This Creepy Puzzle Arrived In Our Mail

October 20, 2015 4:29 AM

"We received a letter from Poland containing a really weird CD. Written on the disc is what looks like a product key, however upon examining the contents of the CD it’s quite clear that this is a puzzle of some sort." More, from the Washington Post.
posted by jbickers (34 comments total)

SEEKING TANIS RUNNER WANTED
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:44 AM on October 20, 2015 [7 favorites]

hey guys i found some letters it says KNIRD IS PEP LUBE or something can you help me figure it out
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:45 AM on October 20, 2015 [4 favorites]

I don't want any more goddamned Ovaltine.
posted by delfin at 5:19 AM on October 20, 2015 [16 favorites]

The outside looks like a DES-encrypted string.

The trailing = gives it away as Base64.
posted by acb at 5:51 AM on October 20, 2015

Spy vs. Spy on Last Day? Sometimes mashups really confuse me.
posted by aught at 6:00 AM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

So the next project from The Disturbing Puzzle Game That Nobody Can Solve author?
posted by effbot at 6:00 AM on October 20, 2015

Oh, these sweet summer children, playing their first ARG! I wonder when they'll do their first reverse-DNS lookup.
posted by adrianhon at 6:10 AM on October 20, 2015 [14 favorites]

The last update appears to indicate that this is a shaggy dog tale that ends with: "check out Skrillex's new album!"
posted by codacorolla at 7:45 AM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well, I, for one, can't wait to see what deeply underwhelming horror movie this is a tie-in for.
posted by metaxa at 7:50 AM on October 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

B-E-S-U-R-E-T-O-D-R-I ...
posted by k5.user at 7:53 AM on October 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

Well, I, for one, can't wait to see what deeply underwhelming horror movie this is a tie-in for.

Which would possibly be Dan Brown's "Inferno", according to many commenters.
posted by metaxa at 8:02 AM on October 20, 2015

Having just watched all of Mr. Robot AND the first two Hellraiser movies, a strange disk that might actually be a puzzle does not sound like something you want in the house.
posted by elr at 8:25 AM on October 20, 2015 [6 favorites]

THAT IS NOT A CD IT SAYS DVD+R RIGHT THERE ON THE GOD DAMN DISC DO WORDS NOT HAVE MEANINGS ANY MORE??
posted by Dysk at 8:30 AM on October 20, 2015 [19 favorites]

This bugged me too. Also, thank you for saying DISC and not DISK. But I'd guess from your username you are careful that way.
posted by achrise at 8:46 AM on October 20, 2015 [4 favorites]

DO WORDS NOT HAVE MEANINGS ANY MORE??

Not at The Washington Post.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:52 AM on October 20, 2015

Boards of Canada can't do anything in a straightforward way can they?
posted by ardgedee at 8:52 AM on October 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

Reminds me of the Cicada 3301 puzzle. It's probably something similar, maybe an ARG as someone above suggested.
posted by Beethoven's Sith at 8:54 AM on October 20, 2015

Man, these ski resort promos are getting more and more desperate.
posted by anthom at 9:16 AM on October 20, 2015 [6 favorites]

one spectrogram produced by Reddit user M4nic_H3dgehog (and more or less successfully replicated using the same software by us) contains detailed, and very, very graphic images of what appear to be one or multiple women being tortured.

Nope, fuck you, puzzle maker. I like puzzles too, but there's no way I'm looking any further into this one. This was creepy without torture being involve. Go fuck yourself.
posted by maryr at 9:57 AM on October 20, 2015 [7 favorites]

Does tthis have to do with death in a Turkish airport?
posted by Oyéah at 10:10 AM on October 20, 2015

To answer six private messages and boundless future ones: no, I had nothing to do with this one. Really.

Looks cute though. I like the use of the video itself as the framing device rather than Yet Another Black Website.
posted by rokusan at 10:12 AM on October 20, 2015

I have a hard time seeing someone doing something like this as a tie-in to a Ron Howard movie if it does indeed have real pictures of torture in it. Either some marketing company's gone off the deep end, or possibly someone who'd read the book took inspiration from it without being affiliated with the movie?
posted by Sequence at 10:20 AM on October 20, 2015

Yeah, the torture thing was a line too far for me. That takes it from "fun X-Files fantasy" to "uninvited reminder of humanity's basest cruelty".
posted by escape from the potato planet at 10:30 AM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

From the Washington Post article:

“I was pretty scared when people started to suggest it’s a serial killer,” Krahbichler said. “Although it seems someone had found one of the ‘gruesome’ images on Google, making that seem doubtful.”

Not that copied fake torture is any better than real (fake) torture, but just FYI.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:48 AM on October 20, 2015

Dysk: "DO WORDS NOT HAVE MEANINGS ANY MORE??"

Not when they're acronyms.
posted by schmod at 1:21 PM on October 20, 2015

Spoiler Alert: When the puzzle is completely solved it reveals that you've just won 500 Free Hours of AOL
posted by mcstayinskool at 1:35 PM on October 20, 2015

I checked out the objectionable spectrogram, and I'm very, very doubtful that's real snuff. The super low fidelity of converting to spectrogram line art would make even a bad photoshop / bad make-up job passable. I still think that it's viral marketing, although likely not for a major media or product brand. Indie / eastern european artist, game dev, or producer seems more likely.
posted by codacorolla at 2:46 PM on October 20, 2015

The super low fidelity of converting to spectrogram line art would make even a bad photoshop / bad make-up job passable.

Your comment emboldened me to track down the images myself. You're right that the images could easily have been faked (although my money is on staged photography, rather than Photoshop). Nonetheless, they are clearly actual photographs of actual nude women, portrayed in graphically and gruesomely violent situations.

It's a distasteful and unnecessary shock tactic (and hopefully nothing more than that).

The speculation that this disc came from a serial killer seems a bit silly and naïve—this reads very clearly as an ARG of some kind. That video of the robed guy is legit creepy tho.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:00 PM on October 20, 2015

filthy light thief: "Not that copied fake torture is any better than real (fake) torture, but just FYI."

Better than real (real) torture. As in, I'm glad they got the torture images off the internet instead of off the sd card of their camera. I'd be 1000X more glad if there were no torture images at all. Fuck whoever made this.
posted by double block and bleed at 5:48 PM on October 20, 2015

Apparently, the torture images are from a low budget German movie from 2007 called Slasher.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:56 AM on October 21, 2015

Faga beefe?
posted by Ennis Tennyone at 9:42 AM on October 21, 2015

For what it's worth, at no point have I believed they were real torture (at least, not created for this specific use). I'm still disgusted that they felt it necessary to include it.
posted by maryr at 10:09 AM on October 21, 2015

Because gratuitous torture is dark and intense and extreme, just like the shitty dance-music album this marketing exercise is trying to flog.

See also: Jamie Zawinski's rant about “brodustrial” music. Or any of 30+ years' worth of discourse about jocks and meatheads failing to get what “punk” is.
posted by acb at 10:22 AM on October 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Bump.
The place has been found in Poland, abandoned mental hospital. The person in the bird mask is only about 1.3 m tall. 13 and 11 feature prominently, together. Any new info?
posted by holist at 11:15 PM on November 19, 2015