Happy Thanksgiving from the Portal. The Gathering, a harvest cipher maze, is free to play until 30 November. Enter The Gathering

2 stages · Medium · free · no account needed

MIRRORSHADES

📜 Briefing
A pair of mirrored shades turned up in a dead drop. The code reflected in the lenses isn't what matters. What matters is underneath.
  1. 1 Stage 1: Dead Drop
  2. 2 Stage 2: Static 🔒 opens with stage 1's answer

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Stage 1: Dead Drop

Someone hid a message in the pixels of this picture. Changing the last bit of a colour value moves it by one shade, far too little to see. Eight bright streams fall across each lens. Count them: you will need the number.
WHAT TO DO
1. In the Image panel, set Channel to Green and leave Bit plane on Bit 0 (LSB). Press "Extract hidden text".
2. You get ones and zeros. Press "Send to workbench".
3. The Binary ↔ Text step is already loaded and set to Decode. Its Result is eight scrambled letters.
4. Press "+ Add step 2", choose Caesar Cipher, set it to Decrypt, and set Shift to the number of bright streams in one lens.
5. The Result is one word. That is your answer.

    Unscored guest play: take your time, hints are free. A member solving this stage scores up to 360 points.

    Full tool pages: Binary ↔ Text ↗ Caesar Cipher ↗ LSB Decoder ↗

    🔬 Image

    Look inside the image here: show one colour channel or bit plane on its own, or pull out text hidden in its least significant bits. Then send what you find to the workbench below.

    Puzzle image for stage 1

    🛠 Workbench

    Empty until you send it something from the image above. Then add the steps that turn it into your answer, and type the answer at the top. The server alone checks answers.