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This is a continuation of this question, and you might want to read it if you haven't already.

I rub my eyes. A slight gap between my eyelids tells me that the Deputy-Inspector has been shaking me. Evidently he wants to confess about something. I had slept in the police station itself that night, for I had nowhere else to go.

I tell him that I already know what he wants to say. His face drops and he locks himself in another cell, throwing the keys at my feet. He seems too scared to speak. I come out and find the Inspector outside, drinking coffee. I tell him the entire story, and he nods. He goes inside, no doubt to confront the Deputy-Inspector.

I hire a taxi to Tennessee, to trace the thieves and catch them red-handed. After about a week of gathering intel, I find out that they are hiding in house located in a area that is rarely frequented by the police.

When the taxi dropped me outside the house, it was evident that the house had been vacated years - no - decades ago. I probably shouldn't have come from the front door, because no later did I do that and I fell unconscious due to a fierce blow to my head.

I find myself locked in a room. It seems to be scantily used, with bits of papers every where that make no sense. I suddenly find the room illuminated by four monitors :-

1st monitor) It has the following words :-

Find my name

and free yourself

from this game.

2nd monitor) Has the following text :-

4r 00 7n 00 75 00 70 00 57 00 2r 00 70 00 6r 00 67 00

3rd monitor) Has the following text (an ill-formed poem) :-

Unless you find a way,

still you think how to play,

enter my game, don't go away.

Help all around you,

enter my game, don't go away.

Xylophone, no I just can't play.

Never, just don' go away,

red, blue, greens,

on all your screens,

till you sit, munching your beans.

4th monitor) Just has a single text input, no doubt for entering a password.

Weird. A puzzle. Are they trying to test me? Hmmm.

What is the password?

Hint:

The answer is not always as it seems. Look a little deeper.

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2 Answers 2

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I think the password is

B3TA_Z3R0

First Step

Reading the first letter of each line, it spells USEHEXNROT or (with spaces) USE HEX N ROT.

Second Step

If we use rot13 on the letters on the second monitor ('r' becomes 'e', 'n' becomes 'a') and then convert the result from hexadecimal (considering 00 as a character separator), we get NzupW.png

Third Step

Checking this link https://i.stack.imgur.com/NzupW.png the name "ALpHA" appears.

Finally, as found by Alaiko

Inscribed at the base of the "L" in grey text is "B3TA_Z3RO".

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  • $\begingroup$ In the image, rot13(gurer vf n O3GN_M3EB va gur Y. Znlor jr arrq gb qb fbzrguvat jvgu vg?) $\endgroup$
    – Alaiko
    Mar 2, 2021 at 16:00
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    $\begingroup$ @Alaiko Oh yes, I had not noticed that. Perhaps there is more to it then. $\endgroup$
    – hexomino
    Mar 2, 2021 at 16:01
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    $\begingroup$ Um, @hexomino, I think any of two things happened. 1) I made this puzzle too easy and straightforward. 2) My adding multiple pieces of clues together made the puzzle so seemingly complicated that you uh, kinda overshot. Believe me, the first monitor was only an instruction manual that told you how to play the game. The second, was the image source, and the third was just for people who were having trouble decoding the text in the 2nd monitor. Me hiding B3TA_Z3R0 (yes, it a zero.) in the word 'ALPHA' was just for people with a watchful eye. $\endgroup$ Mar 3, 2021 at 4:20
  • $\begingroup$ BTW, it has absolutely nothing to do with Tic-Tac-Toe :) $\endgroup$ Mar 3, 2021 at 4:20
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DISCLAIMER : This question was rightfully answered by @hexomino, but I thought I could add in some details and make the answer much simpler.


Let's have a look at the 1st monitor :-

Find my name

and free yourself

from this game.

This is only to be used as

a description of what you have to find. As in the poem above, we have to find the person's name. This monitor tells us nothing but our objective.


Let's have a look at the 2nd monitor :-

4r 00 7n 00 75 00 70 00 57 00 2r 00 70 00 6r 00 67 00

This is quite obviously a code. Since it could be

anything, we can keep it aside for now.


Let's have a look at our 3rd monitor :-

Unless you find a way,

still you think how to play,

enter my game, don't go away.

Help all around you,

enter my game, don't go away.

Xylophone, no I just can't play.

Never, just don' go away,

red, blue, greens,

on all your screens,

till you sit, munching your beans.

To be honest, this is one of the best poems I have made till date. This, as we will see, gives us a very important message.

If we take

The first letter of every line,

We are left with :-

The following sequence - USEHEXNROT

While these might seem like some randomly arranged letters, these in fact, become :-

USE HEX 'N' ROT (Adding spaces in between). This can also be understood as - Use Hex 'and' Rot (changing the 'N' to 'and'). The line implies that we use Hex and ROT13 on the sequence that was found on the second monitor.


Thus, we take the sequence from the 2nd monitor again, and :-

Decode it using Hex and ROT13.

Which gives us :-

NzupW.png.

Of course, this could be anything, but, as many seasoned Stack users will guess, this is actually a :-

Imgur link (https://i.stack.imgur.com/NzupW.png)

Going to this link gives us the following image :-

enter image description here

Of course, this is not the name of the thief. If we zoom in :-

To the base of the letter 'L', we find :-

enter image description here

And that, is the name of our not-so-friendly-neighbourhood-thief's name.

Or so we think. Evil laugh in the background

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