Wickex's YouTube puzzle

December 23, 2013, 02:22 UTC. Wickex had just solved IAMABananaAMAA's GIF puzzle, and the next post says why there's a second puzzle at all: "Because I successfully completed the previous puzzle, it would only be fair to create the next one." Marked medium. An address, 1 mBTC, and a line of hex to start from.

How the YouTube puzzle works

Hex that spells a link

The starting code is 42 bytes of ASCII. Decode it and you get http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYx8FvX9ib0. That's the easy part.

Morse in the audio

The first video carries Morse code. IAMABananaAMAA loaded it into Audacity to hear it better. The Morse spells a bit.ly path, and here people got stuck, because Morse has no case and bit.ly does. givesadvice4bitcoin reported a broken link. Wickex answered twice: "The morse-output should be all-caps by the way!" and "It's case-sensitive and all caps."

A passphrase in a spectrogram

The bit.ly link opens a second video. Somebody asked about an image. Wickex: "The image is meaningless." The sound is what matters. Put the sound through Sonic Visualiser or Spek and a string shows up in the spectrogram. IAMABananaAMAA only gave its ends, "STI...I5Z", so as not to spoil it.

Last step: "You're one step away, Brainwallet.org!" The string is a brainwallet passphrase. SHA-256 of the text, and the result is the private key.

Solved, sent back, taken again

IAMABananaAMAA got there first. "I cleared it but I'm going to send it back actually and then start another." And did. The sweep and the refund went into the same block, 276478, at 03:08:58. The refund's change went to the same address the sweep paid, so the chain agrees with the comment.

The 1 mBTC didn't last. givesadvice4bitcoin imported the key and left it alone. Eighteen minutes later, same thread: "Annnnd...it's gone". A second claim confirmed at 03:27:40, and nobody in the thread said it was them. Then IAMABananaAMAA posted the whole chain in four steps, from hex to Brainwallet.org.

What the Wickex record carries

export const wickexYouTube = bitcoinPuzzle({
  id: "wickex/youtube",
  address: p2pkh("1LhQZc57j9i3xofj5poayd6PnakN7xHwDA", "d80eb272…57092259"),
  sourceUrl: THREAD,
  startedAt: "2013-12-23 02:22:43",
  status: Status.Solved,
  pubkey: uncompressed("04f84646d641306db5209da72a4f7ce6386404fb4035a296b38467a39406a6bac7…d5c684"),
  prize: 0.001,
  hints: [/* the hex, the capitals twice, Brainwallet.org, STI...I5Z */],
  solvedAt: "2013-12-23 03:08:58",
  solveTime: 2775,
  transactions: [
    funding(/* … */),
    claim(/* … */),
    increase(/* … */),
    claim(/* … */),
    increase(/* … */),
    sweep(/* … */),
  ],
  solver: party("IAMABananaAMAA", { profiles: [/* reddit */] }),
});

Why there's no key

Nobody in the thread printed the passphrase or the key. The recipe is all there, but it needs both videos, and the first one is private now. So the record has no key and verify has nothing to derive. The public key doesn't need the recipe at all: both claims signed with it, and the record reads it from their input scripts. Uncompressed.

Hints with their answers

Four hints are Wickex's: the hex from the post and three comments. Each carries a piece of IAMABananaAMAA's four step answer, word for word, from the comment posted after the prize was gone. "STI...I5Z" is a community hint. It's the solver's, not the author's, and the record keeps that.

Six transactions for one prize

The funding confirmed 18 seconds before the post. Then the first claim and the refund, recorded as an increase, since that's what it did to the address. Then the second claim. And in February 2014, whoever still had the key sent 27,486 satoshis in and 17,486 out in the same block. That's the increase and the sweep at the end. The address is empty since.

Solved by whom

solver is IAMABananaAMAA, the first to sweep, and solvedAt is that block. The same person who opened r/bitcoinpuzzles the evening before. The second claim stays a claim with no name, because that's all the chain says.

The Wickex puzzle records