Fan Theory

When secrets are hidden, fans can up with the wonkiest theories.

I:54:61
I:33:74
I:18:74
I:74:44
I:4:53


I:14:45
I:23:61
I:63:63
I:75:19
I:13:56

I:20:6
I:56:6
I:2:60
I:12:45
I:52:78
I:1:7

I:18:73
I:19:16
I:16:55
I:75:65
I:42:78
I:12:85

I:6:7
I:53:38
I:38:37
I:60:50
I:13:42

• theory.txt

Solution

• Treating the txt file as a 2D matrix where row represents line number and column representing the nth character of the line, we wrote this script to extract the characters:

f = open("asciif.txt","rb").read()

st = '''I:54:61
I:33:74
I:18:74
I:74:44
I:4:53
I:14:45
I:23:61
I:63:63
I:75:19
I:13:56
I:20:6
I:56:6
I:2:60
I:12:45
I:52:78
I:1:7
I:18:73
I:19:16
I:16:55
I:75:65
I:42:78
I:12:85
I:6:7
I:53:38
I:38:37
I:60:50
I:13:42'''.split('\n')

for i in st:
    if len(i) == 0:
        print()
        continue
    ind = i.split(':')
    st = int(ind[1])
    strt = f.index((str(st) + '.').encode())
    print(chr(f[strt + int(ind[2]) - 1]),end='')

• We end up with this text after running the python code, eluw{eei jyluduwqjylusetui}.
• Now, let’s try to gather character from the (right position-1) i.e the characters preceeding the characters we just got. We end up with the following vbqo{fply hAhi oenelsnvep }.
• Now I noticed that upon decoding vbqo{fply hAhi oenelsnvep } by caesar 16, we get the first three letters as fla and rest all gibberish.
• I thought why not see what happens when we caesar 16 decode the first text we got eluw{eei jyluduwqjylusetui}. Which resulted in this oveg{oos tivenegativecodes}. At this point you can just guess the flag.

  Flag

  flag{positivenegativecodes}