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Xe HPG Scavenger Hunt Decoded

Xe HPG Scavenger Hunt Decoded

Let’s start off with covering what I will and will NOT be discussing in this Blog:

  • I will be reviewing the clues we deployed, how we hid them, and the “real meaning” behind the answers
  • I will NOT be discussing the timelines for distributing prizes nor details about Intel® Arc™graphics cards, including performance estimates, size, price, etc.

We understand folks are eager to get their hands on our upcoming graphics cards, and to learn more about them. We ask for your patience and I promise we will over convey information as soon as we can. Specifically on the timeline for prizes, we have a thorough process that we need to go through to make sure participants are well vetted, cheaters are eliminated, and the people that have worked hard for their prizes get what they deserve.

Now, onto the fun stuff!

Question #1

This was technically a 2-part clue. In the original Scavenger Hunt during GDC 2021, we hid the following in the source code of the HTML (which you can view here: https://xehpg.intel.com/phase-1
THE CLUE FOR THE FIRST PART OF THE FIRST QUESTION OF PHASE 2 IS: KOVVUR
The 2nd part of the clue was in the video embedded within this Tweet:
https://twitter.com/IntelGraphics/status/1453414393828446216
Specifically, at the 15:23 time stamps, there was a quick flash of a redacted map:

If you put the two parts together, then a quick search on Google Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/dGgLGJNWG6Gsewri8 will show you the unredacted name is:
[Arch Bridge]
We picked this because:
The fact that our graphics brand is part of the name
Our Chief Architect, Raja Koduri used to walk across that bridge every day as a child

#ProTip: To move forward/backwards frame-by-frame on YouTube, first PAUSE the video, then use the and keys to go forward or backward. Depends on keyboard layout, but on my keyboard, goes back 1 frame and goes forward 1 frame (yours maybe be backwards)

Question #2

This was relatively straight-forward, because we wanted to start off the Hunt “simple” and have the clues get harder as we go along, like all of our favorite video games. In the video embedded within this Tweet: https://twitter.com/bobduffy/status/1456471340932730883
At the 0:49 timestamp, you see this:

You take the Hex Number (46:72:65:64) on the box, and convert them to Unicode to get:
[Fred]
We picked that answer because Fred because that was the “secret internal codename” for the Intel Arc brand. The new brand was so secret that, even if you knew what it was going to be, you had to say “FRED” when you were in meetings. Maybe only a few hundred people in the whole company knew what the final name was going to be before it was made public.
#ProTip: In Microsoft Excel, some formulas that are helpful for converting things are:
=HEX2DEC(Cell) << converts Hexadecimal to Decimal
=DEC2HEX(Cell) << converts Decimal to Hexadecimal
=BIN2DEC(Cell) << converts Binary to Decimal
=DEC2BIN(Cell,Places) << converts Decimal to Binary (Places = 8 forces 01010101)
=CHAR(D43) << converts Decimal Numbers to their Unicode Character
=CODE(D44) <<< converts Unicode Character to a Decimal Number
You can “Nest” the code so: =CHAR(HEX2DEC(46)) = “F”

Question #3

For this one, we brought things up a bit. I invented a new alphabet that we called (internally) Arcabet:

The rule is simple: 13 “Arcs” on the inside for A to M and 13 “Arcs” on the outside for N to Z.
Thanks to the Brilliant work by Rich Clark, he hid all the symbols inside the video I embedded in this Tweet: https://twitter.com/CaptGeek/status/1460264577300500480
For example, in this scene, there are 3 characters hidden all around:

UNFORTUNATELY, we made the mistake of asking too easy a question (what was the last name of the Author in Clue 3), so people pretty quickly Googled “Alchemist Author” and filled in the right answer before the video was even released:
[Cohelo] (the Author of the book: “The Alchemist”)
We did not make the mistake of making the questions too easy to guess again.
#ProTip: I used a program called OpenSCAD (https://openscad.org/) to create this. For those that haven’t used it, you write code (similar in syntax to LISP) where you use parenthesized prefix notation (writing modifiers ahead of an object), but can create loops and comparison processes.
PS: You should thank Bob Duffy for forcing me to make this easier to decode. My original version used “continuous Arcs” and he made me add in little lines so you can just count segments instead of trying to eyeball the angles in them.

