Giveaway is finished now, so posting the solution:

The theme of this puzzle was all about reversal. I explained most of the steps in the hints I added back when I thought I had been too vague, but the problem was a mistake of mine... orz

There are various ways to reverse the stuff in the image, and you were supposed to do each to get to the solution:

  • Reverse the image itself - this one I think was pretty obvious, you could flip it vertically and horizontally, or just turn it upside down, since the result is the same.
  • Reverse the characters in the image
  • Use the atbash cipher, which trades each letter of the alphabet with the one in the same position in a reversed alphabet (so A becomes Z, B becomes Y...). Do the same with the numbers (including 0!)

After reaching the solution, you'd get a group of numbers and letters, which would lead you to a simple jigidi puzzle. Zelgh's guide explains this, if you never saw a similar puzzle before, so I linked it to make the puzzle easier to understand.

So following the steps you'd go:

I hope you liked the puzzle! I'll try to do it properly since the beginning if I try again :D

Puzzle post was the following:

First things first: I apologize. The original version of this puzzle had a wrong initial hint due to my carelessness when creating it. This made the puzzle unsolvable, even if the correct steps were taken. I'm really sorry, and I made it anew while carefully checking up that you do get to the place you're supposed to. Thankfully, there's still more than enough time for the giveaway, so I hope that if you're still interested in the game, you can give the puzzle a new try :D


Yeah, I messed it up.

I was trying to share some december goodness with all the people here, so I created a giveaway for Shenmue I & II (Level 1+), lasting until the 22nd of December, 4:00 PM CET (GMT +1).

Where's the giveaway, you ask? Well, that's kind of the problem. I stored it away so it wouldn't get lost, and took notes so I didn't forget. But I noticed I had written them in the opposite way, so I tried to reverse them. Yet somehow that didn't fix them, so I reversed them again. And since that didn't do the trick, I thought "third time's the charm" and tried reversing them once more.

Guess what, third time wasn't the charm. In the end, my notes became a mess and I can't fix them. But maybe someone else can decipher them, so I'll leave them here for anyone interested :) (look at image at the end of the message)


P.S.: I think the best thing to do to start is look at the notes from a different perspective. After that, a couple of things need to be done to return the notes to their original state. There'll be something to work with then.
P.P.S.: Zelgh's guide is your friend https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/TLR8m/zelgh-magic-guide-to-basic-sg-puzzling-update-october-2017


Extra hints for those who need them:

First step: Reverse the image horizontally, then vertically. Or turn it upside down, it's the same.
Second step: Reverse the order
Third step: each single item in the image is encoded, consider that there are two types of items and each belongs to a particular list. There's info about ciphers in the puzzle guide, finding the code is easy if you consider the theme of the puzzle
Fourth step: use the solution to create a link... to another puzzle :P

View attached image.
4 years ago*

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What's with everyone's obsession with polls?

View Results
Polls are just a fun feature to have some laughs with
Polls are actually a really useful tool for gathering information
Polls are annoying and should be removed, I hate even this one
I don't care about polls, gimme some potato answer to click

Ngl, all this reversing got my brains all scrambled

4 years ago
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I should have bought a GPS instead, but my money is reserved for games!

4 years ago
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Puzzle was wrong and unsolvable, it's updated now. I apologize for the troubles.

4 years ago
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View attached image.
4 years ago
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Puzzle was wrong and unsolvable, it's updated now. I apologize for the troubles.

4 years ago
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I can't figure out what to do. Is this meant to be brute forced or is there a logical way to solve it?

4 years ago
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No, you're not supposed to brute force it. While I say I reversed the notes, I might have not done the same thing every time. So if you try to go back to how the notes were originally, you should get to something. Beyond that, this should probably help you: https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/TLR8m/zelgh-magic-guide-to-basic-sg-puzzling-update-october-2017

If I see it got too complicated, I'll throw a hint along the way.

4 years ago
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Bump, added a couple of additional hints.

