Find Satoshi

Is it possible to locate a man given only his photograph and first name? The answer is YES!

In 2006, UK-based game company Mind Candy tested the theory of six degrees of separation as part of an Alternate Reality Game (ARG). They gave us a photograph of a man, a name, and the Japanese characters that translate to “Find me”.

In 2020, thanks to the power of community, that person has been found!

Thank you everyone who helped participate in the quest to find Satoshi!

History

On July 31, 2006, an alternate reality game (ARG) called Perplex City released foil packs of puzzle cards ranging in difficulty from easy (“red”) to impossible (“silver”). Players could solve the cards and enter solutions into the website, to appear on a leaderboard. The game ended in 2008, and the website is now defunct. (You can read more background about the game and silver-level cards here.)

Puzzle #256 was a silver card titled “Billion to One”. It features a man’s photograph and the Japanese characters 私を 見つけなさい (watashi o mitsuke nasai, “find me”). A Perplex City hint line gave the clue, “My name is Satoshi.”

Perplex City players identified the background of the photo as being in Kaysersberg, Alsace, France. (View the exact location on Google Streetview here.)

The FindSatoshi.com website was started in November 2006 by Laura E. Hall as a way to consolidate information about the search for Satoshi for quick sharing. (There were also several other sites by enthusiastic community members, as we all were eager to solve this puzzle!)

Laura was coincidentally near Kaysersberg in December 2007 for a work trip and was able to visit the town, standing on the same spot that Satoshi stood on for his selfie.

Mind Candy confirmed additional information about the hunt:

• First, Satoshi had willingly agreed to participate in the game.
• Second, he had to be contacted directly. If he saw the site, he wouldn’t reach out.
• Third, he had been told a password, which he would reveal to whoever contacted him.

How Satoshi Was Found

Early on, there was some great news coverage, including a television interview on ABC and a writeup in The Guardian and The New York Times. The Internet was very different in 2006 and we attempted to get as much spread as possible, but relied a lot on word of mouth and link-sharing. (See FAQ for more on how the puzzle was intended to be solved.)

Over the years, Laura received many emails and tips about Satoshi’s identity, but none resulted in a connection. (There was one notable email early on that pointed the search at Los Angeles—but the person didn’t reply to follow-up questions. Laura contacted them a couple of years later and they said that at that point, they had no way to contact the person they knew, who knew Satoshi.)

The trail was cold, with occasional surges of interest when people found the site for the first time and shared it.

In 2018, Asher Isbrucker created a podcast about the project, interviewing Laura and Mind Candy co-founder Adrian Hon.

In February 2020, the YouTube channel Inside A Mind did a video about the project, generating a lot of community interest in the project, including the revival of the Reddit forum and a Discord.

In December 2020, Reddit user th0may, Tom-Lucas Säger from Hamburg, Germany, used AI facial recognition image search PimEyes and discovered a photograph of a man holding a beer, which had been posted online in 2018.

Further searching revealed more photographs of this man, who lives in Nagano, Japan.

His freckles match up exactly! But we still had to get in touch with him directly—remember, he wouldn’t contact us, even if he saw the site.

His email was on his company website, so with the help of a friend in Japan, Laura composed an email in English and Japanese. And a day later, she received a reply confirming that this was indeed “our” Satoshi! (See below for his message, shared with permission.)

The creator of the puzzle, a former employer of Mind Candy, then confirmed that it was correct.

14 years after the hunt began, Satoshi has been found!

Satoshi’s Reply

Hello,

Thank you for contacting me.
You said you have been looking for the guy named Satoshi.

I am Satoshi,,,,,,,,,

YES!

I am Satoshi, who you have been looking for!!!

Wow! I had forgotten about this card game altogether, and I never dreamed that someone was still looking for me.
Originally, I was supposed to tell a message to someone if they found me, but … Goodness !! It has been more than 10 years! I completely forgot. I’m so sorry.

Actually, I didn’t know much about Perplex City. Fourteen or fifteen years ago, one of my best American friends asked to use my photo for the game. It sounded interesting for me. I had a recent picture from a trip I had been on and I like this kind of things so I said “why not!” immediately.
However, after that, I didn’t hear much about the game or what it was. I never even saw the card itself.
I didn’t care, and I gradually lost my memory of this, and a year later I had completely forgotten it.

And of course, since then, no one’s found me.

When you got in touch with me few days ago, and I learned that “Findsatoshi” was still going on, I laughed a lot! And I was very happy.

Anyway, you found me! From only one photo, and one photo taken in a small town somewhere around the border between Germany and France, and even as I was in Nagano, Japan when the Card released.

With only the first name information, “Satoshi”

My name is very common in Japan. From the name of hundreds of thousands of people, it took 14 years but I’ve finally been found!! It is really amazing!