Question #4

On this one, folks needed to rely on their experiences with “fictional languages” used in various Video Game. The clue was in a simple picture from this Tweet: https://twitter.com/IntelGraphics/status/1461854812342046724

While we used a plethora of different words and languages floating in the air, the REAL clue was on the book in the bottom left. It was based on Sheikah language from the game: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. BUT, the clue didn’t end there. One you translated Sheikah to English, you got: YSYMKYS, which, of course, is gibberish. So then you had to run it through the Al Bhed Cipher from the game Final Fantasy X-2. The reason we picked that game is because it is one of the largest games ever produced that uses an Alchemist character/class. Once you run YSYMKYS through the Cipher, you get the answer:
[Amalgam]
Why picked this as an answer “Amalgam” is one of the 4 “ways” in Alchemy, and given this was Clue #4, it fits. That said, after we released it, someone point to a quote from PC Gamer where Raja Koduri was reported to have said Xe HPG would be “variant of Intel's discrete graphics will sit as an amalgam of low-power and big data chips and feature real-time ray tracing acceleration.”
#ProTip: The hint as to which word is the clue can be found by the by looking at the glowing triangle floating above the table. It is “turned” compared to the shadow on the table, so it point to the “Real Clue” in the book.

Question #5

We had an opportunity to insert this clue in a video that was already being made for The Game Awards, in this Tweet: https://twitter.com/IntelGraphics/status/1469140936265547777. The clue was at Timestamp: 0:28

What I did here is made a derivative of Morse Code where I used different colors instead of different symbols. The way to figure out which is which, pinkish color was “dash” and the blueish color was “dot” because, on the visible light spectrum, red is a longer wavelength than blue and “-” is longer than “.” When you finish the conversion, you get “- . - . - -” which translates to
[TAU]
Contrary to what people assumed, the selection of Tau had nothing to “Tau meaning 300 in Greek,” but rather because Tau = 2 x Pi. In Radians, a “full circle” is 2 x Pi Radians or, Tau Radians. And, if you look at the picture above, we are using full circles as “Portals” in our branding for Intel Arc. So, Tau is a full circle, which is your portal to a new gaming experience.
#ProTip: The reason I created “Chromatic Morse Code” because, that is, effectively, what the modern Internet is. People think about Bytes & Packets when they think of the Internet, but, at a very physical level, the Internet is based on “SONET Rings,” which is basically a bunch of 1s and 0s transmitted by lasers. Therefore, we can literally thank Samuel Morse for what eventually evolved into the Information Super Highway!

Question #6

So, for the second half of the Hunt, we wanted to bring things up a notch. Instead of artificially placing clues in a video “in post,” this time we put the clues naturally into the game footage. We also wanted to flex some mathematical muscles. Therefore, rather than binary, decimal, and hexadecimal - mainstays of the tech world - we went with Base 6, also know as Senary Notation, in this Tweet: https://twitter.com/theBryceIsRt/status/1483440539441709057

Beside the obvious, 6tth Clue using Base 6, the number 6 is first “Perfect Number,” where the next 3 being 28, 496, and 8128. The other hint to the clue is that the 3 secret numbers, 214, 241, 321, used nothing higher than 4, so, at minimum, it had to be Base 5. When you change the secret numbers into Unicode, you get the answer:
[Ray]
As we have already disclosed, the Xe HPG Microarchitecture will support Ray Tracing, which is important to gamer enthusiasts.

#ProTip: In Microsoft Excel, another helpful formula is:
=BASE(Cell,B,P) << converts the number, to the Base B, with P Places

Question #7

For the “Grand Finale,” doing the last 4 questions in one 24 Hour period, I started with something that would bring people back to their High School Physics Class: the Periodic Table of the Elements. For each element, there is a unique Atomic Number. If you take that Atomic Number, it will give you an Atomic Symbol. For example, the first 3 are 1 = H, 2 = He, and 3 = Li. To find the numbers, you had to look at this Tweet: https://twitter.com/CaptGeek/status/1486976840954785793

After careful examination, you can see a list of secret numbers, and what they convert to:
18 => Ar
6 => C
14 => Si
3 => Li
6 => C
8 => O
7 => N
The clue to use atomic numbers was in the time of the Tweet: 1:18 AM because there are currently 118 Elements in the Periodic Table. When you put them all together, you get the answer that should need no explanation:
[ArCSiLiCON]
#ProTip: As one of our participants discovered, here’s a GREAT tool for solving this clue:
https://www.boxentriq.com/code-breaking/numbers-to-letters
Unfortunately for me, while that website makes it easy to decode the clue, there’s no such handy tool (that I could find) to do the encoding, so I had to do it manually. If you guys do know of a tool that would have made my life easier, do please let me know!

