Elf Connect

Difficulty:

Objective

Task description

Help Angel Candysalt connect the dots in a game of connections.

Angel Candysalt

Welcome back, island adventurer! I'm Angel Candysalt — so happy to finally meet you!

I'm thrilled you're here because I could really use a hand with something.

Have you ever heard of a game called Connections?

It’s simple! All you need to do is find groups of four related words.

I've been stuck on it all day, and I'm sure someone as sharp as you will breeze through it.

Oh, and while you're at it, check out randomElf's score — they hit fifty thousand points, which seems… oddly suspicious.

Think they might have tampered with the game? Just a hunch!

Hints

Easy

I love brain games! This one is like the New York Times Connections game. Your goal here is to find groups of items that share something in common. Think of each group as having a hidden connection or theme—four items belong together, and there are multiple groups to find! See if you can spot patterns or common threads to make connections. Group all the items correctly to win!

Hard

WOW! A high score of 50,000 points! That’s way beyond the limit! With only four rounds and a max of 400 points per round, the top possible score should be 1,600 points. So, how did someone get to 50,000? Something unusual must be happening!

If you're curious, you might want to check under the hood. Try opening the browser's developer tools console and looking around—there might even be a variable named 'score' that could give you some insights. Sometimes, games hold secrets for those who dig a little deeper. Give it a shot and see what you can discover!

Solution

SilverGold

When interacting with the terminal we get presented a minigame. As said by Angel, the game is called 'Connections', where we get sixteen words and we need to find four groups of four that belong together per round.

Elf Connect

Not being a native English speaker and knowing all of its culture, the first round is actually quite challenging. Fortunately, impatience actually rewards us here as prematurely checking the browser's DevTools quickly gives us insight into the answers when looking at JavaScript embedded in the HTML:

const wordSets = {
    1: ["Tinsel", "Sleigh", "Belafonte", "Bag", "Comet", "Garland", "Jingle Bells", "Mittens", "Vixen", "Gifts", "Star", "Crosby", "White Christmas", "Prancer", "Lights", "Blitzen"],
    2: ["Nmap", "burp", "Frida", "OWASP Zap", "Metasploit", "netcat", "Cycript", "Nikto", "Cobalt Strike", "wfuzz", "Wireshark", "AppMon", "apktool", "HAVOC", "Nessus", "Empire"],
    3: ["AES", "WEP", "Symmetric", "WPA2", "Caesar", "RSA", "Asymmetric", "TKIP", "One-time Pad", "LEAP", "Blowfish", "hash", "hybrid", "Ottendorf", "3DES", "Scytale"],
    4: ["IGMP", "TLS", "Ethernet", "SSL", "HTTP", "IPX", "PPP", "IPSec", "FTP", "SSH", "IP", "IEEE 802.11", "ARP", "SMTP", "ICMP", "DNS"]
};
...
let correctSets = [
    [0, 5, 10, 14], // Set 1
    [1, 3, 7, 9],   // Set 2
    [2, 6, 11, 12], // Set 3
    [4, 8, 13, 15]  // Set 4
];

The correct sets for all rounds are fixed by the index of the words. Parsing this data, we get the following correct sets:

• Round 1
  • Tinsel, Garland, Star, Lights
  • Sleigh, Bag, Mittens, Gifts
  • Belafonte, Jingle Bells, White Christmas, Crosby
  • Comet, Vixen, Crosby, Prancer
• Round 2
  • Nmap, netcat, Wireshark, Nessus
  • burp, OWASP Zap, Nikto, wfuzz
  • Frida, Cycript, AppMon, apktool
  • Metasploit, Cobalt Strike, HAVOC, Empire
• Round 3
  • AES, RSA, Blowfish, 3DES
  • WEP, WPA2, TKIP, LEAP
  • Symmetric, Asymmetric, hash, hybrid
  • Caesar, One-time Pad, Ottendorf, Scytale
• Round 4
  • IGMP, IPX, IP, ICMP
  • TLS, SSL, IPSec, SSH
  • Ethernet, PPP, IEEE 802.11, ARP
  • HTTP, FTP, SMTP, DNS

Answer

Solving the game the way it is meant to be played will give us the silver achievement.

The 'hard' hint suggests that we need to use the browser's developer tools (DevTools) to solve this challenge. When looking through the HTML and JavaScript code, we find a function called 'checkSelectedSet' which sounds important. In this function, some logic is executed when a set if deemed correct, like updating the score and check whether a high-score is reached. See the highlighted and annotated code below for more explanation.

function checkSelectedSet(scene) {
    // ...
    if (isCorrectSet) {
        // ...
        // Update score by 100 points
        score += 100; // (1)!
        scoreText.setText('Score: ' + score);

        // Add high-score board
        if (score > 50000) { // (2)!
            highScoreText.setText('High Score: ' + score);
            emitter.explode(20);
            submitAction(2); // (3)!
            displaySuccessMessage('Great Job Hacker! Elf Connect Complete and Hacked!', function () {
            });
        }
    }
}

1. The 'score' variable is updated after finding a correct set. As this is happening client side, we could alter it ourselves using the console in the DevTools.
2. Validation of the high-score (above 50k).
3. Submitting some action, which appears to be the game ending. Since it submits action '2', there is likely also an action '1'.

Looking through the code we find that submitAction(1) is used after the game is completed by playing it as intended. This submission is therefore likely related to the silver/gold progression. We therefore don't have to manually edit the variable score via the DevTools console as we can directly submit the game winning action. Therefore, the answer is as follows:

Answer

Submit the following in the DevTools console (make sure to attach the console to the game iframe):

submitAction(2)

Response

Angel Candysalt

Amazing! You really connected all the dots like a pro.