codemageddon17:

The first clue went live at about 9am PST!

[X] [X]

Our CodeHunters on Discord were able to solve this clue within a half hour, determining that the location of the clue was at Confusion Hill, California! (shoutout to Discord user DizzyDwarf [ @dizzydwarf1 ] who solved it first!)

Confusion Hill was home to the 11th clue in the original CipherHunt last summer: a jar of eyeballs. Confusion Hill is also the final resting place of our beloved Bill Cipher statue.

There rests at Confusion Hill a plaque honoring the grave of someone named Minnie. CodeHunters were quickly able to piece together that this must be the location of our next clue.

Unfortunately, we had a time crunch. Confusion Hill would be closing at 5pm, and no one currently online lived close enough to the location to be able to make it there in time.

The CodeMageddon Organizers/Time Agents imposed a time limit: CodeHunters had until 7pm PST to find the clue and inform the rest of the  discord server. If it was not found by then, they would release the clue themselves (however, the physical clue would still be at the location if anyone wanted to go find it later).

We thought that would be the end of it. But around 2pm PST, @timetravellingscientist (Discord: Xantusia) announced that they were about 2 hours from Confusion Hill and would be able to go get the clue!

A few hours later, the clue was posted on Xantusia’s twitter:

[X]

After decoding using Bill’s substitution cipher, CodeHunters were presented with a url: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B6ja8q80UrkMT2IySE9oUG5ETE0

The drive contained two files.

The first was a photograph. The photograph is “one of 1000 mileposts funded by the royal bank of Scotland to mark the creation of the National Cycle Network”

The second was a coded message. Using the Bifid cipher (Message: lsgovthdtatqyvvev, Key: umxdibwlhfzpocsrvnteqagky, Groupsize: 5, the message was revealed to say: lookatthemetadata

The meta data for the photograph read: Dragon, CH8

‘Dragon’ turned out to be in reference to the Welsh flag. ‘CH8’ is a postal code in Wales. It is most likely that the particular totem in that photograph is located along the bike path in the CH8 area, and will have to be found in order to discover the next clue.

Unfortunately, as it is currently the middle of the night over in the UK, no one was available to head to the location and check it out. So our intrepid CodeHunters took to Google Maps street view, scouring the area until they found the specific totem in question, securing a more precise address: the totem in question is across the street from The Crooked Horn, Brynford, Holywell CH8 8AX, UK.

Beyond that, the hunt has been put on hold until tomorrow, when our UK CodeHunters can go investigate in person. 

Happy Hunting! x