April Fools ARG

The **April Fools ARG** is an event that took place on the official Discord server of *CP3D* on April 1, 2022. It was an event where members of the community worked together to solve four puzzles to form a password for the itch.io site. Ever since then, the site is occasionally updated with a new log from Gary the Gadget Guy along with some design changes to the site.

The site is **https://cp3d.itch.io/database**, and the password is **24527613**.

## History

It started when SoupsSB shared an image in the announcements channel, joking about an upcoming party: The "Holiday Party 2: Electric Boogaloo (and Knuckles)". In the corner of the image, there was text in Tic-Tac-Toe code, which decoded to a link: https://cp3d.itch.io/database. The website acted as a database for the Penguin Secret Agency, containing the logo for the agency, some messages written in hexadecimal, and an input field to type something.

**HOLIDAY PARTY 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO (and Knuckles)**
We hope you are as excited as we are to welcome such an ambitious custom party!!!

## The Site

### Decoded Hexadecimal Messages

As the site updated with more submitted logs, the hexadecimal messages changed.

* April 1
* April 5
* April 7
* April 14
* May 12
* June 9

* Top left: "All the leaves are brown
and the sky is weird.
I've been for a walk on a winter's day.
I'd be warm and safe if I was in the island.
Penguin island dreamin' on such a winter day."
* Top right: "Now with fixed bugs and less leaks for the idiots!"
* Bottom: "Penguin Secret Agency Database Penguin Secret Agency Database Penguin Secret Agency Database"

* Top left: "All the leaves are brown
and the sky is weird.
I've been for a walk on a winter's day.
I'd be warm and safe if I was in the island.
Penguin island dreamin' on such a winter day."
* Top right (after April 5): "Did i really had to come here?
All around me is weird
Nothing is normal, gravity is gone
Great view, but what is that?
Eh...
Road ahead is [REDACTED]"
* Bottom: "Penguin Secret Agency Database Penguin Secret Agency Database Penguin Secret Agency Database"

* Top left: "Between all
Of dimensions
Xen is the border"
* Top right: "The Sky is falling down"
* Bottom: "Penguin Secret Agency Database Penguin Secret Agency Database Penguin Secret Agency Database"

* Top left: "Oi mundo porque te acabas?
Porque abandonas tu normalidad?
Porque desvanecen las luces y el caos aparece?
Porque la isla se abre y tiembla
hace frio, todo ha cambiado
Nuestra hora mas fina ha llegado"
* Top right: "The Sky is falling down"
* Bottom: "danger" repeated many times

* Top left: "Down in the
Enlonged
Prolonged
These areas are surrounded
Habitat? impossible
Stay where we can see you"
* Top right: "error" repeated many times
* Bottom: "ERROR" repeated many times

* Top left: "Error" repeated many times without spaces
* Top right: "Error" repeated many times without spaces
* Bottom: "Error" repeated many times without spaces

### Designs

When it was first foundApril 1-5April 14-May 13May 13-June 9June 9-onward
## The Puzzles

The password needed to be inputted in the field was an 8 digit number combination, in which 4 complex puzzles needed to be solved to get 2 numbers each. Each puzzle was composed by a different staff member: Kwakuyaa, SoupsSB, OlieGamerTV, and Domohead.

* Kwakuyaa's Puzzle
* SoupsSB's Puzzle
* OlieGamerTV's Puzzle
* Domohead's Puzzle

Kwakuyaa's puzzle started with a GIF being posted on his twitter, which contained the letter 'X' on the left side, and a clock. The clock would shift to two images: An hourglass, and a stamp. This implied the phrase "time stamp". The time on the clock translated to 10:49, implying that it could be the timestamp of a video.

This video was found to be Tiny Virtual Avatar Adventure Episode 10, timestamped at 10:49 where a character mentions the number 24. So, the final number for the password was **24**.

SoupsSB's puzzle started with a video posted on his Twitter, which had a hidden spectrogram in the audio. The spectrogram revealed a distorted image of Rookie with part of the Box Store, and the number '52'. So, the final number for this as part of the password was **52**.

