Original Author: the Great Owl's Research Institute of Egyptology
Translator&Author: Nightsky#3319 in Rhodes Island HQ
On demand of the redistribution requirement from Gorie, this article and all the contents partially or totally excerpted from Gorie licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.
Editing History:
2019/11/24 v1.0 ep1&2
2019/11/25 v1.1 ep3
2019/12/25 v2.0 ep4-6
Preamble
Who, or what is GORIE?
The Great Owl's Research Institute of Egyptology aka GORIE, 埃及研 is an organization dedicated to solving the puzzle and secret in the mobile game Arknights. GORIE owns skilled, professional members and a strict rating system for newbies.
Gorie has cracked most of the puzzles in Arknights so far. Thanks to them we can take a glance at what is underneath the Arknights. Here I offer my greatest appreciation and admiration to GORIE and their work.
Some puzzles solved by GORIE can be found on their twitter. This article won’t mention any puzzles that already posted on their twitter.
However, there are still puzzles that Gorie can’t solve so far, like the Square, that’s what we are going to talk about today. Let’s head to the back and forth to the puzzle of it.
This article will be updated if they reveal any more clues. So stay tuned!
If you have any idea or clues about the puzzle in Arknights, please share with us in #lore-main channel in RIHQ.
Disclaimer for GORIE member who saw these articles:
我, 也就是文章的作者,已经加入了Future攻坚组群,但我承诺不会引用任何尚未由Gorie发布的资料,如果在下文出现的任何内容如与内部资料相同,并非我故意为之,敬请谅解。
Episode 1
\\/\ \\/ / \\/ \/\ \
Reference: “明日方舟”PV2解谜中期报告 by Gorie
On April 27th, 2019, Arknights Official Bilibili account post the PV2 of Arknights.
At 3:22 of the video, a strange string with slash and backslash appears next to Doctor:
/ / ///// ///// ///\\ ///\\ ///\\ //\\\ /\\\\ \\\// /\/\ /// // /
From the format of the string, we can basically confirm this string is encoded with Morse Code. Decode the string and we get:
TT0088763
COMT
Searching TT0088763 on google and we know it’s the IMDb number of the movie Back to the Future.
About the COMT, Gorie didn’t mention its meaning. The search result pointing to an enzyme called catechol-O-methyltransferase, which was considered to be an important role in schizophrenia. [1] However we still don’t know its relationship with the later puzzle.
Follow the same ways GORIE did with Taiwan server PV, they put future to the end of domain of Arknights: https://ak.hypergryph.com/future
So here we are, the unsolved, puzzling, mysterious, Square.
Episode 2
Uif Gvuvsf
This is what you get from https://ak.hypergryph.com/future, a 9*9 Matrix, scattering with white crosses, some red, blue or white small squares.
Apart from those inexplicable symbols, GORIE also noticed the file name of this picture: tothefuture.png. Put thefuture to the end of domain again, we got another pieces of puzzle: https://ak.hypergryph.com/thefuture.
This picture contains two parts: multiples lines of capitals strings, and 6 lines of “expressions” in the end.
The hyphens in the capital strings indicate that there are 6 parts in these strings. And what about how it encrypted? Let’s try the most famous cipher: Caesar cipher
Caesar cipher basically shift each letter with a certain value in alphabetical order. Although we don’t know how many numbers should we shift to get the right messages, we can do an exhaustive search on these strings since there are only 25 ways to shift the letter. Here I will show you the result of left shifting 1 letter (-1):
ITSNOUSEGOINGBACKTOYESTERDAYBECAUSEIWAS ADIFFERENTPERSONTHENFSJDJKTWFSJDJBNQQTSQDR FPJYMJBMTQJBTWQIGQNSI /UQOGRGQRNGPGXGTIQETCBA YJCVVTWNAJQTTKDNGNKXG UVJGAOWUVNGCF /WKHWUXWKLVUDUHOB SXUHDQGQHYHUVLPSOHDONTASKSHOULDFIREBURN INGASKCOLDDARKALSOTHER EDONTASKTHEBULLETSHOULDT ASTEASKOPPRESSIONEXPLOITATIONSTILLISINDONTASKJU STCAUSETOHAVETOMORROWASK UNEVENTODAYALSOISININTHEWORLD XLIFIKMRRMRKSJSLIQERCK VIEXXVYXLWEVIGSRWMHIVIHXSFIEKEMRWXXLIFILEMS V[2]
The highlighted parts make sense now, however, the rest of the parts are still unreadable. By left shifting with different values, we decrypt the rest of the strings. Here is the decrypted messages, the value they shifted marked in the end of them.
