So it was an ordinary Thursday - that was until I received a mysterious black shiny envelope....from Microsoft. At which point I thought "What the hell? I'm not due any goodies or requested any media"

Inside the envelope were a nice letter (very mysterious letter) and a USB Stick. So naturally I plugged in the USB Stick - I thought it was going to be empty (I didn't bother to read the letter, no male does lol). But on the USB stick were 3 files:

Cipher Key 4.jpg

from_Loki.txt

Loki.wmv

The text file said:

"Well done! Now you have your first cipher key, plus a video my employer didn’t think you needed to see. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

Do others deserve to see these files, too? I’ll leave that up to you.

~Loki

P.S. Go to vanishingpointgame.com to find out what to do next."

The video was weird, it featured a lady named Loki (I presume) and it had these lingering shots of random objects (or not so random objects).

The image featured a 20(columns) x3(rows) grid with highlighted squares. I had no idea what to do. I've uploaded the image to Imageshack for everyone to see:

http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/8981/cipherkey4fn2.jpg

After this I opened Google (yes I know it should be Live Search, but old habits die hard). And came across a thread at Neowin.... my heart sank. People had already been receiving these waaayyy before I'd even got mine (mine was shipped from America on the 29th Dec 06, plus I live in the UK) and the majority of the puzzles (including mine!) were already solved!! :( But I was determined to do this alone, no fun if you cheat yourself it is! So I banned myself from that thread on Neowin, until I solved the puzzle by myself. After a few more minutes of Googling, I came across a blog which showed an image remarkably like the cipher image you see above:

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/5674/vanishing20point20game2kf7.jpg

It linked back to the IEBlog (I visit this on a regular basis, but because of no new articles, I didn't bother to scroll down!!)

Anyway, now that I had the information that I needed - I began my quest!

I merged the 2 images using Fireworks to get this:

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/311/gridbasicwithcharshighlof7.png

Now if we write those characters that are highlighted in order we get:

PF6N ZZ FP NV QJ

Ok, now we go back to the cipher image and read the sentence at the bottom:

"To decrypt, perform Rot -1 on letters and -1 on numbers. Then shift one key left."

At first, the bit that stumped me was the 'Rot'. I kept thinking rotate -1. Anyway after several minutes of agonising and getting nowhere. I decided to try a different approach. I started applying the -1 in the literally sense as in go back one - so if you have the letter B and go back (Rot -1) you get A, same thing with numbers.. If you follow that rule, you'll get:

OE5M YY EO MU PI

Ok, so now we follow the last bit of instructions in the cipher image, which were:

"Then shift one key left."

Presumably that only works on a standard QWERTY keyboard layout, anyway. Following that piece of advice we get:

IW4N TT WI NY OU

That gives you the final cipher:

IW4NTTWINYOU

Which any self respecting geek should be able to read. You then enter this code on VanishingPointGame.com and that leads you to another puzzle. Once you solve that, it gives you a phone number (US only). When you ring that number, a voice asks for a pin number, enter the PIN number (which you should have got from solving the second puzzle).