Dharma Secret’s LOST-n-Found: A Blog Dedicated to the T.V. Show Lost

By far the hardest clue to crack to date, this picture found at hole2.thehansofoundation.org (see “Persephone’s Numbers Explained” post for explination on how it was found) has had LOST geeks, including yours truely, stumped for almost two days now.

Speculation has been rampant on the internet. Stenography decoders, ASCII, Binary codes, Q9 translators, and Base 64 cyphers had not been able to produce anything to crack this clue.

At the center of the speculation is the name of the image, “q9als2002″ which was discovered when you right click-”Save As” the image. The general consensus is that “als2002″ means “Alvar Last Seen 2002″. Another interesting observation is that “q9″ refers to the alphanumberic association of numbers and letters on the telephone keypad. However, like the other coding methods mentioned, “q9″ has not produced anything definitive.

One person on 4815162342.com speculated that the because the theme of twins has appeared in the ARG that the clue may lay there, so they Photoshopped the original image.

Compliments of gringosteve from 4815162342.com:

Compliments of ASR from 4815162342.com:

View uncropped image here.

UPDATE:
On May 31st, Persephone’s numbers were changed, and now reads “+1“.

Using this clue, we now go to hole3.thehansofoundation.org, and find the following image.
When you zoom in on the left eye, you will find some strategically colored pixels which spell out the message “Save Me”.

Uncropped images can be viewed here:
t9agen75
saveme1
saveme2

UPDATE:
On June 12th, a new set of numbers appeared from Persephone.


After translating the numbers, we find a message that leads us to thefollowing image on “Hole4″.

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According to the “Speaker” from www.insidetheexperience.com Jimmy Kimmel will be interviewing Hugh McIntyre on his show.

Regulars to the ARG have noticed that Hugh’s picture disappeared (probably removed) from the Hanso site.

Screen cap taken last week.

Current page

It has been established a while back that the pictures used on the site are royalty free pictures from Getty Images. As such, the people in the pictures are not paid models or actors, and can’t be used to portray any sort of acting role. It is possible, that because of this, they have removed Hugh McIntyre’s picture from the site so that an actor other than the person in the photo can go on to Jimmy Kimmel Live, and play the role of Hugh McIntyre.

If it turns out that someone other than the person who is in the original photo appears on the Jimmy Kimmel show, then could it be possible that the other executive who does not have a photo on the site, Liddy Wales, will be appearing in some sort of an acted role? Could it also be possible that we have already seen Liddy Wales in someway? Perhaps, she is having an affair with Hugh, and is the woman seen in Persephone’s Hugh McIntyre video.

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Here are screen caps of the menu screens from the up coming LOST season two box set, which will be released on October 3rd.
Compliments of thehatchonline.com:

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Password: SURVIVORGUILT

Enter the password in the hidden login under Peter Thompson’s picture.

Compliments of Flippy from dharmasecrets.com: Hugh McIntyre’s picture icon reappears during the sludge animation after typing in the password.

After you’ve logged in, you will now see a a bunch of papers on a desk. As you move your mouse around the screen, you will find three documents at the top of the screen sticking out from under the pile of papers on the desk. When you’re mouse is over them, the document will be highlighted by a spotlight. From left to right, they read “Nuclear”, “Tobacco”, and “Globoco Oil”.

Nuclear:

2001 was in the process of making sure the citizens of Southern Georgia got their glow-on by bullyragging the locals courts into ignoring widespread protests against a nuclear power plant when he was struck by cancer — looks like Alvar Hanso saved the wrong guy!

Notice the ghost figure that appears in the screen, possibly Marvin Candle from the Orientation film.

Williamsburg Tobacco:

Notice that the option that you previously visited is not scratched out.

1994 Defended the Williamsburg Tobacco Company against a class action lawsuit on behalf of cancer victims: set a new precedent for corporate vindictiveness by counter suing and driving over 40 plaintiffs into bankruptcy!

