Update: Bat­sean has been to the bak­ery to get his cake…

The note says:

“Wow, you really took the cake! Now, put the icing on it: call (phone num­ber) imme­di­ately from this phone and THIS PHONE ONLY. Do NOT give this phone num­ber to any­one else.

Let’s hope your fel­low goons come through as well as you. Once all the lay­ers are in place, you’ll all get your just desserts. I’m a man of my word”

Step Right Up

The count­down on the lat­est why so seri­ous viral mar­ket­ing puz­zle has come to an end, and revealed the final challenge.

www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​s​t​e​p​r​i​g​h​t​up/

Hang­ing from the stall in front of you are, as of now, 6 cud­dly toys, although not at all cute. Each of them has a loca­tion pinned on, a loca­tion that, by instruc­tion, you must travel to and not call.

The instruc­tions also ask you to go under the name “Robin Banks” (aka Rob­bing Banks) at each of these places, with “One per loca­tion, first come, first served”. It seems that each of these is a bak­ery store, with the prize being some­sort of bak­ery delight with an attached phone num­ber. Some of the bears are already start­ing to dis­ap­pear, and with each new dis­cov­ery the mal­let on the left hits a lit­tle harder.

Hit­ting the base of the machine used to invoke a pathet­i­cally small rise of the weight, not even enough to light the first level.

EDIT: Chal­lenge unveiled.

Via Hol­ly­wood Chicago:

humanresources@​whysoserious.​com has sent out a new WhySoSe​ri​ous​.com
mes­sage and code for “The Dark Knight” viral marketing:

Heads up, clown! Tomor­row means that there’s one last shifty step left in the inter­view process: Arwoeuf­gryo

By mov­ing each let­ter one to the right on a QWERTY key­board, the word “steprightup” is spelled.

This led to a new WhySoSe​ri​ous​.com page at the URL www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​s​t​e​p​r​i​g​h​tup with a count­down to 12 p.m. EST on Dec. 4 along with a stuffed mon­key with an exposed stom­ach.

EDIT: The feed is now up (pass­word and login details below), with a two minute audio clip from inside Betty’s Pie House. This is a must listen.

As we turn the cor­ner into the cold and bit­ter Decem­ber the night was once again a flurry of Dark Knight viral puzzles.

First up, solv­ing the per­fect get­away. Given the com­bined map of Gotham City from all the viral web­sites, and using a con­nect the dots method, a mes­sage stat­ing “Out of Time” was spelled out across the map, this led to the new Why So Seri­ous page:

www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​o​u​t​o​f​t​i​me/

“My Kind of Clown! You’re obvi­ously cen­ter ring mate­r­ial, unlike some poor goons who can’t com­plete one sim­ple task. Watch the funny papers in a few days for your final step in the process

The name on the tag is Alder Fred­er­ick, with a date of death 30th Novem­ber, caused by Asphyxia.(www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​o​u​t​o​f​t​i​m​e​/​a​l​d​e​r​.​htm)

A GPDiad email was also dis­cov­ered, glenn.​barhyte@​gpdiad.​com, which spewed out some inter­est­ing responses to queries about doc­u­ment LC6551. As a result this login form was discovered,

GPD Login Form. For which you can use the name and password:

Name: Bre­itup­Karl
Pass­word: 21485

Log­ging in and doing a file search for LC6551 yeilds the doc­u­ment,
Doc­u­ment LC6551, it is titled “Upswing in Extor­tions and Chechen Gang Activity”.

Some of the email responses from Glenn included:

“With all due respect, like I’ve told your friends, I just can’t dis­cuss
LC6551, or IA8214299 for that mat­ter. I don’t know who’s leak­ing
these, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m just not at lib­erty to
dis­cuss sen­si­tive information.

Glenn”

“[Karl Bre­itup] will meet some­one at Betty’s Pie Shop tomor­row. I can give you more infor­ma­tion, but you will need to coöper­ate with me for that.“

To access the sec­ond ref­er­enced doc­u­ment you need a login with higher author­ity, this is Glenn Barhyte’s account:

Name: Barhyte­Glenn
Pass­word: tevre­den­heid (sat­is­fac­tion in dutch, given via the clues for his favourite song by the Rolling Stones and in com­bi­na­tion with the file stat­ing he lived in Utrecht for 9 years — see The Gotham Times)

IA8214299 is a clear­ance request dis­cussing the sur­veil­lance of Betty’s House of Pies — six offi­cers, no uni­forms, lis­ten­ing van, equip­ment for recording.

Fur­ther details of this stake­out can be found in a memo (memo.jpg)

Most impor­tantly, 15:00 Betty’s Pie Shop. Using Glenn’s login details a live audio feed will be played here. Get your record­ing equip­ment ready. (direct link to flash)

And the third of the sea­sonal Why So Seri­ous chal­lenges is upon us, as was to be expected given the flurry of activ­ity this Friday.

The new site revolves around a per­fect get­away, ulti­mately using the maps spread across the var­i­ous Gotham Sites. www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​t​h​e​p​e​r​f​e​c​t​g​e​t​a​way (found via Page 4 of The Ha Ha Times)

Here are the plans:

For dis­cus­sion I rec­om­mend this thread.

More Devel­op­ments elsewhere…

Other big events today include threat­en­ing phones calls made to peo­ple that sub­mit­ted details to We are the Answer, Toas­t­er­Devil has kindly recorded this and placed it up on YouTube:

With a loose tran­scrip­tion from Hol­ly­wood Chicago:

“We heard about the mes­sage you left at the DA’s office. I know you have some big ideas about being a good cit­i­zen. No one likes a squeeler. You know noth­ing.They’re out there putting their lives on the line so you can sleep OK … and you’re lay­ing in your bed. Let’s see what hap­pens the next time you need some­one in blue.

