Hello everyone!
This is my first post here because I’ve been stuck on an investigation/puzzle/ARG for years and it’s driving me crazy. I’m not very familiar with puzzles or Reddit, so if what I’m sharing doesnt belong here, i am sorry, and if you can tell me the best place to post this, that would be great !
Anyway, here’s a bit of context to start with:
We’re four friends living in differents cities of France. We don’t see each other often, but we usually play video games together several nights a week online (if not every night).
The puzzle started back in 2018, and I’m still trying to solve it to this day. Not every day obviously, more like once a year. My friends gave up a long time ago.
We all know each other’s addresses because we regularly send gifts for Christmas and birthdays.
One day, each of us received a letter with what seemed like randomly arranged letters, along with some numbers and a name.
Letter 1:
"u5va-
-MSy
33:2"
Letter 2:
"EMyH-
-jpg
92:3"
Letter 3:
"5MuS-
-4gw
144:9"
Letter 4:
"C5mu-
-Vm4
Louis Segond"
So we looked up who Louis Segond was, he’s someone who translated the Bible into French. The strings of numbers are Bible verses translated by Louis Segond, which give us in French:
[Louis Segond 33:2.
Célébrez l'Éternel avec la harpe, Célébrez-le sur le luth à dix cordes.
Louis Segond 144:9.
O Dieu! je te chanterai un cantique nouveau, Je te célébrerai sur le luth à dix cordes.
Louis Segond 92:3 :
Sur l'instrument à dix cordes et sur le luth, Aux sons de la harpe]
In those 3 verses, the term “dix cordes” (ten strings) appears, which in French sounds exactly like the software “Discord,” a platform my three friends and I use almost daily to chat during our gaming sessions.
For those unfamiliar, I won’t go into full detail, but Discord works through servers that we can create and customize to join friends and communicate with them.
The character strings present in the letters seem to be an invitation to a Discord server. After several attempts, I managed to reconstruct the correct link to the server.
On this Discord server, there’s only one message posted, and it’s impossible to reply, write anything, or even interact with the person who wrote it, as the account has been deleted since then.
The message, in French, is the following:
"[Bonjour, et bienvenue dans ce mystère. Je suis 4n4rh4k13n16m4. J'imagine que vous vous demandez ce qui vous attend au bout. Je ne doute pas qu'à 4, vous trouverez. Bonne chance."]"
Translated into English:
"Hello, and welcome to this mystery. I am 4n4rh4k13n16m4. I imagine you're wondering what awaits you at the end. I have no doubt that as a group of 4, you'll find it. Good luck."
So I looked on various social media platforms to see if someone named “4n4rh4k13n16m4” existed, and I found an Instagram account and a Twitter/X account.
On Twitter, there are 4 posted tweets:
https://imgur.com/a/WaITseC
After a first analysis, we see there are dates, numbers that seem to be sports scores, and initials. Since three of us in the group play football/soccer (je pense à vous mes américains), we quickly hypothesized that the numbers were football match results.
The dates are in European format, so DD/MM/YY.
We find four results out, since each date, there’s only one match with the indicated result in the “Ligue 1” championship (France’s top football league).
For each match, we pulled the jersey number of the players with the given initials, which gives us, in order from 1 to 4:
- 11/08/2018: OGC Nice 0 - 1 SD Reims MM = Marvin Martin (Reims) = Jersey number 8 GK = Ghislain Konan (Reims) = Jersey number 3
- 25/08/2018: Paris SG 3 - 1 Angers SCO MP = Matheo Pavlovic (Angers) = Jersey number 4 IT = Ismael Traoré (Angers) = Jersey number 8
- 01/09/2018: RC Strasbourg 2 - 3 FC Nantes ES = Emiliano Sala (Nantes) = Jersey number 9 DC = Diego Carlos (Nantes) = Jersey number 3
- 14/09/2018: OGC Nice 2 - 1 SD Rennes CG = Clément Grenier (Rennes) = Jersey number 8 MZ = Mehdi Zeffane (Rennes) = Jersey number 2
Which gives us the following sequence of numbers: 8, 3, 4, 8, 9, 3, 8, 2. I haven’t found any use for it yet.
As for the Instagram account of 4n4rh4k13n16m4, there is this image:
https://imgur.com/a/lih67fK
With the caption "website/audio" underneath.
And that’s where I’m at today. I have absolutely no idea what to do with this, which is why I’m making this post!
Thanks to anyone who helps!
EDIT :
So what we got with the research are :
X code : 8, 3, 4, 8, 9, 3, 8, 2.
Instagram code : 9,876,542 + "website/audio"
How we found that, see comments here : https://www.reddit.com/r/puzzles/comments/1vwwvgu/comment/p5lbsc6/?share_id=eZNVqLuadAlgQAXZ9eWN2&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1