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From Portal 2 ARG Wiki - Valve ARG Network

Introduction

Chain of glyphs featuring disconnected glyphs.

Numerous glyphs were discovered in several in participating potato sack deal games after a patch was released listing the change note:

"- Happy #PotatoFoolsDay!"

At the time of writing not much is known about the purpose of the glyphs which has made them a prime target for investigation. Some glyphs refer to other potato sack games directly, e.g., an outline of a main character or logo. Some glyphs have letters in close proximity or replace letters in words, these letters have been associated with the glyphs. A chain has emerged such that if we follow the path of glyphs, going from one game to the next, we end up in a cycle. The start and end of this cycle is currently unknown. The chain is as follows:

• NB: The only game missing is BIT.TRIP BEAT, which branches off at Cogs but doesn't seem to lead anywhere.

Game	Consonant	Glyph	Confirmation
1 2 3 KICK IT!	P		Cogs puzzle screenshot
AaAaAA!!!	G		Confirmed from KF cipher; Defense Grid patched to flip D/G to match
Amnesia: The Dark Descent	B		Sandy/Hubert photos
Audiosurf	M		Confirmed from KF cipher.
The Ball	Y		Killing Floor character model
BIT.TRIP BEAT	N		Cogs puzzle screenshot
Cogs	W		Sign outside Two Tribes HQ in Netherlands
Defense Grid	T		The Ball in-game screenshot
Killing Floor	C		RUSH's menu screen, confirmed by KF cipher.
RUSH	L		Shown by playing Super Meat Boy boss music in Audiosurf
Super Meat Boy	R		Confirmed from the Cogs Puzzle Solution
Toki Tori	V		Steve from Sandy's blog
The Wonderful End of the World	F		Amnesia in-game screenshot
Razer	H		Alliteration on Razer's facebook page
(Unknown game, represented by "?" glyph)	D		Confirmed from KF cipher; Defense Grid patched to flip D/G to match
(Unknown game, represented by "dot" glyph)	S		Confirmed from KF cipher and from BTB's April 7 news update.

The glyph for C may also serve as the glyph for K, as both "C" and "K" were shown by the glyph in RUSH (see below). Converting the glyphs into 2x2 blocks (see below) supports this idea as all possible combinations of 2x2 grids are represented; leaving no room for any additional glyphs. When then combining these 2x2 blocks to form the letters "B" and "L" in the word "Collaboration", using the same glyph for both "C" and "K" creates the letters perfectly. There is also no reason to associate the letter "C" with Killing Floor's glyph over "K" other than "C" being more common in the cyphers.

The glyphs above are freely available in a Glyph Pack (Recreated by Onefifth)

Glyphs In Game

1 2 3 KICK IT!

• Sandy's blog was found from a hint in-game.
• The glyph matches the eye in the Amnesia logo.
• The glyph is linked to the letter 'B': assoc w/ letter "B"? They substitute (the rest is cut off)

AaAaAA!!! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity

From Steve's Photobucket

• Steve, from Sandy's blog, in his YouTube account, mentions drawing a picture, but the link to the Photobucket picture is broken. A quick search yields this.
• The Photobucket description matches this glyph with the letter V.
• The logo matches Toki Tori.
• The image looks like the potato in the glyph from 1 2 3 Kick it!

Amnesia The Dark Descent

Hieroglyphs?

Chalk letters

Comparison of WEotW and the face glyph

In-game shot. Its letter is F

• The first row 3rd symbol and 3rd row second symbol are the only symbols not appearing on the papyrus of ani.
• Overlaying this with the chalk letters you get R and Y
• When found in game, one of the Glyphs that Sticks out is linked to F (the 2nd one isn't found yet)
• The Face Hieroglyph is The main characters face from The Wonderful End of the World.

Audiosurf

from audiosurf

Found by playing the music from the first boss in SMB Links to RUSH

BIT.TRIP BEAT

From BIT.TRIP.BEAT	The bright yellow square	Colour corrected yellow square	A differently enhanced yellow square
Colour corrected aperture science logo	a (unconfirmed) theory is that the 4 corners contain data

• The bright yellow square linked to in the Twitter score updates made by BTB.
  • Color correction results in this image.
  • The image, when corrected, seems to fit in the Aperture Science logo
• One of Portal 2's screenshots has a dot within a box much like this one. Optionally, it may mark the end of the sequence: a "period".
• The glyph in the KF achievments with the missing letter S when translated, hints at this glyph being S

Cogs

Cogs symbols

• Both BIT.TRIP and 1... 2... 3... Kick It!, assigned the letters N and P respectively, or it is a phrase where we need to plug in the letters.

