What else can we do? Well, what if we look under the carpet.gif? Aha! The mouse is running under the carpet!Īha! So we just found a mouse! But… it doesn’t help us much. Well, first you might want to explore lamp.gif or light-off.gif… Alright, the lamp is turned off now. If the image doesn’t exist on the server, you’ll be forwarded to the nobody-is-home.gif. Well, since you entered the house already, at this point you might start to look closely at what’s going on in the image. In fact, we created a number of animated GIFs, including common aliases such as home.gif, for example, to make sure that people who “get” the idea, follow it through and get to the next level. Yes, the key was to figure out that the URL had to be adjusted. So how can you look into the house? Since it’s an animated GIF and there are no clickable elements on it, what about… changing the URL in the browser address bar? What about enter-the-house.gif or just house.gif? enter-the-house.gif revealed a person sitting in the house, distracted by a lamp. Well, if you have to watch out for the file name, the first thing you probably do is look up the file name. Our readers set the house on fire! Large view. The lighter an area, the more clicks it had. Sorry about that! The clicks heatmap for the riddle. And yes, it’s lots and lots of clicks! Unfortunately, since it was an animated GIF and it wasn’t linked and had no clickable areas, all those clicks didn’t help resolve the riddle at all. And, according to our heatmaps, our dear readers literally set the house on fire. Well done, course, the initial reaction was to click anywhere and everywhere on the image. Okay, this ( #merryxmas) could be a solution but it isn’t. Now, in our usability tests, many people went beyond their way to go through each and every frame, check the colors of each frame in Photoshop, rotate the images, run a diff between images, color-highlight different areas of the images and even play around with hex-colors which are (surprise, surprise!) actually hashtags as well ( #aed4dc, anyone?). The only hint was to watch out for the file name. The solution should be displayed in plain text. So there shouldn’t be any room for vague interpretations. Once you resolved the mystery, you’d see a Twitter hashtag displayed in plain text. So after a series of usability rounds we thoroughly adjusted and edited the copy of the riddle, explaining that the mysterious animated GIF contains a hidden message. However, we did want it to be hard enough, but not too hard which would make most readers stop trying. But with a quite smashing prize for the winners, we didn’t want to make it easy for you. The Mystery RiddleĪlright, it wasn’t easy indeed. Oh, you want to figure it out first? Well, then please close this window since there are (obviously) spoilers in this post. Now that two days after the announcement have passed, it’s time to reveal the mystery and announce the winners. Oh, you want to figure it out first? Well, then please close this window since there are (obviously) spoilers in this post.Īh, the good ol’ Smashing Book Mystery riddle. Ah, the good ol’ Smashing Book Mystery riddle.
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