Even though I've returned to that 'summary' several times to re-read and try to make sense of things, I still question whether OP is actually confirming clues or if he's just confirming "yeah, I said all those things." Like you say, I can find meaning out of all kinds of 'pairs'....and I can dismiss just as many for any number of reasons (location in image, size of word, angle, etc) and there's no telling what the OP wants us to glean from the information provided.


Yep. Most of Coin Artist's puzzles had clear steps--a definitive indicator that you were on the right track and had solved a chunk of the data.

1FLAMEN wasn't quite like that, and lo-and-behold, it took years and years to solve.

I wouldn't be surprised if OP is content for this to remain unsolved for years so it too achieves cult status and raises the profile of his business. It was neat when that happened with 1FLAMEN, because CoinArtist wasn't selling anything. It was a puzzle for a puzzle's sake.

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. I feel like the solvers deserve at least a few points of clarification from OP, because you're absolutely correct, this is going nowhere. The puzzle may be genius-level work, but we'll never know because it's a word puzzle which--as you noted--is infinitely more open to interpretation than numbers and symbols. It's kind of a "screw you" to the solvers to go silent, especially after initially saying this would be a 'much more interactive' puzzle between solvers/creator.

If OP is assuming that there's enough hints out there that someone's approaching a solution, I can tell you that's not the case. Every puzzle solving chat across telegram/slack/discord, this forum, reddit..everywhere...the well is completely dry. The puzzle makes no sense. No one can even tell you where it starts.

Not to mention only some of the OP's reddit replies specifically indicated that they were a clue. This one in particular was a response to someone posting the mystery numbers from LOST. Does that mean we should completely ignore this comment because he's just making a joke? Or do these words somehow adhere to a pattern that we're supposed to be applying to the other words in the image?

The same can be said for "code easily, attack early" . Was it just a silly response to someone's question? Most solvers are hell-bent on including these pairs in their solutions, probably because they have little else to work from.

Exactly. I agree that there's no ill intentions from the OP, but (and with word-based puzzles in particular) the risk of coincidences such as these runs high. Clarification is absolutely necessary at this point, otherwise there's no point in continuing.

Not to mention the OP's comment on reddit that:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/8kk0pa/1_btc_is_hidden_in_this_puzzle_good_luck/dzd6gfk/

This puzzle was presented with the expectation that it was difficult yet solvable, and that the clues guided us in a helpful direction. Instead, most puzzle-solvers I've spoken with are angry about how unclear everything is, and many continue to suspect it's a publicity stunt with no actual solution. While I doubt it's a scam, it would be nice for OP to comment on at least some of the confusion, because many of us have spent hundreds of hours desperately searching for connections and having no clear indication that we're on the right path.

That isn't strictly true, though, is it? Unless you have a flawless memory of BIP39 seed words, you'd need to refer to the English word list.

This is why I'm asking for specific clarification on whether or not the whitepaper is needed. Because "yea you can just look at it" more likely means "You don't have to buy it, you can just use a jpeg/png version" but still requires outside information.

I don't find the +1/-1 change confusing at all.

I do, however, think everyone would appreciate a small clarification from the puzzle creator regarding another matter:

Is Satoshi's whitepaper itself required to solve the puzzle?

I'm not looking for suggestions of "it couldn't hurt" or indication that it's helpful because it may, in turn, help elucidate some component relevant to the puzzle--there are only so many ways of logically organizing the data that we're given by the image, and knowing whether or not it's expected that we need to specifically consult the original whitepaper to progress through this puzzle, would at the very least allow solvers to concentrate their efforts behind one of two major methods of approach. Right now it's virtually impossible to know where to begin, and this is coming from someone who has spent over 300 hours trying to tease out information from the puzzle.

Thanks

-clane

These types of analyses seem futile to me. She painted this particular painting by hand. I don't see infrared effects or other filters being useful here. If anything, this is a puzzle about correctly interpreting symbolism.

This is incorrect. Each letter is derived from five flames, each flame is spread out across across a sequence of 15/16 flames, proceeding through multiple rows. "FM" doesn't derive from the bottom rows whatsoever. See my post a few messages up from here.

http://i.imgur.com/jVTPZPj.png

Column explanation:
Column 1: Green Letters / Purple Letters = alpha result from concatenating into bacon cipher. Purple letters correspond to the selected boxes in Column 2. Boxes are ordered bottom to top. The letter F = 00101 (concat AQ844, AQ839, AQ829, AQ824). I moved the actual concat cell (00101) so the tooltip wouldn't hide the selected boxes. F = 00101 M = 01100, _ = 11010 A = 00000 U=10100 R = 10001
Column 2: XOR result (Selected boxes = the ones used to generate the purple letter in Column 1)
Column 3: 011010 pattern used to XOR against flame length data
Column 4: Flame Height Data. Black = 011 pattern, White = others
Column 5: Outside flame color
Column 6: Inside flame color
Column 7: Flame height data again. Ignore.


This particular sample is read from bottom to top.

This is such a tremendous pain in the ass to even consider doing.

Fortunately for everyone else I already did it. Enjoy.

https://i.imgur.com/lMW8ms0.png

Do this one instead: https://i.imgur.com/jVTPZPj.png

(read the concats from bottom up)

Why "keyfile" though?

I assume not, because coinartist has stated that the image is the only thing needed to solve the final step. No outside content should be necessary (which includes the poem that people keep referring to--while it may have inspired her art, it won't somehow serve as a piece of the puzzle).

I'm having a difficult time following your path. The eye points to the (#2) leaf, but then what? The leaf points down & right. Wouldn't we go to the next leaf?

If the idea is to follow the vine that the leaf points to, then that's hopeless. The vine disappears almost immediately and doesn't give any indication of direction.

The leaf with the #3 on it points back up into the flames. But there is no number 4? And yet there is a number 5?

It's an interesting idea and I'd like to follow it, but I think you may have left out some things.

 

Whoops. Yeah, missed that first time around.

The more I play around with the XOR patterns and permutations of row order/orientations, the less I think that these words are meaningful. It's a fairly unlikely coincidence, I admit, for "is" "the" & "keyfile" to appear, but those aren't particularly long words, with "keyfile" being the only exception.

But, perhaps more important--why would they use the term "keyfile" (or "key file") at all? The result wouldn't be a file, it would be a private key. I don't see the puzzle creators using a phrase like "keyfile" when "privkey" or even "key" would suffice, especially when "keyfile" is technically innacurate.

Not to mention generating this phrase requires a series convoluted steps:

1. Arrange 6 out of 8 rows in a pattern that doesn't appear anywhere else in the painting (to be fair, it may be undiscovered, but the bishop/knight explanation breaks down, for me. It's almost certainly a queen rather than a bishop, and the knight's movement is precise in a way that doesn't reflect the jumping around necessary for this row order/orientation)

2. XOR with 011010, but only after you skip the first bit entirely.

3. Cycle back to the beginning of the 6 rows and rinse/repeat.

What about the 011 pattern that tracks through all of the rows without deviation? Sure, it's possible to encode words and still have that pattern exist, but it's a hell of a lot harder, and--considering the route you have to take to generate the above phrase, seemingly unnecessary.

There are a lot of possible permutations, even between 6 out of 8 rows (upwards of 20,000). Maybe if "keyfile" made more sense to me, but I say it's just coincidence that these words exist here. Hell, look at how many scholars tried to prove Bacon was Shakespeare because they "found" his signature hidden in the texts. Everywhere. Those had equally convoluted rule-sets / approaches.

I'm having trouble reproducing the length XOR decode. My understanding from crax0r's breakdown is: you concat the length bits in this order:

Inner Bottom, L2R
Inner Left, T2B
Inner Right, T2B
Inner Top, R2L
Outer Top, R2L
OuterBottom, L2R

Based on this, Inner Bottom L2R is

XOR'ing with 011010 (starting with second bit) gives us:


Then we run that through the v2 Bacon cipher, (omitting a character?)


Or, if we don't omit any characters and simply take them 5 bits at a time:


And/or shifting 1 so 00000 = nil but 00001 = A. Regardless, I can't reproduce any of the patterns here.