Save the Date by Google

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".

packetized 3439 days 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

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

jdutoit 3439 days ago

Agreed :)

lnanek2 3438 days 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.

akappa 3439 days ago

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

oldstrangers 3439 days ago

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

amingilani 3439 days ago

Anything except... sigh, I guess nevermind. I fell for it.

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

They didn't. Go to the actual coordinates on Maps and they're not there.

It's Photoshop.

stcwhirled 3439 days ago

Actually look at the videos on the ending page. You can see that they actually did create them. There are people in some of the gifs.

jdutoit 3439 days ago

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

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

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

nikisweeting 3439 days ago

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

wes-k 3439 days ago

"Shoreline Amphitheatre" is the answer.

abe_duarte 3439 days ago

Meh...

iplaw 3439 days ago

Boo.

jafhdjkashdfj 3439 days ago

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

Pic is called base64

(upvote this so we can start a new subthread)

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

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

jobead 3439 days ago

ok, so what's the final set of coordinates then? searching that on google maps and putting the center point into savethedate.foo did not work.

They broke our expectations. I put in coordinates too, but it's just "Shoreline Amphitheatre".

Yeah I tried that too! It bucks the trend and just wants you to enter the name.

espeed 3439 days ago

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

How dare you assume my ethnicity! /s

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

dzolvd 3439 days ago

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

jafhdjkashdfj 3439 days 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 3439 days ago

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

kernald 3439 days ago

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

xur17 3439 days 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.

amingilani 3439 days 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

yggda 3439 days ago

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

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

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

5, 17, 18, 19, numerically

typicalbender 3439 days ago

Do the number of pawns correspond to the puzzle number?

jobead 3439 days ago

do these somehow correspond to chess move notation?

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?

batrofin 3439 days ago

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

ltowel 3439 days ago

place the 3 black pawns and 7 white pawns to add to the appropriate numbers?

My guess would be black/white corresponds to lat/long? (or vice versa)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Scholars...

Something to think about: chess notation is 1-8 and a-f., with a1 on the bottom left and h8 on the upper right.

If we use chess notation, could that give us a lat/long using the special instructions from the last puzzle?

siddarthd2919 3439 days ago

or maybe position the white rooks and black rooks in their spots to remove those numbers from the board?

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

alejoriveralara 3439 days ago

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

abe_duarte 3439 days ago

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

Ruphin 3439 days ago

Note the remaining pieces on the board.

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

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

anotherturn 3439 days ago

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

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

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

HebrewToYou 3439 days ago

V2hlcmUgaGF2ZSB5b3UgYmVlbj8 --> "Where have you been?"

hadriendavid 3439 days ago

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

xur17 3439 days ago

File info decodes to: Where have you been?

serkanyersen 3439 days ago

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

siddarthd2919 3439 days ago

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

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

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? :)

VuWall-Matt 3439 days 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.

ChrisBland 3439 days ago

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

working on it now

jawns 3439 days ago

I think "you can always count on a good time at the beach" refers to actual counting.

And here's the transcript, with some numbers:

    0:00Magic
    0:03I.
    0:06See
    0:10_
    0:12a
    0:16beach,
    0:19-yes.
    0:21_
    0:25I
    0:28explore
    0:30daylight

amacalac 3439 days ago

I believe:

latitude: MagicI.See_abeach, longitude: -yes._Iexploredaylight

Not sure what the encoding is. I've tried the "letter to number" encryption which gives:

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

Simply adding the numbers, grouped before + after decimal point leads to:

42.2920, -49.120

but this isn't the correct answer

samirparikh 3439 days ago

its lat,lng with the . representing the decimal point

wmblaettler 3439 days ago

Count the characters in each word, _ means 0

[1] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11uA9a5wgoY9w9vOyx3C7...

ceocoder 3439 days ago

That takes us to this[1] Google doc with this embedded video[2]

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8uV0dCTKrE

GauntletWizard 3439 days ago

The doc with video gives us numbers:

053 050 046 049056050049044032050048046057057054053

These represent the ascii codepoints of the next lat/long.

refrigerator 3439 days ago

51.3015, -3.0178

Ahh thanks. Any idea on the next one? :P

EDIT: Nevermind 3 should be easy for most HNers. Wrote that before I even saw it.

