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There's a secret hidden in the text below. What mind-blowing truth does it reveal?

Not imaginative? Then Zeke's Clues may assist! Unsure, lad? With our patented Obscurity Clues, begin verifiably outwitting the great VIGENÈRE! My useful helper, Mr. Riddler, envisions heavenly light revealing clever elements in grabbers. For 6 Krones, cousin Kryptos has made plenty new devotees. But taste softly, victim, this advice: GO ACROSTIC. DOMAIN solves everything. Please review wise masters (xenophobic sociopaths) very selectively. Some KEYS percolate behind masks of kingly visages.

In re-solving this myself, I noticed a difficulty over which I have no control: At some point, capitalization will matter. The order is lowercase, uppercase, uppercase, lowercase. When see a tiger, you know you've got it right.

Hint 1

The capitalized words are obviously clues. The relate to how you perform the first step and, depending on how you look at it, the second step. The DOMAIN that is mentioned is fully qualified. I wanted to fit that into the original text but couldn't find a spot for it.

Hint 2

If you don't recognize the clue words, you should Google them. You should at least figure out what kind of puzzle the first step is just from that. The fully qualified domain will help you solve that first step. Don't get too caught up on the text.

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  • $\begingroup$ Are Zeke's Clues anything to do with this? Also, is 13312 important? (I asked the second question before, but my comment got deleted.) $\endgroup$
    – Rand al'Thor
    Commented May 6, 2015 at 22:30
  • $\begingroup$ @randalthor Wow, no. I've never seen that scavenger hunt thing. That's an internet coincidence. As far as the number, the puzzle will tell you when it's important. $\endgroup$
    – Engineer Toast
    Commented May 6, 2015 at 23:18
  • $\begingroup$ I think I know the type of puzzle, the keyword and the plaintext. But putting them all together doesn't solve it, so I must have at least one of them wrong - probably the plaintext. $\endgroup$
    – starsplusplus
    Commented May 8, 2015 at 15:26
  • $\begingroup$ @starsplusplus You could post what you have to see if others can move it along from there. The puzzle has multiple steps so points can be awarded for solving each one. The tick goes to the first one to find the mind-blowing truth but +1 can be given to those that make major contributions. $\endgroup$
    – Engineer Toast
    Commented May 8, 2015 at 15:33

3 Answers 3

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I'll continue where alexmc Left off.

The tiger image can be decrypted (at http://www.mobilefish.com/services/steganography/steganography.php) with the pass code 13312(The question number). That leaves you with a qr code (called "Almost there") that, when decrypted gives the result: Jet fuel can't melt steel beams. This is probably referring to that which is said by 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

Me and my friend Callan worked on this one all day at school today. He was the one who finished the puzzle though, so full credit to him. I'm sorry for my terrible formatting, and I'm sure that I have not followed proper etiquette, but this is my first time on here so I'm a bit of a noob. Thanks for the puzzle! (feel free to edit up my post, it's probably gonna look pretty ugly)

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  • $\begingroup$ And I can't for the life of me manage to set the orange text as a spoiler. If anyone can fix that please do! :) $\endgroup$
    – Tom and Callan
    Commented May 14, 2015 at 9:00
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    $\begingroup$ I rectified my answer. Sorry about that :) $\endgroup$
    – Tom and Callan
    Commented May 14, 2015 at 9:32
  • $\begingroup$ You found the (tongue-in-cheek) mind-blowing truth! You get the tick and the bounty as you found the final answer. Alexmc gets +1 and an equal bounty as they did a lot of the legwork. $\endgroup$
    – Engineer Toast
    Commented May 14, 2015 at 19:13
  • $\begingroup$ Cheers. alexmc certainly did the hard yards $\endgroup$
    – Tom and Callan
    Commented May 14, 2015 at 23:36
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Treating the clue as an acrostic, as implied in the text, we get the following:

NITZCMAULWOPOCBVOTGVMUHMREHLRCEIGFKCKHMPNDBTSVTAGADSEPRWMXSVSSKPBMOKV

Using the following fully qualified domain as the key:

PUZZLINGSTACKEXCHANGECOM

We get:

YOUARENOTDONEYETHTTPISTACKIMGURCOMKAADPNGDONOTFORGETTHEQUESTIONNUMBER

Which I think corresponds to the message:

You are not done yet https://i.sstatic.net/KAAD.PNG do not forget the question number

Which is clearly some reference to an image hosted on the stack exchange imgur site.

These normally follow the format: i.stack.imgur.com/#####.### having 5 alphanumeric characters before the file extension. In which case we are a character short.

Including the question number could refer to the "6" before the Krones - so putting that in we get: i.stack.imgur.com/6KAAD.png Following the hint to use lowercase, uppercase, uppercase, lowercase, we get: i.stack.imgur.com/6kAAd.png which takes us to a tiger!

This is as far as I got, I hope it helps someone else on the way!

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    $\begingroup$ "Question number" could be the one in the URL of this question i.e. 13312. Perhaps related: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet ? $\endgroup$
    – A E
    Commented May 13, 2015 at 14:26
  • $\begingroup$ Would they have known the URL question number prior to the posting of the question in order to be able to incorporate it though? $\endgroup$
    – alexmc
    Commented May 13, 2015 at 14:30
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    $\begingroup$ Yes, they would have known it. First version of puzzle reads "[PUZZLE PLACEHOLDER] This is not yet a puzzle yet. For... reasons, I needed to create this question first. If you're viewing this in the edit history after the puzzle has been posted, then you've just found a hint.". ;) $\endgroup$
    – A E
    Commented May 13, 2015 at 14:32
  • $\begingroup$ You get +1 and a bounty - if I can figure out how to add another one - for doing so much of the legwork. Tom gets the tick and another bounty for getting the final answer. $\endgroup$
    – Engineer Toast
    Commented May 14, 2015 at 19:14
  • $\begingroup$ (There's a 24 hr wait period before the bounty can be awarded. It might be Monday before I log back on but you'll get it eventually.) $\endgroup$
    – Engineer Toast
    Commented May 15, 2015 at 12:20
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Not imaginative? Then Zeke's Clues may assist! Unsure, lad? With our patented Obscurity Clues, begin verifiably outwitting the great VIGENÈRE! My useful helper, Mr. Riddler, envisions heavenly light revealing clever elements in grabbers. For 6 Krones, cousin Kryptos has made plenty new devotees. But taste softly, victim, this advice: GO ACROSTIC. DOMAIN solves everything. Please review wise masters (xenophobic sociopaths) very selectively. Some KEYS percolate behind masks of kingly visages.

.

Use Vignere cipher

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Acrostic (first letters of every word):
NiTZCmaUlWopOCbvotgVMuhMRehlrceigFKcKhmpndBtsvtaGADsePrwmxsvsSKpbmokv

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Using FQDN "httppuzzlingstackexchangecom" as key I get: "VcNPShaUxFcwHWcyzyeYUvvTWhwyzwyywAKcWqawgxCwdardOBRzjSgjurmliNKpnvcro"

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  • $\begingroup$ I will confirm that you found the type of cipher and the cipher text. However, at this point, capitalization and punctuation don't matter. $\endgroup$
    – Engineer Toast
    Commented May 13, 2015 at 12:43

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