OlieGamerTV's puzzle was a complex decrypt and decode puzzle. It started with a tweet by him that contained a link to a Google Drive file, which contained two images, both of which appeared to be broken at first.

The tweet contained this description:

```
DATA_FILE INTERCEPTED
ERROR: [ENCRYPTION] DETECTED
P1: LINE 14 37 102 | P2: LINE 19 71 97
REMOVAL OF [ENCRYPTION] REQUIRED
(N"($P#*++ RECOMMENDED)
```

"P1: LINE 14 37 102 | P2: LINE 19 71 97" was meant to signify which image it was referring to, and the numbers in the LINE area refer to the text lines, where "[ENCRYPTION]" strings laid, hinted at by "REMOVAL OF [ENCRYPTION] REQUIRED".

"N"($P#\*++" referred to Notepad++, a popular program for editing files.

After you removed those strings, it would form a whole image, which would reveal 4 different strings.

```
"DIGITS RECIEVED"
"UZEROVWRUFIVEUWQ"
"UZEROlY"
"THE SIZE OF THE CODE MATTERS IN THIS BASE"
```

"UZEROVWRUFIVEUWQ" and "UZEROlY" were the important ones, as they were encoded in Base64. Decoding them revealed the words "SEVENTY" and "SIX", which were the numbers you needed from the puzzle.
"THE SIZE OF THE CODE MATTERS IN THIS BASE" was a hint for the small "l" in one of the Base64 codes. Olie had a hint in his Discord status earlier when people were solving the puzzle, which read "WORDS\_CAN\_BE\_NUMBERS", which was for the "ZERO", "FIVE" and "ZERO" parts to convert them back to numbers. So, the final number for the password was **76**.

Domohead's puzzle started in his fan-made Discord server, 'CP3D Zone'. He tells everyone to look at the backgrounds in his catalog, which contained a cryptic message in wingdings. When translated, it said to look at the ninth page of the catalog. That page contained an image with Domohead's signature duck in the center, with a line of text at the bottom. This ended up being in Base64, which, when translated to standard text, reads "basetPin wPZ8Y0fz", which decodes to "Pastebin wPZ8Y0fz". This then turns into a link for a Pastebin file: https://pastebin.com/wPZ8Y0fz

The only text on the page is this: "###://###.###/###/319315314884083712/319319042240413696/773345936910188564". This was quickly worked out to be a Discord message link, which contained a random message from 2020 edited to this:

```
edit: haha made you see thIs aboMination aGain
anyway the final step is Uhhhh i foRgor 💀
SOTIpM7
```

The code at the end is an ID for an Imgur image, which contains some blocks of color with the caption "Focus on the corners...". This ended up being a QR code, which, when scanned, turned into "NUMBER THIRTEEN". So, the final number for the password was **13**.
## The Solved Puzzle

Once all of the pairs of numbers were known, all that was left was to figure out what order they went in to form the password. This was revealed through a sticker of a Spy Phone in the Discord server, which occasionally flashed a combination of 4 letters in Tic-Tac-Toe code, which translated to "KSOD". This references for the first letter of each of the staff members who composed the puzzles: **K**wakuyaa, **S**oupsSB, **O**lieGamerTV, and **D**omohead. The meaning of this was to put the number pairs in the corresponding order of the puzzles from those staff members.

And so, when pieced together, the final password is **24527613**. When inputted into the field on the website, the user is sent to a database containing various different log submissions by Gary the Gadget Guy. As the days went on, different log submissions were inputted.

## Gary's Logs

The first log, on April 1, was Gary giving a message confirming that an April Fools Party is coming, once the snow from the Holiday Party clears out. The hexadecimal message at the bottom reads, "Situation in development" twice.

On April 5, another log was submitted, saying that Rookie noted that boxes in the Box Dimension were wackier than normal. He said that research will be conducted on it soon.

