Category: Mugs

“42” is hidden in the “Best before” date, as February 11th is the 42nd day of the year.

The barcode is a distraction, resulting in the phrase “These aren’t the words you’re looking for…” when processed by a bar code reader.
Got still no idea why this phrase sprang to my mind.

The “words you’re looking for” (Practice Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty), are contained inside the ingredients list. Look up each ingredient in the Periodic Table of the Elements and write the resulting letters down as many times as the percentage states (no percentage means: once). Now you might need a good anagram generator. 🙂

No “Practice Random…” line to see here – please move along. Oh, wait. There’s still a quite obvious appearance of the number “42”, the two mysterious cFos guys and “cFos” itself.

And (this is the only, but not really hidden part) you can find the year 2015 in Attic Numerals right in the middle of the image.

The “Practice Random…” line is scrambled to build the game menu, the number “42” is formed by the branches of a tree in the background.

The mugs were designed in 2013, but were planned to be handed out in 2014 – so I had to decide for one of the two years. I went for 2013, which is anagrammatically hidden in “Where to enter zoo?”.

On this mug it’s just the “Practice Random…” line in morse code at the bottom and the “42” as the american traffic sign W4-2R.

The “42” is hidden in the dice’s visible pips, the current year can be gained by counting the corners of the geometric objects: “20” + “6+5=11” = “2011“.

In the text the letters “r,o,j,v,n,b” are rendered in a slightly lighter tone, the letters “e,m,f,a,v” slightly stronger. By applying the Vigenère cipher with the correct key (3–6–15–19 = “cfos“) one gets the names of “Martin” and “Chris”.

The current year is hidden behind the gap between “o” and “s“, the “42” appears twice: “*” is the ASCII character 42 (dezimal) and “B” is the character 42 (hexadezimal).

“TKgEy” might work well with an URL shortener, e.g. tinyURL or goo.gl.

The pac-dots inside the labyrinth contain the lines:

“What do you get if you multiply six by nine?” – Reference to 42 (taken from the TV show)

“Practice Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty”

“Cramhints” – encription key (C,R,A,M,H,I,N,T,S=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9) for the two names hidden in the high scores.

The number 42 is also included as the total sum of the bonus items (4200 points); the current year is to be found inside the power pellets.

The only hidden message is the number 42, which in this case is represented by Deep Thought himself – but the one from the movie, not the one appearing in the TV show.

Furthermore “Practice Random Kindness…” can be found on the billboard in the lower right corner and a picture containing two suspiciously looking guys in the lower left corner. Both boards are written in fonts that were used for the Futurama TV shows.

Last, but not least, the current year as a part of the “Planet Express” headquarter’s parapet.

No hidden messages this time – at least if one is capable of reading Tengwar, the written language of Middle-earth.

“Practice Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty”, written in the Tengwar-Annatar font by Johan Winge, can be found at the bottom – hopefully without too many typos.
(The first one has been found already: An additional “d” has crept to the end of the line. Fixed now – thanks go to Uwe Engelmann for reporting it.)

On the right hand you can find the current year (written in Tengwar using the elvish duodecimal number system) and on the left hand the number “42”.