Right, friends. I’ve devised a small puzzle for you. If you enjoy this one, perhaps I’ll make another one sometime of a bit more significant length. As it is, this one is only a few riddles strung together.
First, download this rar file, and you’ll need WinRar to open it up. I know this requires a bit of trust, but I swear to you that these files are merely innocent, benign rar archives and graphics files. There is no virus, no porn, no illicit or otherwise bad stuff contained herein.
So you’ve downloaded this file, titled The Opening Gambit. Open it up. Inside, you will find a few more archives:
Question the First
Question the Second
Question the Third
Question the Final
WINNER HOORAY
Open up Question the First. Inside, you’ll find a picture, which you should open and – wait! It seems to be password protected! Whatever shall you do?
Well, at the end of this post, you’ll find your first clue. With that clue, you can figure out the password that opens the first picture. That picture contains another clue, which will be the password to the file in Question the Second. The file in Question the Second contains a clue to the password in Question the Third. The file in Question the Third contains a clue to the password in Question the Final. And the file in Question the Final contains a clue to the password in WINNER HOORAY. When you can open up Winner Hooray, you will be a winner – hooray!
You’ll need Winrar, as I said. Aside from that, you’re on your own. There’s at least one more thing you’ll have to get.
Well, to be fair, 99.99% of pirated software comes stored in RAR files. It’s not the format’s fault, but still, that’s probably what they’re thinking of.
All passwords are lowercase, no spaces. In the event of a two-word pass, just mush them together. firetruck, not fire truck or Fire Truck, for example.
A general hint: this game requires knowledge from several spheres. Some of you have already picked up on Cecil’s custom board title, Perfect Master but you will have to have some knowledge of sports, video gaming, and lolcats to make it all the way to the end.
A hint for the second:
The character shown is from a famous video game, and check the filename of the picture you’re trying to open. Wake up and smell the…
An extra hint if the above isn’t enough:
The character shown is the G-Man, from the Half Life series. At the beginning of HL2, he has a monologue: Wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up and smell the…
Gmask is a difficult program to learn how to use from scratch. I suggest taking an image already on your computer and applying a few masks to it just to see what each one does. There’s more than one mask applied to the image, but nothing too complicated. This is a fairly decent tutorial. Good luck with this one – it’s the hardest part of the whole thing.
