Puzzles are fun.

I've dug around in all 3 versions of the image file Coin Artist posted and did not see any abnormal or extra file headers. What did you find?

Thank you.

I think what she said could have been taken a couple of ways... Either the image has all information contained within it, or the image is a trailhead for a new puzzle that doesn't require knowledge of the previous puzzles. I am leaning towards the latter.

Do you happen to have a link to that or know where I could search to find where she said that? I have read a few comments where people state that she said that, but I haven't read it personally. I have not been digging into this for very long, but I do not believe it is probable that this image has enough on its own to meaningfully interpret the data without random guesses and brute forcing.

I agree that there has to be something visual to find. Reflecting on the old MAD Magazine folding images and the many references to mirrors and perspective I have read by people who may or may not be privy to the true solution, I made a few attempts at manipulating the image to see if anything popped out.

I put together an album. I included some descriptions in the captions. Please take a look and see if anything jumps out at you.

https://imgur.com/a/aJgyj

You seem disproportionately annoyed with what crax0r said there. He was just explaining to another person that we have been exploring many different avenues and your response seems to indicate that you have taken something personally.

I did think that there might be something to the thickness, which led me to consider a possible code 128 mini-key barcode being embedded in some way. After failing to generate any functional barcode from this, I gave in to the notion that the brush strokes look like they were applied pretty quickly (or hastily for lack of a better term). When I watch my wife paint, she gets pretty into it sometimes and can get going pretty fast. It creates quite a bit of irregularity and similar looking brush strokes. So to me it seems more reasonable to chock some details, like this one, up to artistic flow.

I am probably wrong about why I am wrong. I have not come up with anything that I have solid confidence in.

In regards to the brute forcing, I agree after giving it more thought. If there was a significantly smaller number of possibilities and I had more confidence in the idea, though, I would not consider it brute forcing.

Yeah, I started doing more of the math last night and it just seems unreasonable to decipher or decode any information in this way. I wanted to lean towards finding some Morse code after looking at the ribbons (.--./.-. stood out as WR). But that could have easily been coincidental.

I think I am grasping at straws as a result over-thinking. I read through a description of a previous puzzle and it pushed me in the direction of looking for pure data or a bitstream somewhere. Now I am leaning towards the "finding pictures in clouds" approach.

I am very entertained by this puzzle, but I am pretty sure I am spinning my wheels. I would really love to brainstorm in real-time if anyone has a discord or anything set up.

There are 8 unique combination of border/fill/height for each of the flames on the border (10 if you count the orange ones, but they look like noise to me).

• Red,Green,Tall
• Red,Green,Short
• Red,Purple,Tall
• Red,Purple,Short
• Yellow,Green,Tall
• Yellow,Green,Short
• Yellow,Purple,Tall
• Yellow,Purple,Short

I think there is a real possibility that this a representation of octal, but not direct octal > text. I think it might be encoded a couple of levels... Something like octal > hex -or- binary > Morse > etc.

There are 40,320 possible ways to assign 0-8 to each of the color/height combinations. Also, not knowing the direction to read the information makes it more of a shot in the dark. So manually checking this might be unreasonable, and even scripting this is going to produce quite a bit of information to sift through. It would be nice if there were some clues available that might narrow the possibilities. I will try to script this out when I have some time. I think it might be best to grab a small sample rather than the whole thing.

If anyone has the ability to get this scripted out faster than me, I would really appreciate it if you would share your code with me.

I am not nay-saying your hypothesis, but want to provide another perspective... When I draw a spiral, I tend to start in the middle and work my way out, so maybe the direction could be reversed. Also, if these are Ulam spirals, they would be starting in the middle working their way outwards.

I do agree that they seem to indicate a direction to follow for the order the information in the flames (if it exists). Following this reasoning, out of the 4 spirals, there are 2 directions of travel. I instinctively tend to lean towards one direction for the inner set and the opposite direction for the outer set.

I have been working on another (feeble) attempt at interpreting this image. As much as I would like to hold my cards close to my chest and come out as the one who solved it, I hate unknowingly retracing steps even more.

I have been looking at applying a code 128 barcode to the flames in case a mini-key is what we are looking for. I have been looking at the thickness and re-arranging the top/bottom/left/right segments in an order that might create a barcode that might actually be readable.

I have also considered incorporating the color combinations to determine which flames should/shouldn't be included. Or, perhaps the short flames are one barcode (or section) and the tall flames are another. I am doing my barcode creation manually via image editors, but I am wondering if there is a programmatic way to do this.

AUR makes me think of Arch User Repository. Maybe there is a package in there that has some information?

Was there more than just this string in the output?

I am not excited. I am just interested and curious. I will think about it until it isn't fun anymore.