On April 7, two more new logs were submitted, saying that since Rookie spends the most time in the Box Dimension, there is a high chance that his concerns are accurate. Another log that was released later stated that he has gotten equipment working in order to conduct experiments ASAP. This suggests that an April Fools Party could be starting in the next 1-2 days. When these logs were released, the screen changed as well. Gary's icon image would slightly glitch, the "UNDER CONTROL" text changed to "UNDER INVESTIGATION", and the hexadecimal message at the bottom changed to "Investigation in progress Investigation in progress".

On April 14, another log was submitted, with the database having lots of glitching effects. The log was simply stating the challenge of calculating mean values in a parallel dimension.

After this, there was an almost month-long break before any more logs were submitted, most likely because of *CP3D*'s downtime during this time. However, another log was submitted on May 12, with Gary concluding that, for the most part, the Box Dimension should be safe. The hexadecimal read "ERROR" many times.
After almost another month, on June 9, a seventh log was submitted, saying that the fluctuations in the Box Dimension are increasing in frequency, which raises concerns about a supposed April Fools Party, which is puzzling. After this log, no more have been posted for almost two months, so it seems that there will be no more logs at this time.

* 4/1/22 Log
* 4/5/22 Log
* 4/7/22 Logs
* 4/14/22 Log
* 5/12/22 Log
* 6/9/22 Log

## The End

Soon after the announcement that *CP3D* would be closing, a video was posted in the Discord server and on Twitter, showing Gary in the PSA HQ, when suddenly all the monitors on the I.S.E.E.U. display SMPTE color bars, all of the lights on the map of the island flash red (except for those of the Welcome Room and Iceberg), purple sparks fly, and the video feed cuts out.

On August 26, 2022, an image was posted by OlieGamerTV in the announcements channel of the *CP3D* Discord server, showing a blurry image of an igloo with a Fireplace and Mullet Fish, and a knocked over Bamboo Chair. Soon after this, Olie posted a message in the wiki's Discord server, encrypted in hexadecimal, which reads `4D 45 54 41 44 41 54 41`. When decrypted, it translates to 'METADATA'. Soon after, it was discovered that the author of the image posted was set to be 'AUNT\_ARCTIC', depicting that the image itself takes place in Aunt Arctic's igloo.

Almost 10 hours after the initial image was posted, Olie edited the message to give a hexadecimal message reading `61 48 52 30 63 48 4D 36 4C 79 39 6B 63 6D 6C 32 5A 53 35 6E 62 32 39 6E 62 47 55 75 59 32 39 74 4C 32 52 79 61 58 5A 6C 4C 32 5A 76 62 47 52 6C 63 6E 4D 76 4D 56 42 50 54 58 52 57 4D 56 70 70 53 7A 68 5A 65 55 6C 79 54 46 68 6D 63 46 70 4D 4E 6E 42 33 65 6C 64 4D 55 7A 46 66 4F 48 5A 68`. When translated, it turns into a Base64 message reading `aHR0cHM6Ly9kcml2ZS5nb29nbGUuY29tL2RyaXZlL2ZvbGRlcnMvMVBPTXRWMVppSzhZeUlyTFhmcFpMNnB3eldMUzFfOHZh` And when *that* is translated, it turns into a Google Drive URL: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1POMtV1ZiK8YyIrLXfpZL6pwzWLS1\_8va

In the drive, there are two JPEG images, both of which are corrupted, and need to be uncorrupted in a specific way. When they are, however, they become these two images:

The buildup of the ARG was likely The Rift event, leading up to the closure of *CP3D*.

## Contributors

The following list of people is everyone who helped in solving each of the puzzles, by their Discord usernames.

* alexsssi
* D3iviz
* Devious Purrloin
* Kokomo
* NorwayDuck
* Sammany

### Minor Contributors

* Enzo
* Yoshi
* Yoshi3108

## Gallery

An image placed in inspect element to discourage cheatingAnother image placed in inspect element on April 7Another image placed in inspect element in April (The decoded tic-tac-toe message reads "HAHAHAHA THERE'S NOTHING TO DECODE FOOL)The PSA Phone sticker from April 1 - April 7The PSA Phone sticker from April 7 and onwardsA video posted on July 24, 2022 (converted to GIF for viewing sake)