The Great Halo Scavenger Hunt: Solutions

The Preamble

On October 6, 2003, at around 6 pm UTC, we opened the doors on the Great Halo Scavenger Hunt. At 6 pm UTC on November 6, we closed them again. A total of 11 of the full hunt prizes (out of 28 offered) and all 7 instant win prizes were claimed. The rules for this hunt can be found here. Below, you'll find details on how the puzzle was to be solved.

The Trinkets

Blue denotes information that was in some way hidden.
Red denotes the trinket to be gained from each site

#1 -	North - http://halo.bungie.net/favicon.ico
	A small part of a compass which needle is pointing to the North. Small caveat - if your computer is running in 16 colors, you actually see the original Bungie.net favicon. This was an oversight on our part; apologies.
#2 -	North - http://www.bungie.com/inside/soffish.htm
	View the source, look in the body tag : trinket="tsah ne-ahs-jah dah-nes-tsa than-zie lin" (This is NAVAJO CODE) It translates into : N O R T H
#3 -	East - http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/images/sapien.jpg
	Available from GearboxSoftware. The folder names : Mission/Objects/Items/Trinkets/east (The Original version of this screenshot, archived on HBO, shows that the Items folder has been expanded on the Gearbox shot to show the trinket.)
#4 -	East - http://shop.ecompanystore.com/bungie/BNG_products/BNG12000100-L.jpg
	Available from here. Read on the inside of the mug : http://east.bungie.org (Image manipulated, note the much blacker color painted over the old text; also notice that the original 7th Column URL is still on the mug itself)
#5 -	East - http://3dap.com/halo/info/faq/faq.asp
	Available from here. Search for trinket on the page : What is the fifth trinket? East
#6 -	South - http://www.forerunners.org
	The alt attribute in the image tag on the top right forerunner logo is : trinket:south
#7 -	West - http://rampancy.net/?q=user/view/1333
	Available by following the 'Chelsea Bridge' link here or by searching for "Chelsea Bridge" and following the 'user' link. Like Taurus to Orion in winter; Like the Plain of Marathon to Persia; [snipped] A Google search on something like 'Orion Taurus Winter' will turn up a number of webpages about the night sky, including descriptive passages like this one: "Orion faces his formidable opponent, Taurus the bull, who is charging towards him from the west." You'll also find star charts like this one. What becomes clear is that in the winter sky, the constellation of Taurus lies to the west of Orion. Additionally, The Plain of Marathon is in modern-day Greece, and Persia is modern-day Iran. Greece is to the west of Iran. Both clues yield a value of west for the trinket.
#8 -	North - http://www.redvsblue.com/trinket.css
	Available from here. View the source, in the head tag : <link rel="stylesheet" href="/trinket.css" type="text/css" /> #trinket { direction: north; message: "You're almost there--don't give up. The rewards are worth the struggles. Truly, Chelsea."; }
#9 -	South - http://www.subnova.com/news/?cat=trinket
	A search for "Chelsea Bridge" by "Poster's UserID" will yield a single post; it's a poem by Emily Dickenson, and it starts South winds jostle them,
#10 -	South - http://bs.bungie.org/mtarchives/000112.html
	The Bungie Staff Tracker keeps track of Bungie employees and people relevant to the Bungie community. Search for Chelsea on the page : Chelsea Bridge Currently wandering around ancient Rome, collecting trinkets. Frequently speaks in dead languages. Raising her glass and her compass south to Carthage.

Putting it all together

To get the order they should be in, check the HBO links page.
Indications that this page was needed came from Chelsea Bridge in the very first clue post, as well as from her profile.
The link title is Ciphers Seeking Solutions.
Isn't that what you're doing?

So, taking the full list of sites with trinkets, and matching them to the links page, you get this order:

Truth and Reconciliation
Soffish
Gearbox Software
Bungie Store
Battleground: Halo
Forerunners dot org
Rampancy.net
Red vs Blue
Subnova
Bungie Staff Tracker

But then what do you do with them? Well, one of the trinkets was more than a cardinal direction - it also pointed out a bungie.org URL. Visiting

http://east.bungie.org/

brings you to a large compass - and the cardinal directions are all links.

Plugging in the cardinal directions yielded by the trinkets, in the order dictated by the HBO Links page, would bring you to the winning page, where you were asked to confirm what you'd found. (An attempt to visit that page without having run through the cardinal directions first would yield a warning.)

Observant contestants might notice that between every cardinal direction site, they were first directed to a page called 'biscotti.asp' - this page adjusted a cookie in your browser to reflect the cardinal directions you'd visited. It was this cookie that determined whether you'd be given access to the final site or not. Folks looking for a way to shortcut the process (we'll be charitable and label them 'efficient', rather than 'cheaters') tried to visit these cookie setting pages directly, in an attempt to see if they could find a way past the order. It wasn't very productive - you basically had to start over. (The grue would eat your entire cookie string, so you'd need to begin at the top again.)

Instant Win Tokens

In addition to the real scavenger hunt, there were 7 instant win tokens scattered around a few sites, as a way to give people who didn't think they could handle the full search a way to win. These were obviously too easy, since they were all found within 24 hours.

HaloBabies (Sarge's head in top pic)
Scavenger Hunt Rules (cornershot is occasionally a compass - clicking on it wins)
Bungie's Halo FAQ/Info page (MC's head is a link)
HBO About page (Additional navbar item 'Insaccato' is a winner)
Bungie's 7th Column page ('Did You Know?' banner on left side is a link)
Bungie's Myth Vault (last item in Links section on right is bogus - The Myth Codex died in 1998)
Bungie's Code of Conduct page ('Render Unto Caesar' headline is a link)

Any attempt to send the instant win link to your friends would yield a Marathon-styled smackdown. You had to come from a legitimate instant win site (and you had to be first from that site).

The Winners

Congratulations to the winners of this contest:

Instant Winners:

Halo Babies - Jonah FeBland
Scavenger Hunt Rules page - James Rinehart
Bungie's Halo FAQ/Info page - Vic
HBO About page - Cole Youngblood
Bungie's 7th Column page - Peter Gault
Bungie's Myth Vault - Steven Rice
Bungie's Code of Conduct page - Taylor Cartwright

Full Hunt Winners:

Grand Prize - Michel McBride (Mumbles)*
Second place - Richard Heppner (Sep7imus)
Third place - Ross Mills
Fourth place - Thomas Constantine (NthDegree256)
Fifth place - Ciarán Walsh
Sixth place - Andrew Halabourda (goatrope)
Seventh place - James Geary
Eighth place - Simpsons Rule
Ninth place - Evan Sundwick (oddworld18)
Tenth place - Devin Olsen
Eleventh place - Colin Holbrook

*Several players chose not to submit their names, because they'd worked together to get this entry. The amount of contribution varies (depending, even, on who you ask), but there aren't individual entries from Boxer, c0ld vengeance, BOLL, Skavenger, and The MorningStar because all felt they'd contributed to the grand prize entry. A huge tip o' the hat for the honesty.

Many thanks go to BOLL, for writing up a document that was used as the basis for this page; his work saved me a large chunk of time.

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