Passcodes

Look for passcodes and puzzles in official Ingress announcements and event material. Clues can appear in text, images, or attachments. Codes may expire or reach their redemption limit.

The old Google+ accounts and decoding hangouts are no longer available. The examples on this page are historical decoding exercises, not a list of redeemable codes.

To break open passcodes, you'll need to understand how things might be encoded, and you'll need the right tools. Remember that every code is different. Some are straightforward ciphers, some are multi-layered, others are unique, and require a level of intuition.

These tools can help explore common encodings and ciphers:

• Vigenère cipher tool
• Rumkin's Cipher Tools
• ASCII Converter (binary, decimal, hex)

We've managed to crack a few passcodes, and when possible, we'll post details here. The more you know about what's been done in the past, the more you'll be able to see how deep the rabbit hole can go for the future. (Remember, any code posted here is almost assuredly dead.)

dzmm8togjnca6i34

A pretty simple transposition code. Reverse the string, break it into four groups of four, form them into a square, then read down the columns. Result: 4agm3comintz6j8d

5n[c7[somyi7w6w

For this code, the letters are in the right order, but not the right position. On the keyboard, that is. Shift every character to the left one position on the keyboard, and reveal: 4bpx6paintu6q5q

27.80.125.14.33.26.255.437.435.602.987.249.524.548.8616

This is a little trickier. Many recent codes and posts made reference to the Fibonacci sequence, and this one involved a related sequence called Fibonacci primes. (Well, it maybe should have been Fibonacci primes. It's actually the indices of the Fibonacci sequence numbers which happen to be prime. Which is the only reason 4 is a valid number in the sequence.) Divide each number by the Fibonacci prime indices, in order, then convert numbers to letters in the appropriate places, and you get 9tyb3bosonu344x. This is not valid, however. The most popular type of boson currently is the Higgs, so substituting a different keyword yields the answer: 9tyb3higgsu344x

swzzrrdvbndzgtpnihxcayvifuayvir

This is straightforward, if you happen to choose the right code to randomly attempt. Using the autokey version of Vignere, where you provide the first key letter, then the key letter for the next is the plaintext character that was just coded before, start with a key of "a". The result is the passcode: 7ezw5cryptoj3b3n

9y9gbx3z3bydirescvo

At first glace, it's apparent this one just needs to have characters rearranged. In this case, take pairs of characters, starting with the 9g, and take alternating pairs to the end of the code. Then take the remaining pairs in reverse order to receive: 9gbz3discoveryb3x9y

h6x2cntiim6owj2

Again, the characters are all there, but need to be rearranged. In this case, it's a columnar transposition. Take the characters in blocks of five, then rearrange the characters of each in the order 45312. Solution: 2cxh6imintj2w6o

-::,--:,:-,-,;-,::.,:.,:,-i,:,i,-,:-,--:.,--;,::.,;

This sequence of punctuation is actually Morse code. Dash is a dash, colon is two dots, semicolon is dot dash, "i" is dash dot, and so on. This yields: 6zuy5sigintu7q5a

57qerywr24bmuoqzbmryuoxv1a802446qe

If you look at your standard QWERTY keyboard, you'll notice that by breaking the code into pairs of words, each pair is very close. In fact, they're separated by one key. That's the key you need. Solution: 6wte3nianticq935w

={{m9mcnldkjyw966x

The characters are all close to where they should be in ASCII, but not quite right. If you convert each character to binary, then perform a logical NOT operation on the lower four bits (so, 1001 becomes 0110, etc) you get the correct characters: 2ttb6blackdevx699w

521.679654.1014804.52651.927.18.573957.409973311.72.52605.392173.42221043.215.1656.70861.409973311

If you reverse the order of each group of digits, you'll find a number which is the result of a power operation. The first few are 5^3, 26^4, 21^5, 5^6, 9^3, 3^4. The pattern of 3-4-5-6 repeats. Take the base of each, convert to letters to meet the pattern, and solve: 5zue9covcomr897v

$DNS%NZTRX = GVXSZ&I#Z

Convert symbols to numbers by keyboard, convert letters using the Atbash cipher, and you get the following: 4WMH5MAGIC = TECHA7R3A. From that, Arthur C. Clark's third law says that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, yielding: 4wmh53rdlawa7r3a

52678290549629539589499529409546752745779

First and last digits convert using straight ASCII, but the middle section is three digit groups, starting with 9. These convert into Unicode Greek letters. Reverse the order of letters to get Kappa Alpha Theta Epsilon Xi Iota Sigma, which leads to Cathexis. Solved: 4crz6cathexisc4j9o

2c/b1/1/a/1d/a/2b/a/1a1/b/a/a1b/2a/4a/c1/2c/d

This is hidden Morse code. Numbers indicate a number of dashes, letters indicate a number of dots. Translate to Morse, then ASCII: 7ute6Ezekielg9v7h

6.n.07.-11.+.-4.-13.-11.-3.-2.-13.00.-10.05.-.06.-.-13

Take the 6 and n as starting positions. For each sign/number after, move that many positions forward or backward from the starting position. Solution: 6nuc7jacklands5t5a

ayv3ine6ramgg7o6

Break this into blocks of four, and reverse the letters of each block. Solution: 3vya6enigmar6o7g

f6hacpdtz6a6art5mi

Move the first character to the end, then take two, skip two, take two, skip two, and so on. Solution: 6hpd6artifactz6a5m

[/"nAi:n"wAi:"dV:bl%ju"dZi:"fAi:v"d{%t@"ju:"sIkZ"sE:%vn="tu"ku:/]

This code is built of phonetic pronunciations of the numbers, words, and letters of the code. Solution: 9ywg5datau672q