Making a comment to say no comment... Condescending and passive-aggressive at the same time. Great way to set the tone.


I have not disregarded the ribbon lengths, nor do I assume to have ruled anything out. I am exploring other avenues.


I mentioned that they stick out to me. It is intrinsic with no logic, I give you that. I think the artist wanted attention drawn to them. To elaborate, if the color was only a stylistic choice, I think a less chaotic pattern would be apparent and there would be more balance in the color scheme. There wouldn't be so many groups of consecutive flames of that color.


I think prime numbers are significant. And while I do not know how to interpret them as a clue (or if they even are clues), any observations are worth exploration. Maybe it can inspire others to follow different paths to interpreting the image.


In all probability, you are right. However, allowing for overlap it could be divided into quadrants, as I attempted to illustrate in the images I uploaded. I also think it might be the direction to read the bit-streams in the flames.... E.g. the outer rim reads one direction, the inner reads another. I don't know, it was just an idea. I never claimed it was a good one.


I see multiple layers as well, but looking at the high-quality *tif, it looks like the layers are physical medium (paint over paint).


Thank you for your reply, but I don't see any of your comments of much help, no one of your condescending remarks ruled out any idea I presented.

Maybe you are right. Maybe you know all of the secrets to this image and for some reason decided not to move the BTC to another address. I doubt it, though. I get the impression that you are nay-saying anything that is outside of the path you think might be correct out of hubris. Either that or you want to demoralize others, throw red herrings, troll, or some combination.

I only recently found this puzzle and thought I might spend a little time thinking about it. I went through every page of this (painful) thread to see if my own thoughts on the puzzle had been stated by anyone else, and it seems I might have some original ideas. As much as I would like to have the "Eureka!" moment and sweep the private key for myself, I thought it would be better to share.

My thoughts/findings are not listed in any particular order of priority:

• I do not see a rabbit. There may be hidden imagery, but I do not believe that the rabbit so many people are talking about is of any substance.
• I have read a lot of people looking at the "flame" border as a potential binary message. Rather than the height or width of each flame, it makes more sense to me that the color would indicate each bit. What sticks out to me the most is the red-bordered flames. Each of these red bordered flames is filled with either green or purple(blue/violet depending on the color depth of your screen). My thought was that maybe it could be that green=1 and purple=0 or vice-versa.
• Following my original thought that the red flames are the message, I have also considered that the inner and outer rows of flames in the border might each represent 0 an 1, respectively (or vice-versa). I have also seen a reference to http://yewknee.com/blog/peter-saville-colour-code/ which seemed like it might be something worth exploring.
• The glyphs in each of the corners look like Ulam spirals to me. Ulam spirals are used to represent prime numbers. If these are Ulam spirals, then they would each have a value of 17. This caught my attention as it matches the 17 leaves in the painting.
• Whether or not the glyphs are Ulam spirals, I agree that they might also indicate a direction to read the information in the image. Not just the border, however. I think they might indicate how to read the symbols/objects in the middle of the painting as well. One way that I approached this was to examine the chess board in 5x5 "quadrants"
   at each corner, then trace the path of the glyphs through squares contained within each quadrant. If these are all drawn on the board at the same time there is overlap, but I am not sure if that matters. Hell, I am not sure of anything. Example here: https://imgur.com/a/v1EoS
• I looked at the *.tif in a hex editor and I found the string "bitcoin mystery 076".
• I have seen a number of posts where people "zoom and enhance" sections to find characters or hidden imagery. It is obvious that this was done with paint, perhaps acrylic. There may have been other mediums incorporated as well, or other tools besides paint brushes. There are portions that do look like she used the back of her brush handle or another hard instrument. In my experience with paint, especially when applied as liberal this appears to have been, intentionally adding in the tiny details would be more obvious. I think a lot of the details and hidden images people are seeing can be chalked up to artifacts created by brush strokes and color blending/bleeding.
• Do we know how large the painting is in physical dimensions? Knowing the physical dimensions might give us a better idea of the level of detail to look for. The *.tif is 24"x18".
• Maybe this whole thing is much more simple than we expect. I am entertaining the possibility that each of the objects might represent a character or series of characters. For example, the black knight/horse could be BK, bk, Bk, bK, k, K, or any of those with "h" instead of "k". Following that logic, maybe the number of flames of certain color might be something worth examining (example, if there are 16 red flames with purple fill, it might be 16rp or something like that).
• Maybe rather than looking for a private key in its entirety, we should be looking for the variables required to calculate the private private key (base point, prime modulo,
   etc.). I am not as well-versed in the math as I would like to be, so perhaps someone who is could chime in.

Anyway, I just wanted to list out my own thoughts and see if this might light a fuse of inspiration for anyone.