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So, there's a really cool professor at the college I'm starting to teach at. He throws pretty awesome faculty parties every month, but you can only get in if you are able to figure out the password. This month, he says the password is the title of his favorite movie. It seems like he understands that I'm new, because he emailed me a hint. Unfortunately, all it is is an image and a note! The note says:

Sorry if it doesn't make much sense. I realized I had the wrong keyboard plugged in when I wrote it.

Here is the image that he sent me:

Corn Flakes

What does it all mean? How can I get a movie title from a box of cereal?

Edit: As it has already been extracted by @Beastly Gerbil, here is the hidden QR code in higher quality:

QR Code

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    $\begingroup$ Wasn't aware Kellogg's was in the habit of hiding QR codes on their boxes :P $\endgroup$
    – dcfyj
    Commented Aug 15, 2016 at 17:30
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    $\begingroup$ Darn, should have turned up the brightness on my monitor. Looked a little more hidden on my end :P. Still, that's just part of it. $\endgroup$
    – CasperTheFriendlyCode
    Commented Aug 15, 2016 at 17:30
  • $\begingroup$ It might have been better hidden in the "Corn Flakes" writing. But that's debatable with the white space and all. $\endgroup$
    – dcfyj
    Commented Aug 15, 2016 at 17:33
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    $\begingroup$ I thought I was in Workplace.SE for a sec and got very confused... $\endgroup$
    – Carmeister
    Commented Aug 15, 2016 at 19:41
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    $\begingroup$ @Carmeister the workplace and puzzling favicons are too similar. But, I guess that's accurate. $\endgroup$
    – Wayne Werner
    Commented Aug 15, 2016 at 21:13

2 Answers 2

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Here's some black and white images of the QR code hidden (unsuccessfully :P) in the package to the left of the eye.

qr2

My QR Detector decodes this as:

01000011+01111001+00100000+01100011+01101111+00100000+01100001+00100000+01100101+01100001+01110000+01110100+00100000+01111001+01100011+01101101+00101110+00100000+01110101+01110010+01110000+00100000+01111001+01100100+00101110+00100000+01010000+00101110+01111000+00101110+01101110+01101110+01100011+01110010+01100010+01110110+00100000+01000001+01101110+01111001+01100100+01110010+01100111+01101001+01100100+00100000+01111001+01100100+00101110+00100000+01000101+00101110+01100001+01111001+01100100+00100000+01001111+01111001+01100001+01110000+00100000+01100100+01100001+01101111+00100000+01111000+00101110+00101110+01100010+00100000+01100101+00101110+01101111+01111001+01110000+01110010+01100110+00101110+01100101+01110111+00100000+01000011+01101101+01101100+00101110+01110000+01100011+01100001+01101110+00100000+01111001+01110000+01110010+01110010+01101100+01101111+00100000+01100100+01100001+01101011+00101110+00100000+01100101+01110000+01100011+01101011+00101110+01100010+00100000+01111001+01100100+0

This appears to be binary and decodes as:

Cy co a eapt ycm. urp yd. P.x.nncrbv Anydrgid yd. E.ayd Oyap dao x..b e.oyprf.ew Cml.pcan yprrlo dak. epck.b yd

The note from the professor says

"Sorry if it doesn't make much sense. I realized I had the wrong keyboard plugged in when I wrote it".

As @Sleafer points out on the Dvorak Keyboard this is:

It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven th

So the movie is:

Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back

Because the phrase is part of the opening crawl of the movie: (thanks to @gtwebb)

"It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy.

Evading the dreaded Imperial Starfleet, a group of freedom fighters led by Luke Skywalker has established a new secret base on the remote ice world of Hoth.

The evil lord Darth Vader, obsessed with finding young Skywalker, has dispatched thousands of remote probes into the far reaches of space…."

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    $\begingroup$ These images here appear to be QR codes to the untrained eye, but a computer (and anyone that's done any development with QR codes) will notice that the thicknesses of the lines are all wrong. The anchor boxes in particular have a very specific structure that these do not follow (likely due to the compression mentioned). $\endgroup$
    – Ian MacDonald
    Commented Aug 15, 2016 at 18:18
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    $\begingroup$ Each star wars have an opening crawl (words up the screen). From Episode V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK "It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy. Evading the dreaded Imperial Starfleet, a group of freedom fighters led by Luke Skywalker has established a new secret base on the remote ice world of Hoth. The evil lord Darth Vader, obsessed with finding young Skywalker, has dispatched thousands of remote probes into the far reaches of space...." $\endgroup$
    – gtwebb
    Commented Aug 15, 2016 at 18:38
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    $\begingroup$ There we go a complete answer. Phew! $\endgroup$
    – Beastly Gerbil
    Commented Aug 15, 2016 at 18:43
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    $\begingroup$ Yay! Good job! Team work :P $\endgroup$
    – CasperTheFriendlyCode
    Commented Aug 15, 2016 at 18:46
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    $\begingroup$ Please upvote @Sleafar's answer too because he was with me all the way until the end and deserves the same amount of credit $\endgroup$
    – Beastly Gerbil
    Commented Aug 15, 2016 at 18:47
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I extracted the hidden QR code from the image and adjusted the levels getting this image:

enter image description here

The quality of the QR code seem to be very bad (@CasperTheFriendlyCode do you have a better version of the image?). Online decoding tools don't work but an Android app returns the following text:

01000011+01111001+00100000+01100011+01101111+00100000+01100001+00100000+01100101+01100001+01110000+01110100+00100000+01111001+01100011+01101101+00101110+00100000+01110101+01110010+01110000+00100000+01111001+01100100+00101110+00100000+01010000+00101110+01111000+00101110+01101110+01101110+01100011+01110010+01100010+01110110+00100000+01000001+01101110+01111001+01100100+01110010+01100111+01101001+01100100+00100000+01111001+01100100+00101110+00100000+01000101+00101110+01100001+01111001+01100100+00100000+01001111+01111001+01100001+01110000+00100000+01100100+01100001+01101111+00100000+01111000+00101110+00101110+01100010+00100000+01100101+00101110+01101111+01111001+01110000+01110010+01100110+00101110+01100101+01110111+00100000+01000011+01101101+01101100+00101110+01110000+01100011+01100001+01101110+00100000+01111001+01110000+01110010+01110010+01101100+01101111+00100000+01100100+01100001+01101011+00101110+00100000+01100101+01110000+01100011+01101011+00101110+01100010+00100000+01111001+01100100+0

These are obviously ASCII codes in binary form, but something seems to be missing (maybe because of bad quality of the QR code). The present part can be translated to:

Cy co a eapt ycm. urp yd. P.x.nncrbv Anydrgid yd. E.ayd Oyap dao x..b e.oyprf.ew Cml.pcan yprrlo dak. epck.b yd

This is the place where the hint must be used. The professor used a Dvorak keyboard. Replacing the letters on the Dvorak keyboard with the corresponding letters on a Qwerty keyboard gives this:

It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven th

I'm stuck here because a part of the message seems to be missing.

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  • $\begingroup$ While some of the data may have been truncated, this is still most of what you need. You should be able to guess the movie title from what's there :P. $\endgroup$
    – CasperTheFriendlyCode
    Commented Aug 15, 2016 at 18:28
  • $\begingroup$ Please consider using spoiler tags $\endgroup$
    – grooveplex
    Commented Aug 16, 2016 at 11:17

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