The Vine Point or The “Where’s the l1z1wxAvx4t Door?” Point

Three things: 1) TvCyd3MZWRh A) The key is under the mat. a) Don't lose your mind over this one, honey. #thegintercode

— Ginter Code (@TheGinterCode) January 16, 2015

When we saw this point, both Jason and I immediately thought YouTube. The TvCyd3MZWRh string is the exact format of youtube video IDs, an 11 character case sensitive hash. It turns out, it wasn’t exactly the same as YouTube, but more on that later. At any rate, we did a lot of searching around youtube to try to find something. The string itself didn’t work.

So we tried converting the string using the key that the CM gave us: underthemat. It has 11 characters, so it matches up well with the gibberish string from the first part of the clue. This is where things got a little sticky. We assumed the encoding was using a standard base62. It's a way to convert a very large number into a very small string by using 0-9, A-Z, a-z encoding. This was hinted at in the original clue's numbering scheme, and it's similar to YouTube's encoding format, which uses base64 instead of 62. We created a table where 0 = 0, 1=1, A=10, a=37, and z=61. This is a standard base62. I have no idea why we thought there would be anything standard about the encoding.

Decoding the lock and key using that system would never have worked, but it didn't really matter, since we didn't know the door yet anyway. The CM gave a series of clues that made it clear that it wasn't using a standard base62 encoding.

Perhaps this anagram with a one-word solution, which I feel also describes some of your guesses, will help: maniac lob. #thegintercode

— Ginter Code (@TheGinterCode) January 29, 2015

Maniac lob is an anagram of cobalamin, which is vitamin B-12. So our assumption that B=11 is wrong. B = 12. That meant that there had to be another character between 9 and A, so we threw the Zero in that spot. Now, decoding the lock and key gives us OjqdVw5EJ3b

Awesome! so now what do we do? We tried that at YouTube, nothing. I also noticed that the password was similar to the old Flocculent Abe password from a few years ago, so we started trying to log into twitter accounts that had previously been used for the code. Nothing. We were honestly stumped as to what to do with the code.

A note here - another codebreaker, Steve T, we'll call him, figured out the Marvin Gaye hint when nobody else did. He tweeted that right after the codemaster posted the original point. In fairness, as a child of the 80's, if he'd said "California Raisins" I probably would have gotten what he was referencing quicker. We also totally missed the twizzler and pitfall hints until after we figured out what we were supposed to do.

Finally, it was sorta dumb luck that ended up showing the answer. I was browsing around on my personal twitter account and I watched a Vine video from one of my friends. That's when I noticed that the URL of the video had the same 11 character base64 string that YouTube uses!

I dropped the decoded string into Vine and found this:

This is where things get messy. So we're supposed to watch this Vine and figure out a hashtag based on the pictogram in the video. Take a second to watch that. Obvious, right?

So it starts with a picture of twitter, so tweet at the codemaster. So far so good.
Bag of Almonds = Pound = Hashtag
Grate = Great
Nintendo = NES
A ceiling light dimming = Fades
A paper with "The" followed by Google's Source code = The Code or The Site
A creepy brown eye
the corner of a baseball card
ET =Et
A key turning in a lock = Turn
Al from quantum leap = Al

So we quickly realized it was something like "Greatness Fades Something Something Eternal"

We threw one at the wall:

@TheGinterCode #Greatnessfadesthesiteloopseternal

— Bosun Knows Best (@BosunKnows) February 4, 2015

That didn't work, so we tried another:

@TheGinterCode #Greatnessfadesthecodeihaveeternal

— Bosun Knows Best (@BosunKnows) February 4, 2015

And another:

@TheGinterCode #Greatnessfadesthecodeillhaveeternal

— Bosun Knows Best (@BosunKnows) February 4, 2015

And another:

@thegintercode #Greatnessfadesthecodeiseternal

— Bosun Knows Best (@BosunKnows) February 4, 2015

We have no idea which was right. Actually, we aren't even sure that we got this point. I'm not sure if anybody got it right, but it's possible that the CM just gave us the point for effort. Who knows. Either way, it was very frustrating to us, because it wasn't all that clear in the pictogram whether we got it right, and once we guessed, we were opening ourselves up to being sniped by another team. I still have no idea what the Eye and the corner of the card are supposed to mean. If the CM wants to chime in to let us know what he was thinking, we'd appreciate that.