THE GAME HAS BEGUN

[SmilinJackRoss]

Don't get all frustrated yet. Your unscrambling skills are epic. We'll need you again.

Oh, I'm not bitter.  Not really.  It's not as if I'm paying for this entertainment.

I was just hoping at the end of this thing, I'd be looking at a chain of clues that clearly lead from one to the next, and saying to myself, "Aw, crap, I should have gotten that"; as opposed to me saying, "So, wait, I was supposed to throw the tape library at the rat-ant nest?  What the fuck?"

Oh, well.  Next time for sure.

signatured for truth.

[Pak-Man]

My big cool suggestion: The answerer of the next riddle gets a preview copy of the Rifftrax before anyone else. THEN you'll see mayhem! :^)

[kodiakthejuggler]

Record-breaking post right here!!

Most replies to a thread!!

Yay!

[torgosPizza]

Many of your guesses were misguided, such as with the random characters and the Korean text. Those two things were more or less misnomers. I apologize for the Korean characters - that was something Lowtax at SA did which was more or less random words.

I'll admit that the Troll 2 quotes were not entirely to throw you off - we wanted to keep them semi-vague, and still make sense in the fact that there was a long way to go in this "game."

After users had gotten a clue of mine from source code (for the Star Wars puzzle) we figured we'd play around with things like that some more. It's definitely a harder style of puzzle, but this took a lot more time and hopefully would be more fun to solve than the Star Wars puzzle. We were hoping that would be more satisfying to those of you with the courage to venture on. Personally, I think it worked well, and while it was tough seeing some of you get so close and yet come up with nothing, in the end it was quite exciting to watch.

Just remember that, while our clues won't be as obvious as a word jumble every time, we at least try to point you in the right direction. Our thoughts were as follows:

Word Jumble mentions Something Awful -> visit SomethingAwful.com and wait for the interview to post (the link was quickly found).
Listen to the interview to gain knowledge -> and the astute observers notice that Mike's image filename is asparagushtml.jpg
Eventually figure out www.rifftrax.com/asparagus.html -> leads you to the beginning of a puzzle
Puzzle contains many links, two of which bring you to different quizzes -> solving the quizzes gives you words, but what are they for?
If you continue clicking the floor plan, you will eventually find a login form.
Had you been keeping track of the words, you'd find that there were 27 possible combinations.
Because each user unknowingly gets only three tries, users would have to work together to achieve the common goal.
The reward at the end of cooperating this way would be super awesome and we eagerly anticipated you guys finding it.

We did this because we knew that you guys had an idea that the LOTR movies were coming. We're still scratching our heads as to exactly HOW you knew and how it was always your FIRST guess. Was it reason? Deduction? Espionage? We may never know. BUT, since the movie was already guessed, we wanted to make this adventure more cerebral than the others and therefore, make you work harder for something grander and more satisfying than a mere admittance of what RiffTrax is forthcoming.

Does this make sense? If you think this was too hard, we apologize. Everyone seems to be getting more and more cunning and so we wanted to entertain as well as ratchet up your curiosity (and yeah, make you sweat a little bit). We won't do puzzles like this every time, but we felt that for LOTR it was worth it.

I hope you had fun; I know we did!

[kodiakthejuggler]

the astute observers notice that Mike's image filename is asparagushtml.jpg

You know, last night, when I downloaded the image to create a new file to use in the Mike's Head Thread!, I did noticed the strange filename, yet I thought nothing of it!

Maybe next time I'll pay more attention!   

[Variety of Cells]

So those Korean symbols weren't suppose to mean anything, yet we were able to twist them into the correct, or close to correct answer?  I find that amazing.

[SmilinJackRoss]

You know, last night, when I downloaded the image to create a new file to use in the Mike's Head Thread!, I did noticed the strange filename, yet I thought nothing of it!

Maybe next time I'll pay more attention!   

The paranoia around these boards is going to get epic.  Everyone is going to look for clues in every aspect of not only this site, but the myspace pages, not to mention anywhere else rifftrax is mentioned.  Kudos for bringing another website in on the action, but this could get out of hand.  maybe that's part of the plan, I dunno.

[torgosPizza]

So those Korean symbols weren't suppose to mean anything, yet we were able to twist them into the correct, or close to correct answer?  I find that amazing.

Exactly... it was definitely a longshot, and I guess that means we'll have to be more careful next time!

The Korean words weren't ever meant to be a clue or even part of the game.. as we had mentioned in this thread somewhere. Generally if we say that you guys are using "clues" that are wrong, you can trust that we're telling the truth.

We may mislead you to the truth but when you guys are pulling stuff outta nowhere, we'll let you know

[torgosPizza]

The paranoia around these boards is going to get epic.  Everyone is going to look for clues in every aspect of not only this site, but the myspace pages, not to mention anywhere else rifftrax is mentioned.  Kudos for bringing another website in on the action, but this could get out of hand.  maybe that's part of the plan, I dunno.

It won't get out of hand if the clues are considered and carefully evaluated, eliminating any wild guesses. We try to find the balance between giving things away and making it difficult - obviously everyone is at their own skill level and that's why we encourage lots of help from all over the forum.

[Tarantulas]

Many of your guesses were misguided, such as with the random characters and the Korean text. Those two things were more or less misnomers. I apologize for the Korean characters - that was something Lowtax at SA did which was more or less random words.

You might want to say something to him about him changing the text halfway though the contest... since it happened at a time that you guys were sending us back to that page with "Mike is a key" it almost seemed like a call to refocus some attention to the text over there. 

I know you said NOT to look at the text, but it changed, and that could have been a clue to "forget what it used to say... look at it again"

Also, him using a character that can be translated as "gold"  (thinking rings) was a little annoying as well.

Generally, if you guys are going to partner for things, make sure you guys are 100% in control of things hosted elsewhere.  It's pretty easy for some site you guys are linking to to change the off site referral link from a happy scruffy bunny to goatse.

(which actually did happen on this very forum, and there were many red faces)

[torgosPizza]

Also, him using a character that can be translated as "gold"  (thinking rings) was a little annoying as well.

Generally, if you guys are going to partner for things, make sure you guys are 100% in control of things hosted elsewhere.  It's pretty easy for some site you guys are linking to to change the off site referral link from a happy scruffy bunny to goatse.

That's true. He says that he wanted it to translate to "Circle of Money" ... so I guess that can be construed a couple different ways.

Sorry about that. We'll watch out for that next time, and we'll be sure not to link to any of... that. Yeesh!

[Tarantulas]

some folks monitor their bandwidth like hawks... they start seeing a bunch of people visiting a certain page and getting a bunch of refer links, they tend to immediately go into panic mode... then BAM... tubgirl.

So is the whole "I used skype" thing just part of the game, or is Lowtax really that cheap and stupid?

[torgosPizza]

some folks monitor their bandwidth like hawks... they start seeing a bunch of people visiting a certain page and getting a bunch of refer links, they tend to immediately go into panic mode... then BAM... tubgirl.

So is the whole "I used skype" thing just part of the game, or is Lowtax really that cheap and stupid?

Not sure if he's really cheap and stupid, but even he admitted to being "unprofessional" - and yes he actually used Skype.

[Tarantulas]

I went ahead and signed up for the SA forums... maybe now he can afford a land line. 

[Edward J Grug III]

As far as the poll goes, I am abstaining because I want a mixture. I don't want one of these puzzles EVERY time, but sometimes, they are fun.

Likewise with the 20 questions.

I really love that you guys go to so much effort for these.

Please don't stop.