Congratulations on solving puzzle #256!
And may your 2021 be a wonderful year!
Happy New Year !!

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is this related to Bitcoin?

A: No. Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym used by the person who created Bitcoin, but it’s not the same Satoshi.

–

Q: Did Satoshi consent to the search?

A: Yes, this was confirmed by Mind Candy at the start of the search:

“Satoshi has agreed to appear on this card and, of course, knows you’re looking for him. He isn’t hiding, but he isn’t looking for you either. If you track him down, he will happily provide you with the information required to solve this card, and will also be able to prove his identity as The Real Satoshi – you don’t need to coerce or harass him into co-operating, you just need to find him. Satoshi has no connection with any employee of Mind Candy or Mind Candy’s business partners – pursuing them for information will be of no use. Finally, Satoshi possesses no information regarding the location of Perplex City’s $200,000 Cube, so you needn’t interrogate him about that either! As always with Perplex City, you needn’t (and mustn’t) break the law – or be mean! – in the course of your adventures. With all that said. good hunting, one and all….”

–

Q: Should I contact Satoshi?

A: Please don’t! His agreement to participate in the game was limited to this one puzzle, and that is now complete. We are very grateful to him for allowing Mind Candy to use his image for the puzzle!

–

Q: What was the password that Satoshi was supposed to share?

A: It was a question in Japanese that he would have spoken to whoever found him. The answer to the question was the puzzle’s answer. The creator of the puzzle, Jey Biddulph, has posted an audio clip of the question on Twitter. Can you solve it?

–

Q: What was Satoshi’s connection to the game makers?

A: From Jey Biddulph’s thread: “Satoshi was a friend of someone who worked at a game-focused PR agency Mind Candy worked with, who were based in LA I believe. So there weren’t too many steps involved but quite a few leaps around the world.”

–

Q: How was the puzzle supposed to be solved?

A: Ideally, through “six degrees of separation”, the hypothesis that each person is connected to everyone else in the world through six or fewer social connections. Remember that this came out in the early 2000s. The shape of the internet was very different then—Facebook started in 2004, Youtube and Reddit started in 2005, Twitter and Google Translate started in 2006. We think it’s great that the solution happened because of the strengths of the Internet today.

Thank You!

This wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work of thousands of people. Everyone who read about the project, shared it with a friend, and chatted about it online made this possible.

Thanks to James at Inside A Mind for making the video about the Find Satoshi project and sharing it with your audience.

Thanks to everyone on the Find Satoshi Reddit forum and Discord for the many hours of research and conversation.

Huge congratulations to Reddit user th0may for finding the photo and making the connection to Satoshi. You did it!!

Thanks to Yanis Deschamps and Mt. MELVIL for help with translation and support.

Cheers to Chris Warren, who created the Billion2One website back in the day.

Many thanks to all of the Perplex City players, a very special and fun community.

Thanks to Satoshi for the use of his name and photograph!

Thanks to the entire Mind Candy team for creating Perplex City, and to Jey Biddulph, creator of the puzzle, who has been Laura’s partner for over 10 years and who did not reveal anything about the answer the entire time.

News

Love puzzles?

Interested in learning more about ARGs?

Laura has written a book about the history of immersive entertainment and how to play escape room games, “Planning Your Escape: Strategy Secrets to Make You an Escape Room Superstar”.

Pre-order it now from your favorite bookseller in time for its release in August 2021!

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What Are “Foxtails” on Cannabis Buds?

by Sirius Fourside

What to Do About Marijuana Foxtailing

Picture some dried and cured, ready-to-smoke bud in your mind. Maybe it’s some you’ve harvested yourself, maybe it’s some exotic-looking unique strain, or maybe it’s just a generic picture your mind pulls up when you think ‘weed’.

I’m sure there are a few exceptions, but I’m betting most of you didn’t automatically picture this:

Picture of a cannabis bud with a major “foxtail” coming out the top. In this case, the foxtailing was caused by too much heat, though some types of foxtails are caused by genetics.

There are new green “fox tails” near the top of this cola where the bud is too close to the grow light. On the right is a bud with a typical shape. The lower bud is far enough away from the grow light to be unstressed.

Many auto-trimming machines cut off foxtails, so if you used to purchase cannabis regularly you may have bought buds that had foxtails without knowing. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though!

See examples of “good” vs “bad” marijuana foxtailing below!

So, What Exactly Are Foxtails?

The bud we know and love is made up of a bunch of calyces (that’s the plural for “calyx”) and each calyx is a potential home for a seed. However, those seeds will only develop in cases where pollination or hermaphroditism (developing both male and female sex organs) occurs.

Buds are made up of many calyxes stacked on top of each other, but generally, buds grow evenly and stick together in bunches.

As female cannabis plants mature and soak up light, they grow calyces in groups which pile up on each other until they end up looking something like the plant above. Even the more exotic looking strains tend to form buds with a somewhat even-ish surface:

“Foxtails” are made of several calyxes stacked on top of each other in a tower-like structure.

