Crack the stack.

New to Tricky Bits? Start here. A short, no-tricks campaign that walks you through campaigns, stages, answering, hints, and input files while you actually use them. Every answer is handed to you.

Barry Buffer is getting ready to reset a system, and, predictably, nothing is written down plainly.

Six parts are hidden across logs, configs, and notes. Your job is to find them by thinking like Barry, not by reading literally.

A stolen research notebook at the Meridian Institute. Reconstruct the chain of custody, spot manipulated evidence, and prove the official story was fabricated one forensic puzzle at a time.

A federal witness is missing. The Bureau handed the case to Barry Buffer, who profiled the suspect, opened his vault, and located the hold-site, then stopped answering.

Twelve artifacts remain on his desk: a laptop image, a packet capture, a reversed recording, and notes that explain nothing. Reconstruct Barry's investigation and recover the location before the trail goes cold.

Waldo is on the run, and he can't stop bragging about it. Every few days a new postcard arrives: a photo, a smug little caption, and the same dare: find me.

This is your first OSINT case. Each postcard hides a place, and the place is hiding in plain sight: in a webcam frame, a street corner, a file's metadata, a luggage tag. No special tools, no coding. Just you, a browser, and the habit of looking closely. Four postcards, four locations. Catch up to Waldo.

A water-stained notebook turns up with no name on the cover, only a title: Ways To Write A Thought. Inside, four scripts that look nothing alike, and not one of them uses the alphabet you grew up with.

This is a tour through the stranger corners of human writing. No tools, no coding. Just patterns, patience, and the habit of asking what does this mean? Four pages, four languages. Learn to read them all.