These images are from an early April 6 beta update of Cogs.

The ring around the jack-in-the-box's left eye spells out "every" in one photo, and "piece" in the other. See Cogs for more information about this level.

Defense Grid

Symbols

More Symbols

A clearer version of the "G" glyph.

The version found in the Cogs slider puzzle, with more detail

• Symbols: AaAaAA!!! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity and an unknown logo replacing the D and G in the games logo respectively.
• In the text adventure game, a symbol can be seen which may resemble a Personality Core from Portal. However, it doesn't seem to have a corresponding letter.
• Barcodes are seen in the background. Were these here before? The barcodes were there before [1]
  • If you flip one horizontally on itself it slightly resembles the Steam logo.
  • It also looks like a straight up question mark "?", possibly being the "end" of the glyph cycle loop.
• The D and G glyphs were switched in an April 7 patch. ("Oops.")

Killing Floor

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Comparison of "The ball"

• Symbol1/2/3: The connected letter is: Y, as seen in the center of the left models backpack. It is currently unknown what the symbol on the right figure is for.
• The symbol is possibly "The Ball" logo?

7th April Update

On 7th April, Killing Floor's achievements were updated, including five achievements with glyph icons.

The Killing Floor glyph	The AaAaAA!!! glyph	The unlinked Razer glyph	The unlinked Bit.Trip glyph
The Audiosurf glyph

• the translation gives the missing letters C, G, H, S, and M. Confirming some letters and giving us others.

RUSH

Symbol

Mysterious potato skin

• Symbol: Killing Floor "biological hazard" logo with the letters C and K next to it.
• Killing Floor achievement confirms C.

• The only 2 letters missing from the texture are B and Z

• Symbols on potato skin in order :-

1. Super Meat Boy's Bandaid
2. Steam
3. Killing Floor
4. Tea Bag
5. AaAaAA!!!'s Coffee Icon

• Notice how on the skin, there's loads of letters, and 5 different glyphs (just like how the Amnesia texture had loads of glyphs), but actually, ingame, only ONE of the glyphs showed and the letter next to it was NOT the letter that was next to it in the texture, so they manually put different letters there. It was obviously done this way so you can't look up the texture.

Super Meat Boy

Symbol

Enhanced symbol

Symbol location

Comparison to Mono

• Symbol: Possibly resembling the mono character from Audiosurf.
• On Twitter, @SuperMeatBoy said: im not sure if @danielleorama redeemed the code i sent last night so here it is for anyone who wants it 7fa6ce99d281 after (before?) which @danielleorama in turn linked to this obviously SMB related picture with an M in the background.
• If I had to guess I'd say we never did find the M planted into the game, and Team Meat threw us a gimme.
• Killing Floor achievements seem to confirm the M.
• The meat boy M was pretty easy to find. If you alternated between featured and levels in super meat world, meat boy on the bottom right died. This links to danielleorama's flickr, which VERY clearly shows the M. However, since we sucked, Team Meat had to tell us numerous times, and eventually just put the m by the audio surf glyph.

The Ball

symbol

Side of the potato

The glyph as seen in-game

• Symbol: Paired with the letter 't'.

The Wonderful End of the World

• CrimeFlyerIntimidator (referred to in a flyer inside the game), when added to a TinyURL, links to this video, uploaded by Sandy's boss, which has a Super Meat Boy glyph.
• Process of elimination in the Cogs puzzle leads to this glyph being R.

Razer Facebook Message

The image used in the Message

• The description for the image was "Huh? Hardly Helpful Handy Hardware.... Hypothesis?" which implies that the associated letter is H.
  • The words 'Handy' and 'Hardware' in the description and the alliteration of H points to Razer's new motion controller named Hydra. Portal 2 is said to include exclusive levels designed for the controller.
    • The Killing Floor achievement puzzle associates this glyph with H.

Hidden Path points the way

An update was made by Hidden Path to their Congratulations page with the message "alinealk +v". On IRC, +v means voice, meaning to pay attention to someone and make sure they can speak when the channel is moderated.