It's no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person then. (-1)
An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind. (-6)
Some people never go crazy, what truly horrible lives they must. (-3)
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. (-4)
Don't ask should fire burning, ask could dark also there. Don' t ask the bullet should taste, ask oppression exploitation still is in. Don't ask just cause to have tomorrow, ask uneven today also is in in the world. (-1)
The beginning of the many great truths are considered to be against the behavior. (-5)
Hmm, looks like some kind of quotes, in fact they are all some famous quotes, you can search their sources on google. But hey, you can also find them in the beginning of the puzzle: PV2. [3]
In the end of PV2, you can see 7 characters. Except Doctor, each character appears with a sentences, which exactly, oops, not exactly but similar to the result we got just now, with some small underlined differences.
So far that’s what we got from pv2, like that Square, the 6 expressions in the end of the picture is still unsolved. The steps of GORIE stopped here, until...
Episode 3
■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■
Reference: “喧闹法则”谜题初步报告
Warning for non-CN server players: The following content may contain spoilers.
Half a year later, on November 12th, Arknights revealed their latest event Code of Brawl. [4]In the picture attached to the post, GORIE found a new clue.
There is a barcode under “CURRENT LOCATION”. According to GORIE’s post, they found it is a Japanese Postal Barcode. [5]
And the result, 0088763, is what we mentioned before: the imdb number of Back to the Future.
When the event began, GORIE found another clue: 2 pieces of QRcodes
The first piece, on the event frontpage, was hidden under the button, but you can capture that before the fade-in animation end.
The second piece was on the left of Supreme Penguin Medal interface.
Obviously this two pieces are complementary. By scanning the QR code from the combination of two pieces, we got another url: https://ak.hypergryph.com/penguinlogistics/tracking/
Enter the number 0088763, and we got the result:
Get bored?
■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■
Then, it’s time to do the number puzzle on newspaper.
Playing with numbers could be fun😃
i’vE dONe wHAt I cAn, I wiLL lOsE mY JOb iF mY BoSs kNEW IT. GoOD LUck mY fRiEnDS, iT’s GOnNa bE a LoNg jOuRnEY. By PL STAFF J.T.
There is text in the end of it. Select the blank area to show the hidden text.
The second line is a series of black and white squares, with the same idea of slash and backslash, we decrypt it using Morse Code again. Here is the result:
0418689
Enter the number above to the tracking textbox again, and we got another result:
The chain of clues stopped here.
Puzzle of the newspaper, Sudoku?
That little red flag, Minesweeper?
Blank Cell, the blank area in that Square?
Is this the key to the solution of that Square?
Or did we even miss something?
This isn’t the end of story. GORIE, and the Future Research Group, are still working on…
Episode 4
Letter from Hypergryph
Reference:迟到与记录者
Date back to November 18th, Penguin Logistics, a weibo account registered by Hypergryph post a puzzle and who solve the puzzle first will receive a present.
The post linked to a picture posted by Arknights official Netease Cloud Music account.
Gorie’s researcher @Surlive found the middle of the pictures has International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 (ITA2) code.[6]
By decrypt with the Alphabet above, we can get the answer:
DJ OKAWARI[7]
Researcher Surlive posted the answer in the comment and soon Penguin Logistic announce that Surlive won the present.
Here is the present from Hypergryph:
A letter from J.T., who appeared before!
Here we go! We got a letter from J.T.! And the “MAP”, a piece of acrylic, looks like it match the Square isn’t it!
From now on, we got almost all the clues about the Future puzzle.
Time to put all of these puzzle pieces together.
Episode 5
Christmas Present
In discussion of future puzzle, there are 3 directions of conjectures, Minesweeper, Cross-Word and Sudoku.
We tried countless ways to fill the Square. Put forward an idea, then demolish it, this is Future groups’ daily routine.
Until…
December 25th
A researcher put forward an idea:
What if we consider the Blank Cell as Flag in minesweeper, and calculate the number of mines based on minesweeper rule on each cell except cross cell?
Then we got
Based on the rule “try PLUS and MINUS” at the end of the letter, we apply this rule to all the numbers. PLUS the number of blue blocks, and MINUS the number of red blocks.
