“Heaven pity the web developers.”
The Book of Bill contains a pseudo-copyright page, with the following note:
https://ThisIsNotAWebsiteDotCom.com/ is, of course, an actual website.
Prior to July 23, 2024, the site contained only “△” and a black background. See here for an archival link.
Currently, it contains a password prompt.
The “SUBMIT” button queries https://mystery.thisisnotawebsitedotcom.com/ with the sanitized contents of the password field (meaning that spaces, punctuation, etc. are irrelevant to potential passwords). Invalid passwords receive a 404; valid passwords receive content which is appended to the webpage.
fetch("https://mystery.thisisnotawebsitedotcom.com/", {
method: "POST",
body: i
})
Only alphanumeric characters are permitted. The text is sanitized with the following regex:
/[^a-z0-9?]/gi
A code on page 42 of the book decrypts to the following:
Need a password? Fine, I’ll talk. It’s the name of the eyeball doc.
The eye doctor in The Great Gatsby (a portion of which is reprinted in The Book of Bill) is named T. J. Eckleburg. This is a valid password.
Before 7/30/2024 7:00 PM UTC, this password returned a countdown timer.
The ciphertext in this image decrypts to “LOST FILES”.
The coffee stains decrypt to portions of the phrase “HIS DIMENSION NOW DECEASED SCALENE AND EUCLID REST IN PEACE”, which can also be found in the coffee stains in the book. This was found by overlaying the coffee stains on this ring of letters found in the book:
After the initial timer expired, the password returned the following (henceforth “reverse timer screen”):
This update changed the page title from “👁️△” to “TIME IS DEAD AND MEANING HAS NO MEANING”.
On 7/31/2024, at 4:47 PM UTC, this update was confirmed to be an actual maintenance screen.
Points of interest on this page will be referenced for the remainder of this document according to the following diagram:
Field 1 contained a randomized message, chosen from the following set of strings (found at https://thisisnotawebsitedotcom.com/frontend/javascript/controllers/secrets_controller.js):
"Oops, the Mystery Shack is currently experiencing some delays dude! Please bare with us as we figure out which wire goes where!"
"Lets see... the blue wire is connected to the....hip bone...."
"So what I wanna know is, why are cryptic riddles always written down on tattered yellowed parchment. Get some normal paper dude!"
"Still comin, dudes! In the meantime, please enjoy this fine literature while you wait. People are saying its the book of the summer!"
"In the meantime, experience some soothing tunes while you wait. They drown out the rage, dude!"
"I tried to explain to Mr Pines how to open a PDF one time. He got so angry and confused that he punched through my Funko shelf! Many brave Funkos were lost that day..."
"My favorite Otter Pop is Sir Isaac Lime. But Louie Bloo is pretty cool too. Which is your favorite Otter Pop? Sound off in chat!"
"If the ICEE bear was real, I wonder if he would be my friend..."
"Hopefully nobody was expecting anything too crazy , heh heh!"
"Hey dude, did you know that computers are filled with ghouls? That’s a fact."
"I’M gonna watch YOU. You’re the website now, dude!"
"To quote a great man, “everythings gonna be alright...rockabye”"
"I wonder if its possible to taste your own tongue. Im gonna get to the bottom of this,dude!"
"Boy that counter is MESSED UP. I guess we’ll be ready when it finally reaches the bottom of....math?"
"Man, I tried to look at that Bill Book and it was just a bunch of static and the words “HE’S UNCORRUPTABLE.” Whats that mean? Beats me, dawg!"
"Are you Blanchin? Girl we blanchin! I live up in a- dang, still in my head!"
"If I can’t get this fixed, this WILL be the Final Countdown, dudes!”
At an unknown point, an additional string was added, embedding a base64-encoded PNG. See Alternate Soos Image for more details.
Field 2 (Soos) was clickable. Clicking here changed the displayed message. The messages were selected verifiably randomly, and not displayed in any particular order.
Field 3 contained a “countdown” timer, which is counting upward.
On 8/9/24 7:40 PM UTC, the site was updated:
The copy of The Great Gatsby found at https://files.thisisnotawebsitedotcom.com/is-it-time-yet/the-great-gatsby.pdf is taken from https://www.planetebook.com/the-great-gatsby/. The file is identical. This can be confirmed easily with a binary comparison:
The Great Gatsby has been available as a PDF from Planet Ebook since 2008. This file contains no changes or encrypted messages.
This does not necessarily rule out its potential usage as e.g. a decryption tool of some sort, when coupled with actual ciphertext. However, it should not be treated as a puzzle in and of itself.
The “soothing tunes” text links to the following YouTube video:
Brad Breeck - Gravity Falls Main Title Theme (From "Lofi: Gravity Falls"/Visualizer Video)
This video was published on July 25, 2024.
A playlist of official lo-fi Gravity Falls Remixes may be found at:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXaH20eIS38YOxxpF2fykPXklrjIUtkab
Known points of interest are located in spectrograms of the following videos’ audio:
Weirdmageddon Pt. 1A contains the text “REMEMBER EUCLYDIA”:
It also contains Morse code, which decrypts to the same text.
Gideon’s Theme contains the text “FREE ME”:
This info courtesy of the “Lofi Beats to Decipher to” document.
An alternate image was added to the table of potential Soos messages at an unknown point after the initial reverse timer screen changes. The table has been documented both before and after the change, and contains no other alterations.
The image appears in Field 1, replacing text entirely.
The probability of this message being seen, with the current number of messages, is 1/18. It is the same probability as any of the other messages.
This decodes to "SO! MANY! QUESTIONS!" in the “Cipheric alphabet”. A key to this alphabet, created by Gandlebob in the Discord server, is provided below:
The “glowing eyes” overlay image is also provided as a base64 string. It is sized to cover the full existing image, and is shown here cropped for easier viewing.
countdown_controller.js queries https://files.thisisnotawebsitedotcom.com/is-it-time-yet/well-is-it.txt.
Currently, this text file only contains the text “NO”.
The code contains a handler for the text file containing a URL. If this is the case, the user will be redirected to the URL provided in the text file.
Any value other than “NO” or a URL will set the countdown’s end time to the contents of the text file.
The explicit “it is not time” comment before the “NO” line seems intended for those inspecting the website, as opposed to a true developer comment.
The site has a variable tracking the amount of time remaining until the target timestamp. When that amount originally reached zero, the timestamp text was changed to “NOW”, and a suggestion to refresh the page.
The site was built using the Bridgetown framework. Anything in the https://thisisnotawebsitedotcom.com/_bridgetown/ directory should almost certainly be considered irrelevant. While site-specific code is present in some files, that code is duplicated in files outside of the _bridgetown directory.
stimulus.js and index.esm.js are standard library modules: stimulus originates from Stimulus, and index.esm originates from Fancyapps. These should be ignored.
The vast majority of index.M723IYP7.js is from the Fancyapps library. While there has been speculation about the references to Google Maps, YouTube, and Vimeo in the code, these references are part of the generic library function processType. Other sites that use Fancyapps also contain this function as a generic handler; here is an arbitrary example.
The contents of secrets_controller.js are reproduced at the bottom of index.M723IYP7.js. This section is identical, and contains no new information.
The Fancyapps libraries are commercial software. However, they are open-source. Code can be found for comparison purposes at https://github.com/fancyapps/ui/tree/main/dist.
Should there be a need to analyze the site’s minified Javascript files, https://beautifier.io/ can be used to improve their readability. However, there is currently no indication that analyzing the site’s internals will produce new information.
Doc compiled with love by Team DEATHTRIANGLE: Aura Irving, Bella, “...”, k.odak, and an anonymous additional friend