Question #8

Now we shift from the Hard Science of the Elements, to the Arcane Science of the symbols used by Alchemists. Our stellar graphics artist, Rich Clark, hid within a series of Wallpapers, different Alchemist symbols, in this Tweet: https://twitter.com/IntelGraphics/status/1487076787855241222 that pointed to IMGUR:
https://imgur.com/gallery/mRiHefZ?linkId=100000107215610
We made one (Bismuth) easy to find:

But, we made sure it wasn’t the first Wallpaper in the list, so you had to dig a little to find them. When you found all of them and decoded them, you found the following words:
Oil, Bismuth, Sulfur, Iron, Dram, Iron, Air, and Nickel
Once you take the first letter of each word, you get the final answer:
[Obsidian]
The reason I chose Obsian is because a famous Alchemist, John Dee, who was an Advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, used an Obsidian “Spirit Mirror” to communicate with Angels, or Celestial Beings. Also, in a small way, one could view Obsidian as “Nature’s Alchemy” because, like many igneous rocks, it takes fairly common elements - silicon, oxygen, aluminum, sodium, and potassium - and transforms them into a material with very unique properties. If you cut it one way, and it’s black but if it is cut from a different angle, it's gray.
#ProTip: If you didn’t know, Alchemist symbols are actually in unicode:
https://www.webnots.com/alt-code-shortcuts-for-alchemical-symbols/
For example, unicode U+1F70D or 128781 will get the symbol for Sulfur: 🜍

Question #9

Perhaps this one was the most scavenging clue of the whole hunt. In a picture shared in this Tweet: https://twitter.com/bobduffy/status/1487154763678375937

We put 8 “fake clues” in the picture, all encoded in Hexadecimal, with answers like “Nope,” “Colder,” and “Hi Discord.” The real clue was in the box in the top right, written in Roman Numerals: LI C LV LII CXV L

Change the Roman Numerals, into Decimal, then into Unicode, you get: 3d7 4s2. Thankfully, through the miracle of DuckDuckGo, a quick search reveals that it is the electron configuration of the answer:
[Cobalt]
Why I choose Cobalt is that it is one of the official colors in the official color palette for our Intel Arc branding [#1E2EB8]. The other major color is Geode [#8F5DA2], if you’re curious. Additionally, Intel has been using Cobalt in the manufacturing of 10nm chips.
#ProTip: The last of the great list of helpful Excel formulas:
=Roman(Cell,F) << converts a number into Roman Numeral, where F is formatting options (see the ToolTip for examples)

Question #10

For the grand finale and the final question, I used a combination of a very esoteric word combined yet another, original character creation. Within the video shared through this Tweet: https://twitter.com/theBryceIsRt/status/1487253161589067777
From time stamp 0:53 to 0:59, you will faintly see the following symbols:

I call it “Rotational Binary Notation.” There are 8 segments, where filled in is 1 & empty is 0, starting clockwise from Noon, where the 1st segment is the least significant bit (LSB) and the 8th segment is the most significant bit (MSB). So, for example, the first symbol translates to 01000011, which translates to 67 or “C” in Unicode. Continue that, and you get the answer:
[Chrys0p031a]
The answer is partially encoded in L33t Speak so that no one could possibly guess the answer. Even if you know the word behind the answer was Chrysopoeia, we didn’t “L33t” the “S” into a 5 or the “A” into a 4. For anyone that hasn’t looked it up yet, the word means “the artificial production of gold, most commonly by the alleged transmutation of base metals such as lead.” Effectively, Chrysopoeia is one of the major goals of Alchemy.

Conclusion

So, that's it. The big reveal. If you have any questions, there are to ways to join into the conversation: