Disclaimer: this list may not include every reference - if you find one that is missing from this list, please let us know.
References to Other Works[]
| Name | Author | Usage | Source | Year | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Decoy Duck Image | Autumn Wings | Background | frost waterfowl | 2012 | art |
| King Arthur Tapestry | unknown | Stereogram | imgur | 2012 | art |
| Agrippa | William Gibson | Book code key | cscom | 2012 | art |
| Mabinogion | Charlotte Guest | Book code text | cscom | 2012 | literature |
| Encyclopaedia Britannica | N/A | "cicada" name | gutenberg | 2012 | encyclopedia |
| A Song of Liberty | William Blake | MIDI | bartleby | 2012 | poetic work |
| The Marriage of Heaven and Hell | William Blake | Book code text | gailgastfield | 2012 (second chance) | literature |
| Liber AL vel Legis | Aleister Crowley | Book code text | book-of-the-law.com | 2013 | literature |
| The New Inquisition | Robert Anton Wilson | Test .onion answer choices | ussr.win | 2013 | literature |
| Self-Reliance and Other Essays | Ralph Waldo Emerson | Book code text | dartmouth | 2014 | literature |
| Portrait of Andrés del Peral | Goya y Lucientes | Onion 5:
unknown |
national gallery | 2014 | art |
| Image of Grigori Rasputin | unknown | Onion 5:
unknown |
miraheze (unconfirmed) | 2014 | art |
| Trio Sonata in G Major (BWV 1039) | Johann Sebastian Bach | Onion 5: unknown | wikipedia
github (3301's mp3) |
2014 | music |
| Eye | M.C. Escher | Onion 5: unknown | wikiart | 2014 | art |
| Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid | Douglas R. Hofstadter | Book code text | internet archive | 2014 | literature |
Technological, mathematical, and cryptographical references[]
| Name | Usage | source |
| JPEG | Images format throughout the puzzles | wikipedia |
| HEX dump | Hide messege in the end of a JPEG image | wikipedia |
| caesar cipher | Decrypt the message in final.jpeg | wikipedia |
| URL | Connect different parts of the puzzle | wikipedia |
| OutGuess | OutGuess is a steganography program designed to hide messages within images. | our overview |
| PGP | Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a data encryption and decryption computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication | our overview |
| mayan numerals | In the subreddit’s header | wikipedia |
| Book code | Used throughout the puzzle | wikipedia |
| UTC | Coordinated Universal Time (probably to remain geographically anonymous) | timeanddate.com, wikipedia |
| QR | Used in the posters across the globe | wikipedia |
| the Tor network | .onion site | tor project |
| RSA | In the “second chance” part | wikipedia |
| MIDI | In the “second chance” part aka midi puzzle | wikipedia |
| Perl | In the RSA message | perl website |
| XOR | Used a lot throughout the 2013 puzzle | wikipedia |
| Gematria | Converting words to numbers and vice versa | wikipedia |
| Mostly blank | Outguess message from the gematria primus | wikipedia |
| Telenet | Internet protocol used in 2013 puzzle to communicate with website without web browser (aka terminal) | wikipedia |
| Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme | Used in the 2013 puzzle in the phone call part, and in the winners’ question | our overview |
| HTML | Used exploring the websites and onions throughout the puzzles | wikipedia |
| TCP | In the end stage of the 2013 puzzle the winner needed to code TCP server | wikipedia |
| Base64 | Base64 is a scheme to encode unprintable bytes into printable characters | wikipedia |
| Vigenere | Used in the RSA message | wikipedia |
| n-gram | Used in the third onion in 2014 puzzle | wikipedia |
| column transposition cipher | Used in the third onion in 2014 puzzle | wikipedia |
| Atbash | Used in the second onion in 2014 puzzle | wikipedia |
| Totient function | Mentioned in the third onion in 2014 puzzle and used to decrypt the final page of LP | wikipedia |
| OOB | Out of band data | wikipedia |
| HASH | A hash function is any function that can be used to map data of arbitrary size to fixed-size values. | wikipedia |
Websites[]
| Name | Usage | source |
| 4chan | Post the black-and-white images | 4chan |
| The r/a2e7j6ic78h0j/ subreddit used in the 2012 puzzle | subreddit | |
| MIT Keyserver | website that hosts public keys | MIT website, currently down |
| The 2013 twitter account | ||
| imgur | The first step of the 2014 puzzle | imgur |
| Infotomb | Used in 2016 message | our overview, infotomb is down |
| Pastebin | The "Planned Parenthood" message | pastebin |