Even when you can very clearly see each individual calyx (which is natural for some strains), they tend to be relatively symmetric, with a similar amount of “foxtailing” on all sides. (Why are these buds pink and purple?)

Another example of a strain that naturally makes foxtails in normal conditions

Foxtailing buds look a bit different from traditional buds because the calyces grow on top of each other to form spires.

These spires/towers throw off the overall shape of the bud as we’re used to, so they look odd to most people. However, there are also strains that grow bud where all (or at least the vast majority) of the calyces turn into foxtails.

Note that on these plants, every calyx is foxtailing….even the calyces on the underside! It appears to be the same action that’s happening in the “bad” foxtailing picture above, but it’s much more complete.

 

So, is foxtailing a bad thing? It depends…

I know, I know… no one likes an ‘it depends’ answer. A ‘yes’ or ‘no’ would be a definitive answer and it feels so nice to feel like you know something for sure! Luckily for us as growers, you can learn to tell if the foxtailing you’re seeing is good or bad in just a few minutes! Now you can impress your friends!

Note: That was a trick! Impress your friends with cooking and/or Karate, but tell no one you grow cannabis!

 

The Two Types of Foxtailing
(Good vs Bad)

Before we go any further, I have to admit that designating one type of foxtailing ‘good’ is a bit misleading. I call it ‘good’ in that it doesn’t provide any positive or negative benefits; ‘good’ foxtailing looks a bit funky but ultimately, it’s purely a cosmetic issue. However, ‘bad foxtailing’ really is a bad thing and comes with consequences…

Being able to tell if the foxtailing you’re experiencing is good or bad is as simple as being able to tell the difference between two foxtailing pictures. Here are two more examples side-by-side:

Let’s start with the one on the left. This type of foxtailing is caused by…

 

Genetics
Some strains of cannabis have been bred – by humans and/or mother nature – to form buds where foxtailing is the norm. Although often foxtailing is caused by heat or light stress, when you’re growing a strain that is genetically predisposed to foxtail, the whole bud joins in on the foxtailing action. This makes it so that genetic foxtailing looks more uniform than the other type of foxtailing we’ll review in a minute.

The picture to the right is a strain called ‘Dr. Grinspoon’ (named for the esteemed cannabis activist, Dr. Lester Grinspoon). The look of this plant could be considered another manifestation of genetic foxtailing, and it’s important to note that this action happens everywhere on the plant.

Good or Bad? In short, there’s nothing wrong with genetic foxtailing. The fact that it’s genetic means that it was going to do it regardless of whatever specific growing technique is being used. These strains are also capable of containing high amounts of THC, so it doesn’t seem that genetic foxtailing reduces the potency of the plant.

This type of foxtailing is the good type. Again, that only means that it’s good by comparison to bad foxtailing in that it doesn’t cause any negative effects.

Now for the other picture. The other kind of foxtailing (the bad kind) is usually caused by…

 

Heat/Light Stress
The second cause of foxtailing is environmental and it’s usually caused by your lights. If you’ve ever parked a high-powered HPS or LED light (CFLs and T5s aren’t usually strong enough) too close to your cannabis, you might see it grow these odd spires.

What about when buds keep growing new white pistils over and over? This is another version of foxtailing that is caused by heat and light stress. If it’s only happening to the parts of the plant closest to the light, that’s a sign that it’s being caused by stress instead of genetics.

Good or Bad? Bad! This type of foxtailing is a sign that your buds are getting too much light and/or too much heat! These odd spires can also be accompanied by light bleaching and cooked leaves. Any one of these signs is a message that your lights need to be backed off immediately to halt any further damage. Although light bleaching and burned leaves are obviously damaged, foxtails don’t look damaged so much as they just look weird, so they don’t register as a threat to new growers. Unfortunately, they’re the harbingers of heat damage which means lost potency; if you see this type of foxtails on your buds, you’ve likely already lost potency to heat and now the mission is to lose as little as you possibly can.

Luckily, this type of foxtailing is usually localized, so you’ll only see it in spots where light intensity is super-high. This usually means they’ll be found in a small circle directly under the light, but that small circle gets larger as the light gets closer.

Now with all that being said, plants are weird! It’s totally possible that many of you growers have already seen a plant that makes the ‘bad’ looking foxtails but all over the plant. Or maybe a plant that only grows in spires! The point is that there is bound to be plants that break these rules, but at least until then you’ll know what you’re dealing with. Good luck and happy growing!

Learn more about why some plants keep growing new pistils on top of their buds

 

 

Jump to…

PSA: Too Much Light?!

How to Use a Cheap Lux Meter to Increase Yields

Cannabis Light Burn

How to Prevent and Treat Heat Stress