TFEE T3

Tier 3: The "Gold Egg" Puzzle

Tier Overview

After T2ABC and T2DEF were solved, they each led to a page with an image. T2ABC led to the image "tfee_ques" and T2DEF led to the image "tfee_tion" and both depicted a large, stylized question mark. The first question mark appears to be made out of gold, while the second resembles the color of an eggshell, following the respective themes of T2ABC and T2DEF.

The dimensions of both images were 1149x635
The background of tfee_ques.jpg was the solid RGB value 6, 6, 6
Custom metadata of both images pointed to the date November 6th 2015.

On December 7th, THE FINALS officially launched alongside the 1.2.0 patch notes. The letters o, l, n, g, g, g, e, e, d, were written in bold, and could be rearranged to form "golden egg".

On January 21st, an artwork was posted in the official Discord art channel, the first new image in nearly three months. Hunters quickly analyzed the image and discovered hidden fragments of a QR code in the footer. After the QR code was pieced together, it was scanned to reveal a new secret URL of THE FINALS official website: reachthefinals.com/whydidntanyonefindme-aminotimportant.

This page had a new Nama Tama image (named "vvv.png"), which historically have been used as a source of supplementary clues during the hunt. This time, Nama Tama was holding a golden mirror and wearing a golden Civic Crown.

The numbers 15 07 1943 were hidden on the mirror, referencing the birthdate of Jocelyn Bell Burnell.
The signature of German artist Paul Klee was broken up and hidden deep within the image's background.
- Paul Klee had a painting called "Ab ovo"
Pairs of numbers were found in each corner of the image:
- Top Left: 555, 99
- Top Right: 444, 888
- Bottom Left: 666, 444
- Bottom Right: 4, 444
These were decoded using a phoneword cipher, where the numbers correspond to letters on a phone's keypad, spelling LIGO XVII, or LIGO 17.
- Top Left: L, X
- Top Right: I, V
- Bottom Left: O, I
- Bottom Right: G, I

Jocelyn Bell Burnell and LIGO had one major thing in common: the Nobel Prize in Physics. The winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded with a gold medal.

Solving

On March 22nd, 2024, hunter Ludonope entered the password, "0v0aurum" and completed Level 2. This tier took 126 days to solve.

Summary

Since the password for T2ABC was "gold" and the password for T2DEF was "egg", hunters knew that the answer to T3 was likely to be a combination of the two.

There were many clues that pointed towards gold, egg, Latin, and mirror; as well as the 'GEO' cipher used in previous passwords (G=6, E=3, O=0). The two Latin words for egg are "ovum" or "ovo," but the Paul Klee clue singled out "ovo" as the correct translation. "Gold egg" translated to Latin is "aurum ovo," and applying the 'GEO' cipher provides "aurum 0v0." Lastly, the mirror clues signaled the hunters to reverse the order of the words in the phrase, therefore "aurum 0v0" becomes "0v0 aurum."