As a result, we searched the #Valvearg2-DG channel for Alinealk, and found this (reposted by GameFreak)

[11:40] <GameFreak2> <alinealk> there are glyphs everywhere
[11:40] <GameFreak2> <alinealk> shoudn't we at least try to make blocks out of them?
[11:40] <GameFreak2> <alinealk> anyway
[11:40] <GameFreak2> <alinealk> dinner

Gamefreak then discovers that he changed his name, and this shows up:

[11:50] <GameFreak> <alkaline> is it me, or do I see an "O" in the WEOTW cypher?
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alkaline> if you arrange them in 4x4
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alkaline> I don't have any image tools
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alkaline> or a big 2x2 dot
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alkaline> it's bit like ascii art where they use . as an empty character
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alkaline> or a i just seeing things?
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alkaline> :O
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alkaline> it must be
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alkaline> guys
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alkaline> i seriously belief that this http://valvearg.com/wiki/File:Defence_Grid_hidden_messages.jpg
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alkaline> somehow refers to the other glys
[11:50] <GameFreak> * alkaline changed nick to alinealk
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alkaline> guys
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alkaline> i seriously belief that this http://valvearg.com/wiki/File:Defence_Grid_hidden_messages.jpg
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alkaline> somehow refers to the other glys
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alinealk> it was?
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alinealk> but those are not the glys i mean
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alinealk> eh
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alinealk> these http://valvearg.com/w/images/c/c0/Cypher_glyphs.jpg
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alinealk> some look like an O if you put them in a grid
[11:50] <GameFreak> <alinealk> mh, ok, i thought there was more to those cyphers....
[11:51] <GameFreak> <alinealk> i tried to focus on that...
[11:51] <GameFreak> <alinealk> and I thought it had something to do with the 16 glyps from the cyphers
[11:51] <GameFreak> <alinealk> but i was told that was solved already so i'm trying to move on

Glyphs as 2x2 blocks

There are 16 total glyphs. Note that many of the symbols are offset to corners or the like; for example, the Toki Tori logo is all in the bottom left; the Super Meat Boy logo is all in the upper half. These placements initially seem arbitrary leaving lots of white space in the glyph square.

If one considers a 2x2 block of squares, there are exactly 16 ways of coloring it in black or white:

• 1 empty (all white)
• 4 with 1 black square
• 6 with 2 black squares
• 4 with 3 black squares
• 1 all black.

By considering the space that these symbols take up in the glyphs - with some squinting - we can assign them each of these 2x2 blocks uniquely; the Toki Tori logo a single black square in the bottom left, the Super Meat Boat logo taking the top two squares. Contrarily to its previous use on this wiki, the "eye" glyph for Amnesia is used for the top-left to bottom-right diagonal; until the discovery of the DG "don't forget about the lasers" message, there was no digital message that contained the "eye" glyph to confirm the proper orientation.

We work out what the cyphers mean!

The solution from the Killing Floor achievement puzzle, which also provided confirmation on 5 of the glyphs, gave the phrase "sixteen and four is the way". Each cypher found for each game consists of 16 consonants (assuming K as C) that correspond to the glyphs. These can be arranged in a 4x4 grid - note that the order is as originally found for each cypher, and does not use anything from Hubert's dice Twitter picture. Doing so, and then blanking the "dot"/"S" glyph, gives a series of what appear to be letters that can be arranged to spell "Collaboration", the password for the mega-archive file from the single letter files from the DLC acquired after reaching each Aperture Science login screen with the correct password. The python source code for generating this is available [2]

The letters are clearer when each glyph is replaced by its 2x2 square from above. magcius on IRC made a tool to try out different 16-consonant phrases.

Media:Glyph-squares-colors.jpg

One point made is that it would be hard to make the glyphs contain two separate messages (i.e. Make them contain 'Collaboration' *and* another hidden message in the glyphs). This would imply that either 'Collaboration' is a co-incidence, or that there is nothing further to be gained from studying these glyphs (which is somewhat hard to believe).

Arguably, the use of glyphs as graphical elements of a larger picture was hinted by the Flower puzzle from Defense Grid. The flower page can be seen to use the 2x2 grid assignments to create a more refined picture without gaps in the pedal edges.

Hidden Path leave us one more message

Hidden Path updated their congratulations thread with the four following notes:

Note: I did not say phase 3 starts tomorrow.
Note 2: The Echo that just was on gamesurge isn't me :P
Note 3: Nice, Masum- I wondered when someone would figure that out!
Note 4: Alas, alas- so sass, do assume user airs

• Note 1 and 2 relate to an IRC user by the name of 'Echo', who claimed to be Hidden Path (and DID have a Seattle, WA IP Address), who congratulated us on our efforts and then left the channel
• Note 3 refers to the IRC user 'Masum' (sic, user's name was Masem), who worked out that each glyph is a 2x2 square
• Note 4 is a nonsensical phrase, which happens to have 16 consonants in it (LSLSSSSSDSSMSRRS). When analysed in the same way as the other cyphers, we get the following image:

Make of it what you will.