It was now up to participants to venture outside and look for clues. Once the countdown reached zero, the page was updated with a list of coordinates all of which corresponded to a location somewhere around the globe. The website mentioned had a countdown as well as an image of a cicada. After multiplying the width and height of the image 509 and 503 respectively with 3301 and adding to the result “.com” at the end like the message directed users were led to a website (Archive of original site). The two missing numbers mentioned in the pre-recorded message proved to be the dimensions of the original black and white image.
Many dismissed the puzzle as a big troll while others perceived its complexity as a challenge.īefore long rumors started going around that this was just the work of a secret society or a government agency looking for skillful recruits in cryptography, steganography and another related field to join its ranks.Īll of those, of course, were nothing but a rumour. A growing community of Internet detectives sought on a mission to solve this very elaborate puzzle but no one was quite sure what to make of it. Goodbye.»īy the following day, the initial image had been reposted all over the Internet. Multiply all three of these numbers and add a. There are 3 prime numbers associated with the original jpeg image.
#OUTGUESS CICADA CODE#
The book along with a code were then used to uncover a now deactivated phone number that when called, played a pre-recorded message. The information contained a link to a subreddit which in turn contained information about a book. This string of text contained a cipher that once deciphered, revealed a link to another image.Īt first, the image was looked at as a dead-end, but using an application known as OutGuess (hence the reference in the image), users were able to discover hidden information within this seemingly dead end. Within minutes of the image being posted, someone discovered that by opening the image file using a text editor, revealed a secret message. And so, the mystery of Cicada 3301 started to unravel. What a small number of people realized was that someone had just set in motion one of the Internet’s most elaborate scavenger hunts to have ever existed. The anonymous author who went by the pseudonym 3301 called users to uncover a message hidden within the image.
#OUTGUESS CICADA ARCHIVE#
On the 4th of January 2012, a user on 4chan posted this image (This screencap seems to be the only surviving archive of the original 4chan thread) to the site’s /b/ otherwise known as «random» chat board.
What started it all was a post on a forum style website called 4chan. By Ermis Efthymiou-Mouzouras & Kleopatra Giannika IntroductionĬicada is the nickname of puzzle project by an organization called 3301, with the final goal, as thought by many, to recruit only the elite of problem solvers and language experts around the world.
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