Challenge: Down the rabbit hole — part 1.

Hi, I’ve decided to take on a challenge (the challenge) that I found on the internet. I’m going to make several posts about this because it has multiple steps, and I don’t want to compress it all into one post. This is a walkthrough, so as I mentioned in my previous entry, it contains spoilers. I hope you enjoy it.

STEP 1 — STARTING POINT

“This summer, I got a message from my friend. I knew she was planning to visit Europe, but didn’t have any clue where she was going. The message said: “I came to a city that welcomed me with a puzzle. While sightseeing I was tricked to go to the train station an hour earlier. And that’s all because of the cathedral bells ringing noon not at the time you’d expect them to. While I ran down from the hill along a little street named after a president, just behind that cathedral I noticed a skull painted by a gate. Just behing that gate somebody left a piece of cloth. Its color is the password that will let you find my next exact location.”

So this is it, the first part of the challenge: a message. I was expecting a picture. Okay, not expecting, but I would have preferred a picture. Enough joking around. Now, I need to analyze the text and see what I can understand from it:

Text anlyses:

Europe.

city that welcome with a puzzle.

cathedral bells that rings before noon.

street named after a president.

So, this girl was in Europe, in a city with a cathedral. I will start my research from this point, conducting a search on Google. Maybe this will inspire my next trip. The search for “city in Europe famous for cathedral” yielded too many results, so I might need to find another piece of information to narrow it down. I like the part about a “city that welcomes with a puzzle.” Let’s try googling that exact phrase, plus the word “Europe.” If I don’t have any luck, I’ll revert to the first search, but this time I’ll also add the word “bells” to it.

This is the first result. I’m not sure if this is the right one, but it’s worth a look before I conduct another search on Google. So, I’m heading to Google Maps, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to use Street View.

I don’t see any important information, so I need to think of another approach. The message says that the bells ring before “noon,” so before 12 PM. Let’s try to search for “cathedral in Europe where bells ring before 12 PM.” No good results. I’ll refine the search to “cathedral in Europe where bells ring at 11 AM.”

“Brno” let’s continue to search for this name on Google. Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul, this could be the right place, as its bells ring before noon. Now I need to locate the street that is named after a president. I know that it’s in the Czech Republic, so let’s do a search for “Brno streets named after presidents.”

Masarykova Street, Brno is the first result that comes up. Let’s check it out.

This seems to be the street, but it looks too large to be a “little street.” So, it might be the wrong one. At this point, I decide to look closer to the cathedral. I can see the station, so I need to find a smaller street not far from it that leads to the station.

My attention turns to Ulička Václava Havla. Let’s check if this is named after a president.

Let’s take a walk down this “little street,” starting from the top and heading toward the station.

That is the skull we were looking for. Now I need to look behind the gate to find the cloth I’m seeking.

Ok, now let’s create the MD5 hash of the color (purple) and use it as a password.

STEP 2 — A STRANGE MESSAGE

P.S: I’ve decided to include the second step here because it’s quick to complete and I wouldn’t want to use a separate blog post for it.

“The next message I got from my friend was strange. I think there was something wrong with her phone. The message I got was just “Going to 727774447777”. Did she want to type a phone number or something was wrong with her phone? Could that be the hint to find the clue to her next location?”

It looks like a coded message, cryptography. Great, I don’t know anything about it, so I’ll use a tool to decode it.

I am going to use dcode.fr and the Cipher Identifier on the website.

The analysis suggests that the message could be in Multi-Tap Phone (SMS) cipher, so I select that cipher and input my numbers.

The answer is “PARIS.” I convert the word to lowercase, then create the MD5 hash, and that gives me the next password.

Let’s go to paris then. See you in the next post!