ðh, The First
The beginning
Last updated
The beginning
Last updated
Oh, h. So, the thing about h. How it all started... ... it all started as an innocent little mistake. We always intended to create these little treasure hunt games that people could choose to participate in for a prize at the end, but not without some investigative skills being put to the test.
h started earlier than it was supposed to. Our Discord guy (Howie) was working on creating some channels and h was the result of some arguments he was having with the bots he was working with. He was supposed to delete it and no one would have been the wiser. But then people started posting in it...
The channel got flooded pretty quickly. On a whim, we came up with the rule that you could only post things that started with 'h' - a rule for the channel.
Whoever did so would be awarded the 'h' Discord role. One user (Empty Battery) actually did this without realizing it and was awarded the h role but had no idea how they got it until much later. For now, this role had no purpose or use.
The bot was set up to respond to only one command, !h. It would respond to !h with 'h'. The addition of this command caused quite a stir. The people wanted to know;
What is h?
We weren't ready yet to release all of what h was meant to be. But we didn't want people to lose interest either. So, Howie was directed to now have the bot respond with 2 additional replies. The bot would now reply to !h with either h, 0, or 4. Boomers quickly took notice of this change.
On the same day, some modifications were made to the website. A secret page was added. One of our scrolling boomers was changed to reflect a different picture. A picture of our comic boomer holding up a piece of paper with a single letter 'h'.
A cryptic Twitter message was also posted:
These changes were all made to hint and point to the website. However, we encountered two issues. Likely due to the vague nature of it all, our boomers were not quite finding what we were hoping. The secret webpage link remained hidden, and the command required to activate the response we were looking for in the h channel was not found.
We decided we had to do more. Originally, the command you were looking for in the h channel once the bot started responding with 0 & 4 was !h 4004 or !h4004. This would have resulted in the bot replying with the secret webpage link (https://www.boomersquad.io/h) and also when the 'kick off' for the rest of h to begin. We wanted to start the hunt at the halfway point of our mint, for which we were still around the 2000 or 3000 mark at this point.
We passed the halfway point, and still no one had discovered the command. A disaster! But it's alright. We disabled the command (ironically, someone actually figured it out but only after it was disabled). We simply changed the gating system to be a specific date - June 4th, 2022. And started dropping more clues, both on Twitter and Discord.
This picture could be found on the Boomer Squad website by manually navigating to this URL: https://www.boomersquad.io/h. Your wallet had to be connected, and you had to own at least one Boomer for the picture to be displayed. One of the clues which really helped point people in the right direction was the following:
As we got closer and closer to 06/04/2022, there still hadn't been many Boomers who had managed to make their way there. We started ramping up the hints. We made reference to WWW in our Discord Alpha channel. A Twitter post was sent asking "What happens when you take the 'ome' out of 'home'?
These hints helped a few more Boomers reach the time gated webpage.
Quite a bit changed all at once on this day. First and foremost, an announcement was posted with this picture:
This picture was meant to represent word #7 - flash. If you dug deeper, the name of the picture was also "flash".
Second, the picture on the website was changed.
There are several things to observe from this picture. The first and most obvious one, the QR code. Scanning this QR code brought you to an unlisted YouTube video. The video played "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley. This was an attempt to get the viewer to simply shut it down right away without actually watching it. At the 69 second mark of the video, a different QR code was displayed. The video description hints at this by having the number '69' as well as two verses of the lyrics that precede the QR code showing itself.
This QR code was a discord invite. It brought you to the RickRoll server:
Once you grabbed the top half of the QR code, you were done with this lead.
For those paying close attention, they would have noticed the number "12" on the wallet the old man is holding from the updated picture. For our more savvy Boomers, this is a hard coincidence to ignore. Wallets are often used and referred to in the crypto & NFT world, and the number 12 being a hint at a 12-word wallet seed phrase.
If you look even closer, there are other clues in the picture which hint that this might be the case:
You can see here the word 'plug' spelled out and what appears to be the number 9 on the broken lens.
The word 'rally' with the number 5 under it.
The word 'save' with the number 10 next to it.
The inverted number 3 on a 'hat'.
These were probably the most 'obvious' clues provided. It was done this way intentionally. We wanted our Boomers to notice this trend, and set them on the chase. The half a QR code provided by the RickRoll Discord was another bread crumb. Here came the hard part.
Along with the picture being changed on the website, a Twitter post went out with a GIF of a gate opening. And a few things on Discord changed.
Visible for everyone to see was a new channel under the h channel. The i channel.
The i channel was created and with it came a clue; this channel was created because no one had been able to solve h. It was created to help you solve h.
After this hint, a few people figured it out. They went back, clicked on the bot, and received the i role. This allowed them access to the i2 channel. The i2 channel was very straightforward. If you typed !i, the bot would respond with the face of a boomer and the number 8. The channel also had a pinned note which included a clue.
But most importantly, figuring out the i channel was the biggest clue it provided. Those quicker to catch on realized that the h channel was likely set up the same way. And they were correct. At the verrrrrry top of all the chatter that had happened over the month h had been opened, back they went and clicked the bot to get the emoji reaction.