yellowait44 3439 days ago

There is an hexadecimal block hidden in caves.jpg:

4e 75 6d 62 65 72 73 20 61 72 65 20 61 6d 61 7a 69 6e 67 2e 20 46 6f 6c 6c 6f 77 20 74 68 65 20 63 6f 75 6e 74 2e 0d 0a 0d 0a 0d 0a 20 20 56 20 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 0d 0a 3e 20 31 20 20 37 20 20 38 20 20 35 20 20 34 20 20 31 30 20 31 20 20 32 20 20 36 20 20 33 20 20 36 20 20 31 2e 20 39 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 34 2e 20 32 20 20 39 20 20 34 20 20 32 20 20 37 20 20 39 20 20 38 20 20 35 20 20 36 20 20 35 20 20 32 20 20 37 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 34 20 20 31 30 20 39 20 20 37 20 20 34 20 20 32 20 20 35 20 20 39 20 20 36 20 20 38 20 20 31 30 20 37 20 20 39 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 38 20 20 35 20 20 33 20 20 35 20 20 33 20 20 35 20 20 34 20 20 37 20 20 32 20 20 39 20 20 36 20 20 31 20 20 38 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 32 20 20 37 20 20 31 20 20 33 20 20 34 20 20 31 20 20 35 20 20 38 20 20 34 20 20 39 20 20 38 20 20 38 20 20 33 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 36 20 20 31 20 20 39 20 20 34 20 20 35 20 20 35 20 20 37 20 20 33 20 20 31 20 20 32 20 20 36 20 20 31 30 20 34 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 31 30 20 38 20 20 37 20 20 31 20 20 32 20 20 34 20 20 35 20 20 38 20 20 32 20 20 35 20 20 37 20 20 39 20 20 31 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 32 20 20 33 20 20 35 20 20 37 20 20 31 20 20 34 20 20 36 20 20 39 20 20 35 20 20 33 20 20 34 20 20 35 20 20 36 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 39 20 20 31 20 20 34 20 20 34 20 20 38 20 20 33 20 20 37 20 20 36 20 20 32 20 20 35 20 20 31 20 20 36 20 20 37 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 32 20 20 31 20 20 39 20 20 33 20 20 37 20 20 34 20 20 35 20 20 37 20 20 33 20 20 36 20 20 38 20 20 37 20 20 38 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 38 20 20 33 20 20 38 20 20 35 20 20 38 20 20 34 20 20 36 20 20 31 20 20 35 20 20 39 20 20 31 2c 20 31 30 20 36 7c 0d 0a 20 7c 36 20 20 33 20 20 35 20 20 37 20 20 37 20 20 31 20 20 31 30 20 34 20 20 38 20 20 36 20 20 33 20 20 35 20 20 39 20 3e 0d 0a 20 20 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 76 0d 0a

  Numbers are amazing. Follow the count.

    V -----------------------------------
  > 1  7  8  5  4  10 1  2  6  3  6  1. 9|
   |4. 2  9  4  2  7  9  8  5  6  5  2  7|
   |4  10 9  7  4  2  5  9  6  8  10 7  9|
   |8  5  3  5  3  5  4  7  2  9  6  1  8|
   |2  7  1  3  4  1  5  8  4  9  8  8  3|
   |6  1  9  4  5  5  7  3  1  2  6  10 4|
   |10 8  7  1  2  4  5  8  2  5  7  9  1|
   |2  3  5  7  1  4  6  9  5  3  4  5  6|
   |9  1  4  4  8  3  7  6  2  5  1  6  7|
   |2  1  9  3  7  4  5  7  3  6  8  7  8|
   |8  3  8  5  8  4  6  1  5  9  1, 10 6|
   |6  3  5  7  7  1  10 4  8  6  3  5  9 >
    ------------------------------------v

VuWall-Matt 3439 days ago

Here's 4: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B2BGioksxQiRc2hpTDJ1...

Looks like caves.jpg has something wrong with it, but I'm not sure what to do with it.

VuWall-Matt 3439 days ago

Okay, for four open caves.jpg in Notepad. Inside is some hex:

Convert it to a string and you get:

??Numbers are amazing. Follow the count.