Here we got “the number puzzle on newspaper”, a sudoku. And this sudoku has only one solution:
But how do we know this answer is correct?
At the end of thefuture.jpg, there are 6 rows of equations:
First Row, First Column is 1; Second Row, Second Column is 3…
Yeah! This is exactly the answer we want!
In Penguin Logistics Staff, J.T.’s words, we got the “right compass”, and we have the “MAP”!
Overlay the MAP on the sudoku… Hold up, which direction should I overlay it?
Here it comes, the last piece of the puzzle.
Episode 6
WE ARE HEADING EAST
To find the last piece of the puzzle, we need to go back to 2017.
In the old official website, there is a picture:
The numbers in the middle are encrypted with base 36 (0123456789abcdef...xyz), the result is:
Controlled her mind
The end of it, is exactly, the last piece of the puzzle.[8]
Rotate the MAP to make the “E” facing up, then overlap the MAP on the compass:
And read the overlapped numbers from West to East, we got:
2853523
Now you know what to do, enter the codes into Penguin Logistic Tracking System:
The tracking result:
单号:(+0)2853523
>>>12/23 23:59:59 [已取出] 存储柜超期 包裹1已取出
|
>>>05/01 10:00:00 [待取件] 包裹1已存放至存储柜
|
>>>04/29 16:01:00 [运输中] 货物已到达龙门中转总站
|
>>>04/27 21:15:29 [已揽件] 临时中转站D01已揽件(包裹:1/ ?)
附件:
包裹1内容物扫描件.jpeg
TL:
Order No:(+0)2853523
>>>12/23 23:59:59 [Taken out] Locker expired, Parcel 1 has been taken out
|
>>>05/01 10:00:00 [Waiting for taking out] Parcel 1 has stored in lockers
|
>>>04/29 16:01:00 [Delivering] Cargo has arrived at Lungmen central hub
|
>>>04/27 21:15:29 [Parcel Received] Temporary Hub D01 has received the parcel(Parcel:1/ ?)
Appendix:
Scanning of Parcel 1 content.jpeg
The upper right codes are ITA2 code again:
The content is encoded with unicode, decoded text is:
“我第一次遇到她的时候,她正和那个人一起,艰难地从沙漠返回营地。
起初我并没有在意这个女孩,但是冥冥之中感觉到——她和过去我所见到的所有的孩子都不一样。
虽然作为异乡客,和议长她相处的时间并不长,但是我发现议长看到那个孩子的那一刻,已经不再像离开委员会时那样沮丧,仿佛换了一个人一样。这时我意识到,也许并不是只有我有那样的感觉。
她并不像议长一样如水晶一般耀眼,她更像是一块从煤块中被发现的原石。
她太特别了。
议长最终告诉了我这个孩子的名字——阿米娅。
她说她也许能够引导这个孩子成长,但是我从她的眼中看得出,她更渴望那个孩子能给未来的大地带来一线不一样的曙光。
——记录者”
TL from Viridian#8782:
When I first met her, She was with that person, returning to the camp from the desert with difficulty.
At first I didn’t take much notice of this girl, but felt intuitively that—she’s unlike any child I’ve ever seen.
Although as an outlander, I didn’t spend much time with the president, but I noticed that the moment the president set sight on that child, she’s no longer as depressed as when she left the committee, as if she became another person. This is when I realized, perhaps I’m not the only one with that feeling.
She’s not radiant as a crystal like the president, she’s more like an uncut gemstone found among charcoals.
She’s too special.
The president told me the child’s name in the end—Amiya. She said she might be able to guide this child’s growth, but I can see in her eyes that, what she desires more is that the child can bring a different silver lining to this land in the future.
Recorder
Recorder, who appeared in the earliest weibo posts, then vanished, his identity is still unknown.
Is it the end of future puzzle?
Yesn’t.
We may solve the puzzle about the square, but the Recorder, with all mysterious around him still indicate that we haven’t reach the final truth.
As who participated and witnessed the whole progress, solving the puzzle not only brought me knowledge, which help me solve the EN clue3 first lmao, but also established connection with anyone who love solving puzzles and Arknights. Thanks GORIE, Future group and every one participate in this legendary trip, and you!
See you in next puzzle.
Stay Tuned™
Arknights CN server April Fool Puzzle: Challenge from Conviction
[2] There are some missing letters in this example, which are my typos.