Nine Eyes TV

* Website
* Countdown

*Truth is only an illusion... Can you see past it?*
-*Spike Chunsoft official Twitter account*
**Nine Eyes TV** was a promotional Augmented Reality Game held by Spike Chunsoft on their website between June 28th and June 30th in 2021. It concluded with the announcement of *AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES - nirvanA Initiative* being in development.

The website contained a set of 9 separate puzzles, and solving each one gave the player a piece of the password, "NIRVANAINITIATIVE." Inputting the password into the answer box led directly to a countdown, which ended at 5 PM PDT on June 30th to reveal the announcement trailer for *nirvanA Initiative*.

## Eye Puzzles

The Nine Eyes TV website contained 9 different puzzles, found within 9 different floating eyes. Clicking on each eye makes an old CRT TV screen appear with the puzzle in question, where you can submit an answer to change the eye icon on the main page, spelling out the password. The puzzles and their solutions are as follows:

### Puzzle 1: Calendar

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* Monitor
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The first puzzle shows a set of numbers listed in a similar style as a calendar –4, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 21, 23, 25, 28, 30–, and the phrase "July 2021" on top. The colors 4, 11, 18, and 25 are colored red. This matches the Sunday dates for the month of July in 2021. Marking all the dates on the calendar can make a specific shape: a line goes from 25 upward through 18, 11, and ending on 4, then diagonally down-rightwards through 12, 20, and 28, then upwards again across 21, 14, and 7, which makes a giant **N**. A line downwards from 9 through 16, 23, and 30 make a giant **I**. This results in the answer to the puzzle: **NI**.

### Puzzle 2: Pigpen Cipher

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The second puzzle shows 3 strange symbols defined by their shapes and angles. Their descriptions are as follows: the first symbol is two perpendicular lines, one vertical and one 90˚ counterclockwise horizontally, with a dot in the midpoint of their right angle; the second symbol is two perpendicular lines, the first raised at a slope of 1 and the second connected at its tip at a slope of -1 (essentially an upside-down V); the third symbol is two perpendicular lines, one vertical and one 90˚ *clockwise* this time, and no dot in sight. These symbols are part of a pigpen cypher (AKA masonic cipher, among others), and when deciphered they produce the letters **RVA**.

### Puzzle 3: Subtraction

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The third puzzle is a math equation composed of words rather than numbers. The equation reads ***Thousand - Dash Out = ?***. The solution to this puzzle is to subtract the letters that compose the phrase Dash Out (A, D, H, O, S, T, U) from the word Thousand. This leaves the puzzle with just one letter: **N**.

### Puzzle 4: Morse Code

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The fourth puzzle is composed of simply a single dot and a single vertical line: • **—** . These symbols are morse code, and deciphering the code results in the letter **A**.

### Puzzle 5: Rainbow, Circles, and Stars

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The fifth puzzle covers the entire TV screen in a spectrum of colors, but inside the symbols ○○★★○○○ can be found. The solution to this puzzle is to define the spectrum seen in the background, a RAINBOW, and then select the appropriate letters that correspond with the positioning of the stars (★). With that, the third and fourth letters are extracted, resulting in the answer being **IN**.

### Puzzle 6: Binary

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The sixth puzzle contains set of 1 and 0s organized into the following sequence: 01101001. These numbers are binary, and can be decoded into the letter **I**.

### Puzzle 7: Clock

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The seventh puzzle is an image of a clock where the hour and minute hands face towards the 12th position, and two fractions are placed along the clock's positions. A 1/3 fraction is found on the 2nd position and a 2/4 fraction is found at the 5th position. The denominator of each fraction correlates to the amount of letters that the spelt-out word for the number its position in has (i.e. the 3 in 1/3 correlates to the word TWO as its placed in the 2nd position, and the 4 in 2/4 correlates to the word FIVE). As such, the numerators in each fraction correlate to the letter position in each word: a **T** from TWO (1/3), and an **I** from FIVE (2/4). As such, the solution for this puzzle is **TI**.

### Puzzle 8: Star Pyramid

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The eight puzzle is a pyramid composed of several letters, with a ★ symbol at the start and end of each individual row. The letters for each row, top to bottom, are C, LER, DDIC, CCOUN, and LCHEMIS. Much like the rainbow puzzle, the ★ symbols correlate to specific letters, specifically the starter ★ were all the same to each other and the end ★ were all the same independently, and when combined with the row they're located in, they form a complete English word. As such, one can deduce which 2 letters, when placed at the start and end of each row respectively, can produce a functional word. The correct answer is **AT**, as the resulting words would be **A**C**T**, **A**LER**T**, **A**DDIC**T**, **A**CCOUN**T**, and **A**LCHEMIS**T**.

### Puzzle 9: Caesar Cipher

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The ninth and final puzzle is simply the phrase "CAESAR SHIFT 4 ERA". The phrase CAESAR SHIFT correlates to a Caesar cipher, commonly known as a shift cipher, wherein the letters of the alphabet are "shifted" forwards or backwards on the alphabet by a specific number. In this case, the cipher number is 4, and the word that must be deciphered is ERA. Moving the letters E, R, and A by 4 spots in the alphabet gives the answer of **IVE**.

## Countdown

Once all 9 puzzles are solved, all the letters would be visible within the eye symbols. These answers were NI, RVA, N, A, IN, I, TI, AT, and IVE. Inputting NIRVANAINITATIVE into the password input leads into an image of a giant blue skull, with numbers ticking down on both eye sockets and the phrase "Share The Truth #NineEyesTV" found at the bottom. The numbers on the right eye socket (left when facing the image) indicated minutes, while the other eye socket indicated seconds. This timer counted down up to 5 PM PDT on June 30th, 2021, wherein the announcement trailer was shown. A few hours before the countdown ended, the Countdown image was made available by default, making the puzzles completely unavailable.

## Trivia

* When the website was published, hidden in its source code, a link to the site www.spike-chunsoft.co.jp/ai-nirvana could be found. The link itself was not active, and the link was subsequently removed after a few hours.
* In its initial day after going live, the countdown found at the end of the puzzle did not function properly, as it would automatically reset itself to around 2900 minutes (approx. 48 hours) every time the page refreshed, and switching out of the tab would freeze the timer. The first glitch would be fixed by the final day, while the freezing timer would persist but easily be fixed with a refresh.
* Certain elements found in this website may become relevant to the events of *AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES - nirvanA Initiative*, but it's unknown how much, if any, would carry over, such as:
	+ The 9 different eyes.
	+ The CRT TV screens.
	+ The words ACT, ALERT, ADDICT, ACCOUNT, and ALCHEMIST.
	+ The date July 2021.
	+ The different ciphers used for the puzzles.
* The CRT TV screens used as the framing device for each puzzle shares similarities to the appearances of the CRT TVs in the Somnium titled PSYNCIN' IN THE VaiN from *AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES*. It's unclear if there's any relevance to that Somnium or the character it belongs to (major spoilers for *AI*) or if it's simply just a re-used concept.
* The Caesar/Shift cipher was used briefly in the Lemniscate YouTube Series as the second part in a two-part ARG puzzle found by the character Ota Matsushita. The puzzle involved implementing a Letter Number cipher in reverse and then applying a Shift 13 cipher to the solution.
* When a player beats the puzzles and tweets out the promo link for the website, the image that appears in the thumbnail is that of the TV screens stacked in a 3x3 format on top of each other. This stack is reminiscent of the Japanese logo for *Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors*.