers and adding "www." and ".com", we get a link.
Clicking on the link, we get redirected to an image of Cicada and an countdown below. One user outguessed the image and we got coordinates of 14 different location scattered all over the world. Now, the solvers would have to go all across the globe to solve the infamous puzzle.
On every location we find a poster with QR code. After scanning each of them, we get two common messages. First one was a poem and second one were the book codes.
The End
The poem takes us to a book and after decoding the book codes we finally get a link. The link takes us to the dark web. Those absolute geniuses who get to website first get recruited by Cicada. The late comers were not welcomed. The site got shut down with a message "We want the best. Not the followers.".
What happened to the recruited individuals? Why does Cicada need such high intelligent individuals? Well, no one knows. Some people came forward claiming that they got recruited by the secret organization. Cicada 3301 also uploaded two more interesting puzzles in the upcoming years, but let us leave that for the next article.
Stay tuned.