4 years ago
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I'm on reverse too :(

Have a bump

View attached image.
4 years ago
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Puzzle was wrong and unsolvable, it's updated now. I apologize for the troubles.

4 years ago
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Bump.

4 years ago
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Puzzle was wrong and unsolvable, it's updated now. I apologize for the troubles.

4 years ago
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pararell?

4 years ago
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I hope you can make sense of this...

4 years ago
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Puzzle was wrong and unsolvable, it's updated now. I apologize for the troubles.

4 years ago
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Bump for still haven't figured it out, but intrigued.

I think I know what you want us to get from the guide, but I still haven't been able to get any success by reversing in different ways to fit that idea.

4 years ago
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Puzzle was wrong and unsolvable, it's updated now. I apologize for the troubles.

4 years ago
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Bumping for new hints added.

Seeing that after a few days no one solved the puzzle, I want to know what happened. My first guess is that the original hints are a tad too vague, but as the (also first time) puzzle creator I have a bit of a problem measuring myself if I'm giving too much information and thus making it not challenging enough. I hope I get the knack for a more appropiate difficulty next time, but I would appreciate any tips that can help me with that :D

4 years ago
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The problem is the encryption, reversing is easy

4 years ago
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Puzzle was wrong and unsolvable, it's updated now. I apologize for the troubles.

4 years ago
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Making puzzles the right difficulty is not easy at all. You often end up with something much too simple, or (as I think in this case) a serious "guess what I'm thinking"-problem :)

Don't give up, there are lots of users here who like a good challenge - and even more who like giveaways :)

4 years ago
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Puzzle was wrong and unsolvable, it's updated now. I apologize for the troubles.

4 years ago
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Don't worry, you're not the first :)

4 years ago
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Hmm, the steps hint you put seem to follow what I've been doing.

Even the encryption step, I'm pretty sure I've been doing what you seem to suggest, but I haven't been able to get a working answer for step 4. Even the two lists thing that you mention makes sense to me.

I feel like I'm using the right cipher based on what you said, but maybe one or both of my lists are wrong. For one of those lists, 2 ways seemed logically for me so I tried both scenarios. For the other one, I've just been following what is set up online so I assumed it was that but maybe that's not correct.

Final step makes sense to me as well. I considered 2 possibilities, but one of them made more sense to me.

4 years ago
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What you say that's happening to you makes sense so one of the scenarios should have turned up right. Given that, I tried to put the code back myself and I think I might have ACTUALLY messed up when creating the hint (one of the items isn't turning into what I expected it would).

If that's what happening... talk about an embarrassment. I have proper notes back at home with the steps I took, I will check them up and confirm it, but it will take some time, because I just got to work. Since I'm thinking that it's a high chance that it's the case, let me apologize beforehand. If it were the case that I mistakenly put a wrong hint, what steps should I take? Do I ask a moderator to close this thread and create a new one, or do I just update the thread and explain the situation in the main message?

*EDIT: I did indeed make a mistake. I just updated the thread and put a new image which I carefully checked that worked. I hope everyone can forgive me, I really failed there :(

4 years ago*
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IMPORTANT BUMP:

I'm sorry everyone. I made a mistake when I initially created the puzzle which made it unsolvable. So it might not have been that you did anything wrong: even if you didn't, I had and you wouldn't get to where you were supposed to. The puzzle is corrected now.

4 years ago
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That is good to know. So I was not just too stupid to figure out what to do. :)
Bump for solved!

4 years ago
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Would put this in the main post as an update so anyone who comes across this again knows you changed the image now.
EDIT: Nevermind, I see you did that already.

Bump for solved!

4 years ago*
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Bump for solved

4 years ago
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View attached image.
4 years ago
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Less than 3 days now!

4 years ago
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4 years ago
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Done! I hope it was the corrected version of the puzzle, and not the initial one, because I made a mistake when encrypting myself and forgot the alphabet contains X...

4 years ago
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4 years ago
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Closed 3 years ago by RiderOfPhoenix.