As some of you already know, we like to have a little fun around the site by hiding secrets in various places and giving prizes to those who can find and solve them. To make this a little more structured, we’re making this thread to centralize past secrets, hints about new secrets, discussion, and questions. When a new secret begins, we’ll post about it here. Do you have what it takes?!
For those of you who have already solved an ongoing secret, please don’t spoil it for those who are still looking!
Secret 1 [COMPLETED 3/8/16]:
The first secret began on the Support page. It was pretty simple, all you had to do was see the extra couple sentences in the “What is Chrono.gg” section that asked everyone to send us their favorite Pokemon.
Secret 2 [COMPLETED 3/8/16]:
The second secret began and ended on the same day. It took place right here in the community. We went through and edited several topics to include various letters in the phrase “HALF LIFE 3”. All you had to do was find all the letters, spell out the phrase, and email it to us.
Secret 3 [COMPLETED 3/22/16]:
The third secret turned out to be much harder than the others. In every purchase confirmation email that went out we hid some text near the bottom of the email that asked users to send us an email with the subject “SECRET COW LEVEL.” You can still see where the message was in the purchase confirmation emails by highlighting below the “contact us” line.
Secret 4 [COMPLETED 4/11/16]:
Secret 4 was our hardest secret yet, but 25 people figured it out. To solve the secret you had to visit our About Us page and enter the classic Doom cheat code IDDQD. This brought you to this video with some strange sounds. Many people got stuck here, but some enterprising individuals figured out that those weird sounds produced an image that asked them to send an email to us with the subject line “DOOM”.
Secret 5 [COMPLETED 4/18/16]:
Well, that was fast! This secret was solved much faster than anticipated. It all revolved around fictional languages found in video games. The first clue, found right here in this topic, says “the secret is the source” in Alienese, a language originally from Futurama, but more recently in Enter the Gungeon. The second clue was contained in the source code of the site. This spelled out “chronodotggslasholdparchment” in the secret language from Fez. Heading over to Chrono.gg - One game. One amazing deal. Every day at 9AM Pacific. you can see the final clue, written in the Daedric language from the Elder Scrolls series. This asked users to send an email with a screenshot of the page and the subject line “Fictional Languages.”
Secret 6 [COMPLETED 5/1/16]:
Judging by the responses from those who solved this secret, I think this was our hardest yet. It started with a clue in this thread, “a little birdie showed us something awesome that piqued our curiosity…” This referred to a tweet (little birdie) we made that day for Awesomenauts (something awesome) which contained a gif (showed us something) that had a QR code in a single frame (watch the top right corner). This QR code, when scanned, displayed the message “DACCECBGCG.” This needed to be translated into numbers, which led to “4133532737,” which is a phone number! Call the number (you still can!) and it immediately goes to voicemail with a message in morse code. This message spells out “SECRET@CHRONO.GG SUBJECT SOS.” Ta da.
Secret 7 [COMPLETED 8/13/16]:
The fastest solve yet, congrats to the winners! This secret was separated into 4 sections. In the first section, you had to use the poem below to figure out that “strife” is a synonym of discord, which leads to our Discord channel.
In strife we say
to Robo’s dismay
that there’s always more
than one way to pay
Robo is the name of a bot in that channel. Sending Robo private message of “that there’s always more than one way to pay” gave the next clue.
Numbers I know
but it’s the title I need
maybe the rainforest
can give you a lead
9780470222751
This section ended up being quite simple for most people. The number at the bottom is an ISBN and rainforest referred to Amazon. Searching that number on Amazon (or Google) gave you the title of a book, Coin Collecting for Dummies. Typing that to Robo gave you the next step.
A coin-liKe picture
about which you’ll find
a visagE corrupted
bY the data behind
For this step you had to go to the About Us page and find the picture of Rupert which looked corrupted. Downloading that image and opening it with a hex editor reveals the final piece.
Oqysp qogpox yd gfbsly.ke gmrr xfo wslncmx “aymlc” eln e qmvcorqrsr yj rrmq wiqceeo
This is a Vigenère cipher and “key” is the key to decode it. Decoding it spelled out the final step of emailing us at secret@chrono.gg with the subject like “Coins”. And that’s it! We’ll start working on the next secret, look out for it!
Secret 8 [COMPLETED 3/7/17]:
It took a few days, but our most complex ARG yet has been solved! This secret will unlock a new feature on the site at 9AM Pacific on 3/8/17. You can check out the whole process over at the Game Detectives Wiki: http://wiki.gamedetectives.net/index.php?title=Chrono.gg_ARG
I’d also like to give a special thanks to the crew over at Game Detectives (specifically imnotgoats, crash, picapi_, and Svardskampe) for creating this ARG. Go check out their site, Discord, and subreddit for more ARG goodness!
Secret 9 [COMPLETED 11/26/17]:
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,
For a book of powerful deals,
Like the blackest of Friday steals.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
See the path with a westward gaze,
Thus begins a challenge for days.
) get some kind of reply when we send the correct answer?