Another note to add - one change had also occurred in the h channel. In addition to the bot responding to !h with h, 0 or 4, it would now also answer with "11. quit". This was one of the required 12 words, but many people still weren't sure what they were looking for at this stage of the hunt.
Now at this point, some have gained the h role and with that, access to the h2 channel.
The h2 channel was very straightforward. It was locked down so no one could chat and held the other bottom half of the missing QR code.
At this point in the game, some people had gotten half of each QR code, but not necessarily both. Some Boomers playing with h in Discord had still not caught on that some of the hints pointed to the website. Only those who wizened up managed to get both pieces of this puzzle. And with that, an invitation to the 1-2-3-4 Discord...
h was back in the 1-2-3-4 Discord. This time, it would answer to the !h command with the number 2 or 6. A hidden channel could be unlocked by typing in the correct command.
This is where many Boomers were stumped. Along with this point, we could tell that there would be some struggles with word #8 (the face boomer hint) and word #12, the wallet - it became obvious that some additional hints would be required to move the hunt along on these three specific points.
At this point, boomers could have gathered the following:
????
????
hat
????
rally
????
flash
gasp (if you were really, really good - but most wouldn't have gotten this)
plug
save
quit
wreck (if you were really, really good - but most wouldn't have gotten this)
It was now 3 days into the hunt. Things had stalled, and it looked like some additional hints might be required. It was sorted out and announced that at 2 PM EST on June 8th, some additional clues would be released. They were sent out via Twitter. 3 clues were provided:
The first clue:
Regarding the i2 channel and the picture that is generated along with the number 8. You are looking for a 4 letter word that can be defined as: sudden short inhale.
The second clue:
Regarding the 1-2-3-4 Discord. You are looking for a command that begins with ! The information from both h channels (not h2) needs to be combined in a specific format (for which an example is provided) in order to figure out the command.
The third clue:
The first clue was provided because there were simply too many possibilities based on the original hint. It helped to guide the boomers to the correct word.
The second clue explained something that the Boomers had missed. The 'format' of the command was given as an example via the Discord name (1-2-3-4) which our hunters took for granted. The name of the Discord was not being taken into consideration as a hint which the additional clue helped to point out. The original h channel in the main Boomer Discord would reply to the !h command with 0 & 4. The new h channel replied to !h with 2 & 6. Combining that information together, paired with the format provided (Discord name, from low to high with dashes in between) meant you were looking for the following command: !h0-2-4-6 or !h 0-2-4-6. Part of why this may have been overlooked is that Boomers never figured out the !h 4004 command in the original h channel. Had this been discovered, it likely would have made this part more obvious.
Typing in the correct command granted you a special role which gave you access to the 0-equals-1 channel:
The channel was locked down and had only the following information: 0. lens 2. culture 4. enrich 6. gaze. For those paying attention, these were some of the missing words. The name of the channel was another hint "0-equals-1" was meant to indicate that "0. lens" is actually "1. lens", the first word in your search of the 12-word wallet seed phrase.
The third clue was provided due to how difficult it was to spot this. And the clue was quite literal. In the changed picture, in very small font, you could find 1 letter on each fiat bill in the top right corner of each one:
The letters were W R E C K. Coincidentally, this was also the 12th word required :)
lens
culture
hat
enrich
rally
gaze
flash
gasp
plug
save
quit
wreck
Upon inputting these 12 words, you gained access to a wallet containing 2500 CRO and 3 Boomers, including Boomer #1 of the series. Along with being forever immortalized with the h role in our Discord. The winner is also privy to some alpha information and input for one of our projects down the line.
Nytecoin was ultimately the winner of h. He was the first to solve all the clues and gain access to the wallet. He was gracious enough to leave 500 CRO and 1 Boomer on the wallet for the runner-up, which was EliteExchanges. Nyte gains the unique role of h, The First in our discord to commemorate his win.
The wallet address: https://cronoscan.com/address/0x5fC10B683B026A154dA3e3C9Bd11450e28a1d4Ae#tokentxnsErc721
I hope everyone had a fun but infuriating time chasing down all the clues we left behind. This hunt was put together a bit on the go, and these should be organized better as we go along. It also helped us realize what works and what doesn't and how to better go about things going forward. Our next release will be community based, where everyone can work together to reveal... something :)
h
Following the rule meant whatever you posted would be 'reacted to' with the H emoji - . Breaking the rule would result in a reaction of . The reason for the emoji responses were a hint. This was already enough to drive some of the resident locals crazy...
Howie then set up a bot to respond in a specific way for anyone who 'reacted' to this sentence with a , found near the beginning of the channel creation:
Unfortunately, several hours into channel i opening, no one had been able to solve the puzzle and it was quickly scrolling down. Channel i was setup the same way channel h had been - if you added a emoji reaction to the bot chat line, you would receive the i role. The longer people chatted in the channel, the least likely they were to solve the puzzle. So, we locked it down. No one was allowed to talk in the channel anymore. And we told them that in itself was a hint. We also provided a clue in the form of a short sort of poem:
Sometimes, you have to look very closely to see the value of fiat