I tend to forget things

Question

I tend to forget things. The only thing that keeps my memories alive is dreaming. During the day I listen to all that is said to me, but in the evening I already forget it. But when I fall asleep all that I learned that day tries to make it to the surface of my conciousness in some enigmatic form. I will tell you my dream. Could you remind me what I forgot about today? Otherwise someone will certainly be mad at me tomorrow.

My drawing skills are not that good, but I will try to draw you some outlines of my dream. To make sure you understand it see the description below:

The question is: Could you remind me what I forgot about today?

Credit (but also a hint):

This puzzle was inspired by (the mechanics of) this great puzzle by Ankoganit.

@lois6b I hope you will get into my dream deep enough to see that this is not a mistake :) — oleslaw, Oct 26 '16 at 06:57
funny answer. "Black Brown and White" is a song of Big Bill Broonzy. Big Bill means you have forgot to pay! :) (Nice riddle!) — marcoresk, Oct 26 '16 at 07:33
Small progress: Click on the image, and you get a different image. Use the text in those, and you get more images... Eventually, you need a 'password' and two 'keys', whatever they are. — boboquack, Oct 26 '16 at 07:43
@marcoresk It fits so well I'm beginning to regret it is not the intended answer :P — oleslaw, Oct 26 '16 at 07:48
Does the story have anything to do with the code? Maybe the number of letters in each of the words? — Qwerp-Derp, Oct 26 '16 at 09:03
@Qwerp-Derp The steganography tag is intentionally not there. — oleslaw, Oct 26 '16 at 09:04
In addition to @boboquack I assume that the passwords / keys you will be getting somehow are (partial) pointers to the next image. I think that the hint from the first picture will somehow give you the password. Would fit to cipher (@loise6b) as well... — geisterfurz007, Oct 26 '16 at 09:06
Are you using images from the other puzzle for cracking this? — Techidiot, Oct 26 '16 at 10:39
@Techidiot All the images used in this puzzle are created exclusively for this puzzle. — oleslaw, Oct 26 '16 at 10:43
oleslaw- I mean does the images from the referred puzzle hold any meaning here? :) — Techidiot, Oct 26 '16 at 10:47
@Techidiot No. :) This is entirely separate puzzle. Only the mechanics part (which inspired me to make this puzzle) is kind of similar - this is why I linked it. — oleslaw, Oct 26 '16 at 10:53

Zadok Storkey · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-27T13:53:38.357

3

I followed the riddle about the dragon and got a result of

'drAgN' (capitalised parts were described as larger and the o is the crushed 'hole').

I used a

Vigenere shift with that as a key using the order of lowercase uppercase and numbers provided by @M Oehm commented on the other answer.

This led to the following page:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/QHPzy.png

From there much of the labarynth is visible including the key

'd6AQ5'.

I then decrypted the door on the right at the start with that key and the key

('dream')

which I got from the hint that the key is

('what this is all about')

leading to a result of the page

(https://i.stack.imgur.com/R657h.png)

From the clue

(about going to 'his or her door':)

We know

(that they forgot about going to visit someone.)

From the clues

(about the shape of the puzzle and about the watch being stuck at 5pm:)

We know

(that they forgot about having tea with someone because 5pm is tea time and the puzzle is in a 'T' shape.)

From the clues

(about it being somwhere 'near you and my ant':)

We can get the word

('aunt'(by adding 'u' to 'ant'))

Putting it all together, we can work out that they have forgotten about their plans to

have tea with their aunt.

edited Oct 27 '16 at 13:53

answered Oct 26 '16 at 19:25

Zadok Storkey

86
4

That's brilliant! The labyrinth continues with ZKFwX and even further. – M Oehm Oct 26 '16 at 19:42
How did you get to that? – Zadok Storkey Oct 26 '16 at 19:53
The codes on floor tiles are just connections that you can enter straight away: ZKFwX, Dldtx, opkOi. – M Oehm Oct 26 '16 at 19:57
I think thats the whole of the answer. Please tell me if I need more detail on what was forgotten – Zadok Storkey Oct 26 '16 at 21:47
You are almost there. There are clues about who you are supposed to meet. Filling this detail it is all the answer I expect :) – oleslaw Oct 27 '16 at 06:09
They need to have tea with their aunt. Thanks for adding spoiler tags by the way. – Zadok Storkey Oct 27 '16 at 12:49
Please add more detailed reasoning for why you think the final answer is correct (which is correct by the way). – oleslaw Oct 27 '16 at 12:52

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 26 '16 at 18:20

Partial answer

First, click on the image in the question. Hidden behind what you can actually see in the question is a quite different Stack.Imgur image:

This image contains two five-character codes. Each of these yields a Stack.Imgur image of its own:

Finally, each one of these two images leads to yet another Stack.Imgur image:

Putting together all the text from these images:

1. There is some ordering in my head. It starts with an 'a' goes through an 'A' and ends with a '9'.
2. I see a door ahead. It is decorated by a dragon carved in the wood. It is crushing a small circle and it grows bigger when I look at its middle and its tail.
3. The door ahead reminded me that the thing I forgot about was that someone wanted me to be at his or her door. Tomorrow.
4. The door has a panel with numbers and letters. But what is the correct code?
5. Door is locked with two keys. I have to find them.

From clue 1, I think we should be looking for another Stack.Imgur image with a code of the form a?A?9. Clue 2 might be telling us something about the same code (perhaps "small circle" = o?) Clue 4 could again refer to the same code, or perhaps a different one since clue 5 seems to tell us that there are two different codes.

I think the clue in the first room means that the possible characters of imgur addresses are ordered a-zA-Z0-9; we might need that ordering when we find numerical clues. I've tried "drAgN" - a dragon that crushes its circle and whose letters at the middle and tail are capital - but that didn't work, of course. I think such literal clues hard to pull off anyway, because the author doesn't have control over the address. As far as I can see, the images have no metadata or hidden text that can be revealed with a flood fill. — M Oehm, Oct 26 '16 at 18:52
As to the "drAgN" thing - sometimes you don't have control, but you get lucky to get an address like this :) (or not the adress but its part) — oleslaw, Oct 27 '16 at 06:21
Well, now that I see how the keys work I can also see that you can have several shots: Upload both the door and its destination n times and you get n × n possible outcomes. That's clever. — M Oehm, Oct 27 '16 at 06:27

I tend to forget things

2 Answers2

Partial answer

Linked