  V -----------------------------------

> 1 7 8 5 4 10 1 2 6 3 6 1. 9|

|4. 2 9 4 2 7 9 8 5 6 5 2 7|

|4 10 9 7 4 2 5 9 6 8 10 7 9|

|8 5 3 5 3 5 4 7 2 9 6 1 8|

|2 7 1 3 4 1 5 8 4 9 8 8 3|

|6 1 9 4 5 5 7 3 1 2 6 10 4|

|10 8 7 1 2 4 5 8 2 5 7 9 1|

|2 3 5 7 1 4 6 9 5 3 4 5 6|

|9 1 4 4 8 3 7 6 2 5 1 6 7|

|2 1 9 3 7 4 5 7 3 6 8 7 8|

|8 3 8 5 8 4 6 1 5 9 1, 10 6|

|6 3 5 7 7 1 10 4 8 6 3 5 9 >

  ------------------------------------v

ChrisBland 3439 days ago

Ascii 7 bit encoding - 52.1821, 20.9965

iplaw 3439 days ago

Using this thread to say that the page names may mean something, but I didn't notice initially.

5 -

17 -

18 - Poland

wallzz 3439 days ago

should we count the numbers or something ?

westondeboer 3439 days ago

Is the caves.jpg broken for everyone?

westondeboer 3439 days ago

the caves has instructions in the metadata FBMD01000a9c0d0000ec4f000055df0000b5e80000fcfa00005cb2010013ef020069fc02003d110300942b0300b0ce0500

xigency 3439 days ago

It shows a 17 on the page. Just a note.

nneonneo 3439 days ago

caves.jpg is broken for me too. I'm on mobile - has anyone checked the JPG metadata?

Yep

yes the image is broken

51.3015,-3.0178

What's the red thing in the upper-left?

I was thinking maybe it was part of a chip bag. Then you could run that fancy subpixel-motion sound extraction algorithm on it pretty easily (fitting with "See What Cannot Be Heard").

But the timecodes are probably a more likely thing...

refrigerator 3439 days ago

Looks like a Maoam wrapper (type of sweet)

amingilani 3439 days ago

Same boat. My head hurts. Red Herring: there are 5 punctuations in the sentence

Sodman 3439 days ago

Possibly related to the big '5' that appears on the savethedate.foo site after entering the latlong?

If you take out the other text, we're left with "._,-.-". Removing the comma leaves us with 5 characters "._-.-" Morse code?

From the description:

>You can always count on a good time at the beach...

midhir 3439 days ago

Video appears to be at least 50% speed :)

morhope 3439 days ago

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

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

iplaw 3439 days ago

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

It sounds like the surf to me.

wmblaettler 3439 days ago

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

cableshaft 3439 days ago

That might not be a clue. It's 5 puzzles, so maybe it's just counting down 5,4,3,2,1.

EDIT: Haha, oops, nevermind.

chowes 3439 days ago

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

ucaetano 3439 days ago

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

Ajedi32 3439 days ago

That's not part of the video itself though, it's just the usual branding watermark shown by YouTube. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6147757?hl=en

It probably appears in all videos on the Google Developer channel.

berberous 3439 days ago

What format do you input?

siddarthd2919 3439 days ago

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

MagicI.See_abeach,-yes._Iexploredaylight

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

amacalac 3439 days 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

ekr 3439 days 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.

iraphael 3439 days ago

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

devty 3439 days ago

it could be your adblock whatever plugin you use to disable trackers

iraphael 3439 days ago

that was it! thanks!

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-...

neogodless 3439 days 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?

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

Nine spaces down, I believe

1-down

4-right

2-left

9-down

8-right

etc

wes-k 3439 days ago

How did you work out the movement sequences?

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.

wes-k 3439 days ago

Deduction at it's finest - thanks!

graeham 3439 days ago

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

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

bevacqua 3439 days ago

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

tmaly 3439 days 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

Ajedi32 3439 days 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 3439 days ago

From the js file:

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

Wish I had time to play.

CiPHPerCoder 3439 days 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.

NotSteve 3439 days ago

I had no idea foo was a tld

abeisgreat 3439 days ago

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

fredley 3439 days ago

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