There are a series of faint images that flash on the screen when you first get to the Tobaco screen. The first thing that flashes on the screen is the phase “Don’t believe his lies”, followed by the following images:

Compliments of http://lowkeysoft.com/LostARG/thompson.php:

This Picture was actually a transparent jpg within the swf. It’s not that you can’t see the body, it’s been cut from the graphic.

The final image is, again, the faint image of Marvin Candle.

Globoco Oil:

Notice, again, that the option that you previously visited is not scratched out.

1998 defended Globoco Oil… and successfully made the world safe for chemical polluters and dumpers of carcinogenic industrial waste in the Florida panhandle — the incidence of cancer in the affected areas has grown by 75%!

After you’ve gone through all three options, you return to the desk, and a final message appears before you are returned to the Bios page.

UPDATE:
There has been quite a bit of discussion as to the wearer of the labcoat in the pictures. It is the general concensus that it is Marvin Candle. The following is probably the best argument in favor of this belief.

Compliments of ianwarren from 4825262342.com:
I made a quick overlay javascript rollover…

have a quick look:

http://www.milliondollarwilly.co.uk/lost/candle.html

draw your own conclusion!

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Compliments of Marl64 from the Fuselage:

I can’t be the only one on here to have walked this kind of road before, so I thought it might be helpful if people shared some of their experience. Give those new to Alternate Reality Gaming an idea of what to expect.

So I’ll start the ball rolling.

Fast highs and slow lows

New clues result in a mad flurry of activity, boards light up as people add their small piece to the bigger puzzle. Threads grow at an alarming rate and it become impossible to keep up with them. People fire guesses at passwords in all directions and in-game websites are brute-forced to death.

Yeah, I’ve seen an in-game site collapse under the strain of over-enthusiastic hacking attempts under the banner of “if they didn’t tell us not to, it must be ok”. It’s not.

At first, the clues should start quite easy, but they won’t stay that way. The rate of change depends on the level of interaction on the part of the people running the game. The way players react to initial puzzles can often lead to later parts of the game being adjusted to keep it within reach yet still make it challenging

It can be very exciting and a lot of people get a real buzz out of it, but you have to be ready for the low that follows. Getting a bunch of clues reletively quickly can give players a real boost, but it makes the inevitable quiet spell that much quieter.

Somewhere, there will be a real mean puzzle that will stop players dead in their tracks, the initial flurry of guessing passwords and frantic random clicking will give way to long periods of contemplation and accompanying frustration.

This is when the real fun starts. This is when the experience changes from a guessing game or hand-fed walk through to a test of reasoning and deduction.

Players will little patience or easilt frustrated will start to lose interest and wander off, it’s inevitable. Sure they want to maintain interest, but if the game was easy enough to satisfy these people, it’s not much fun for those who like the challenge.

These comments are based on experience of other on-line games and may well not necearily reflect this experience at all, but it may be helpful that there is already a wealth of information and tools at your disposal, should this game turn out to be like the rest.

Quick tip no. 1: You might want to start by googling “steganography”

TOOLBOX - Useful online ARG Tools:
Anagrams:
http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/index.html (Up to 25 characters, can also provide word lists)
http://oneacross.com/anagrams/

Conversions:
http://www.paulschou.com/tools/xlate/ (Convert between ASCII, Binary, Decimal, Hex, Base64)
http://www.onlineconversion.com/ (Thousands of conversions grouped by category)
http://www.4thtyldesley.co.uk/skills/codes.php (Convert text to; Morse, Phonetic, Semaphore, Hieroglyphs, Braille, Runes etc.)

Cryptography:
http://oneacross.com/cryptograms/search.html (Cryptograms)
http://stackoverflow.org/tools/rot.html (Rot-N, does all ROT permutations in one go)

Phone Directories:
http://www.fonefinder.net/ (US/Canada/International)
http://thedirectory.org/pref/ (Telephone Prefix Locator)

Web Page Monitoring:
http://www.changedetection.com/monitor.html (e-mails you when a web page is changed)

Collections:
http://stackoverflow.org/tools.html (Translators and Tables)
http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=9 (Lots of tools on this Dedicated ARG forum)

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