The Monero Puzzle (500 Piece Jigsaw)

Description

The Monero 500 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle

• This beautiful 500 piece work of art jigsaw puzzle features a ton of Monero XMR and other cryptocurrency references and memes hidden throughout the landscape
• Some sections are easier than others; which makes it great for help from anyone age 9 or older
• This puzzle can be broken down into 6 different sections A-F. On the back of the puzzle pieces are letters based on the section it belongs to. So, don’t look at these clues for a harder solve, or if you’re getting frustrated you can use these letters to know which section the piece belongs to
• The original art comes from Giovanni Paolo Pannini from the 1700s. An artist who goes by TheMonera and midipoet released this customized puzzle in 2018 with a hidden XMR reward locked behind clues in this puzzle. A portion of every sale will go to support TheMonera’s work.
• Should take 3-5 hours to complete this jigsaw puzzle

This product ships from the US to the US. It will ship to you from an Amazon warehouse, but please purchase here on our website (we will pay less fees to Amazon this way and you have the option to pay in cryptocurrency here). If you are outside of the US and would like to purchase this puzzle, you could try using a freight forwarder of your choice to achieve this (they would re-ship it to you internationally). You can also try purchasing directly on Amazon (they might be able to ship to your country for a fee, though I’m not sure which countries this is possible for).

Trivia and History of this Puzzle

Puzzle Art created and released in 2018 by theMonera and reddit user midipoet (I believe they created the ideas for all the clues) at themonera.art as an edit of Giovanni Paolo Pannini’s original painting from 1757. “There’s a private key with an unknown amount of XMR hidden in it. Which, rumor has it, is the same FluffyPony lost in his boating accident.” Now that it is a physical jigsaw puzzle; there is a puzzle within a puzzle.

Spoiler Alert: Here’s how it was solved to unlock access to the XMR seed for the funds. I will summarize the article below:

1. Clue: See the “monero research lab” period table of elements. Reorganize the elements into their proper order (Cl — Ar — K — Ca — Sc — Ti — V — Cr — Mn — Fe). The text under the element is in base64 encoding and when in order makes “DePk6rqSKIcsDzx177WKCeD6uEYOo3iRkMszgy1sMJLD8rbSSP2J+FGF3L3yL8GmQQ==”.
   • I’m not sure most people would know what base64 is without some research into why there are “=” and “+” symbols in the string of text.
2. Now you would try to decode this string using a base64 decoder, but the result would be nonsense.  So, the text is encrypted. We have to decrypt it using a passphrase and knowing which type of cipher was used for the encryption.
3. There are different forms of ciphers, but there are two clues in the art that show two fish. Twofish cipher.
4. See the robot spray painting the barcode (middle left)? When you scan this barcode you get p864xRDJ. The binary “0’s” and “1’s” to the upper right of the robot is actually the pastebin.com logo. So, when you add these two clues together, you can get a web url link to go to. The page reads, “If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:” Google this poem, and you learn Rudyard Kipling is the author, and the poem is called “If.”
5. In the “Invisible Man” poster, at the bottom you can notice some dashes and dots. This is morse code. It says “Position Three”
6. Another Clue: Blaise de Vigenere 1523–1596 tombstone. Vigenere is a very famous and used cipher in many puzzles, so the inclusion here wouldn’t be very suspicious. You could assume that there will be a ciphertext at a later stage and we need to use a Vigenere cipher to decode it. [But, actually, we would use Rudyard Kipling’s name and his birth year and death year as the key/passphrase for our ciphertext from the periodic table of elements using the twofish cipher.]
7. Now it is time to use some clues to get further along the path. The person who first solved this puzzle was stuck (along with everyone else). Some more clues were released on reddit by user midipoet. It was hinted that using brackets should not be forgotten. You could try to decode the clues at the website:
   • https://codebeautify.org/encrypt-decrypt

     Ciphertext: DePk6rqSKIcsDzx177WKCeD6uEYOo3iRkMszgy1sMJLD8rbSSP2J+FGF3L3yL8GmQQ==

     Cipher/mode: Twofish/CTR

     Passphrase: RudyardKipling(1865–1936)

   • I tried this myself and could not get the decryption to work to get the result. Anyone know why?
8. The output given for this was apparently: “paradise_lost_1674@protonmail.com”.
   • The passphrase Rudyard Kipling with the parentheses brackets of his birth and death years definitely seemed like an impossible part to figure out. The clue released on reddit for this was vital (remember the brackets). I think the tombstone art should have had the brackets there; but I guess this was overlooked. Also, how was the CTR mode for the decryption setting supposed to be known?
9. He sent an email to the email address and got an auto-response that it could be accessed with “#030F03#081505#0D0702#0E2107”. These are RGB colors:
   • #030f03 = rgb( 3, 15, 3)
     #081505 = rgb( 8, 21, 5)
     #0d0702 = rgb(13, 7, 2)
     #0e2107 = rgb(14, 33, 7)
10. Paradise Lost is a book. Search in the book.
    • #030f03 rgb( 3, 15, 3) -> paragraph 3 row 15 word 3: disdain
      #081505 rgb( 8, 21, 5) -> paragraph 8 row 21 word 5: ambition
      #0d0702 rgb(13, 7, 2) -> paragraph 13 row 7 word 2: defiance
      #0e2107 rgb(14, 33, 7) -> paragraph 14 row 33 word 7: multitude
11. Combine these words together and you get a password to the email: disdainambitiondefiancemultitude
12. The creator of this puzzle overlooked the fact that the first person who accessed this email could change the password (which he did)…oops! Now no one else could get past this step because he had ownership of the email…
13. In the email account there was an unsent draft. There was a seed but it only had 24 words. (Monero seeds are 25 words long.) There was an attached file. Morse code again. it said tsunami. Remember the clue from before? Position three. Put the word tsunami in the third position to make 25 words.
14. Now he had the seed to gain access to the monero wallet. The wallet contained 1 XMR; which at the time of reading may or may not have been worth all the effort in your opinion :P.