Think about who they are. Check doc­u­ment LC6551. You know where to look.”

We are the Answer also have a new email response:

Thank you for your infor­ma­tion on sus­pi­cious activ­ity regard­ing a police offi­cer. Your infor­ma­tion appears to pos­si­bly be very impor­tant in an open inves­ti­ga­tion regard­ing the officer(s) involved. It is impos­si­ble to dis­close any spe­cific infor­ma­tion on the inves­ti­ga­tion, but be assured that the infor­ma­tion you have pro­vided is being han­dled with the utmost seri­ous­ness and confidentiality.

If you have any fur­ther infor­ma­tion about crim­i­nal activ­ity that the officer(s) have or will be engag­ing in, you are encour­aged to use the tip-line form as an ongo­ing resource.

Please keep this email and the infor­ma­tion you have pro­vided us con­fi­den­tial. Your infor­ma­tion is part of an ongo­ing police inves­ti­ga­tion and is there­fore sub­ject to all laws gov­ern­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion. Pre­ma­ture dis­clo­sure of infor­ma­tion could com­pro­mise the investigation.

Again, thank you for your assis­tance. We rely on your help. Together, we are mak­ing Gotham City bet­ter, safer, stronger. Together, We Are the Answer.

So we will be able to turn some­one else in soon. We just need a time and location…wait!

EDIT: Look­ing for the “It’s all part of the plan” safe codes? Check our cov­er­age here: “It’s all part of the plan — Why So Seri­ous”

EDIT 2: Now a new site has been revealed, http://​www​.gothamusd​.net/ — The Gotham Uni­fied School District

EDIT: OPENED…

It’s a vault! Why So Seri­ous has a sec­ond secret stage dis­cov­ered in the per­son­al­ity pro­file… http://​www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​m​a​u​s​o​l​e​um/ Thanks to Hol­ly­wood Chicago for the heads up!

The secret itself was found by look­ing at the let­ters in the var­i­ous lev­els you could achieve on the pro­filer, it was found that tak­ing one let­ter from each could spell mau­soleum and hence gen­er­ate the next fas­ci­nat­ing URL.

This is the email that was sent out:

If you’ve fin­ished my quiz, then it’s time for the next step in the inter­view process, some­thing to test your apti­tude. Spaces count:

* Eighth
* Sixth
* Eighth
* Ninth
* Ninth
* Sec­ond
* Fourth
* Sec­ond
* Third

The text on the note reads:

” You surely know how to put a smile on a guys face ! Now your task is simple.

Your job is to find a way into the evi­dence vault.

Our fine friends in blue have col­lected some­thing that surely dosn’t belong to them.”

UPDATE:From the blood­ied let­ters you can get the ana­gram, “TIME FOR TAFFY” — refer­ring to The Gotham Times, Johnny “Taffy­face” Linata died at 7:38am. There is a clock with­out any view­able hands to the left of the safe.

UPDATE: There seems to be a new secu­rity related Gotham web­site, http://​acmese​cu​ri​tysys​tems​.com/

“ACME Busi­ness Secu­rity pro­vides reli­able secu­rity sys­tems for busi­nesses through­out Gotham City. We pro­vide a range of ser­vices, from pas­sive alarm to con­stant video surveillance.

We spe­cial­ize in ware­house and com­mer­cial real estate secu­rity with flex­i­ble plans—allowing you secu­rity when you need it, for as long as you need it.”

There is also yet another Gotham City based web­site, this time its Gotham Cabs at http://​www​.gotham​cab​.com/

A new link on Why So Seri­ous has been unveiled, link­ing to a per­son­al­ity pro­filer. This comes in the form of 14 ques­tions, at the end of which your score is judged on clas­sic arcade style machine. Notice that at the bot­tom there is a pad­locked cup­board, could this con­tain some­thing of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to us?

There will be more tests in a few days.

Read the rest of this entry »

… and no major, news­wor­thy update yet. Rory’s Death Kiss… has how­ever updated with a new mes­sage at the bot­tom of the page:

It seems those with accepted sub­mis­sions will receive some­thing spe­cial in the post, prob­a­bly around Thanks­giv­ing. We’ll have to wait and see what that is, the rumors sug­gest some sort of Poster.

The feed­back we’re get­ting from the fans that waited for this dead­line to pass is that the major­ity are extremely dis­ap­pointed, espe­cially those that took part in the photo tak­ing chal­lenge but had their pic­tures rejected or those that took pic­tures of the let­ters to reveal the hid­den mes­sage — they will not be rewarded for their pro­mo­tional efforts.

Maybe this is because the old prize — a set of Dark Knight stills, was let loose on the net a few weeks back, spoil­ing the entire sce­nario. How­ever that’s just spec­u­la­tion on my part.

Updated: Rory’s Death Kiss 

I apol­o­gise for the brevity of the last post, it was a hop-in hop-out post as quickly as pos­si­ble dilemma.

As you all prob­a­bly know, the Hal­loween Why So Seri­ous scav­enger hunt is well under­way. “Clowns” have been “ordered” to go and take pic­tures of var­i­ous places through­out an assort­ment of major cities across the United States. These pic­tures are then uploaded to form a message…

“The only sen­si­ble way to live in this world is with­out rules“Not all the let­ters are filled in yet but the mes­sage is clear. It appears like a screen cap from the movie will reveal itself once the mes­sage is com­plete. Maybe it will be related to Two-Face, con­sid­er­ing the pump­kin rot­ting scenario.I have set up a topic for dis­cus­sion on the forums (apolo­gies for the theme on there at the moment, we had to revert back whilst some issues with PHPBB were ironed out):

Why So Seri­ous Discussion

The Clues: