Nawa Tsumugu Unmasks Himself as Puzzle Hunt’s Creator and Is Put to Work in a Warehouse

YUMENOS — Nawa Tsumugu revealed on Sunday that his character, a rapper, was the maker of a spray-painted puzzle hunt that had been circulating in Stragraphy (ストグラ), the GTA roleplay community, and turned himself in to the police over it. The reveal came about 70 minutes into a stream of just over five hours.

On the way to the station he was badly hurt, his health draining, and was treated by paramedics who addressed him as “Butterfly,” the name tied to the puzzle. He asked that his chart be written under that name and told them he had been ordered to report over his use of spray and had not made it in time. At the station he gave the same name at the front desk, then asked an officer whether “Nawa” rang a bell. “The rapper,” the officer replied.

“I really wanted to do an answer-reveal session, to lay the answers out in front of everyone. But, well, too bad.” — Nawa Tsumugu, after the ordeal ended

Nawa said an officer had caught him on patrol earlier, worked out that he was behind the puzzle and let him go on a promise to come back once it was finished. He walked the officers through its steps: the width and height of an image gave a number, which led to a coded string that resolved to the word “Union”; a QR code there linked to a video whose music was Morse code, and decoding it gave the last clue. About four people had solved it, he said, and he had worried he made it too easy. The fine for the spray offense was 100,000 yen in the game’s money.

Officers said ordinary prison was too soft, so they were trying out a warehouse job as prison labor. On the way, police ticketed one another for speeding. At the warehouse Nawa was called No. 9, chose a table and began packing boxes at roughly 5,000 yen each toward the fine. The job ended early when the pallets ran short, and he was let go with an instruction to follow proper procedure and seek police cooperation next time. He later said the work turned out to be fairly enjoyable.

With it over, he said he would leave the puzzle’s marks up for the time being: they reportedly fade on their own, and some players might still want to solve it. He turned to Halloween costumes next and settled on a ninja look, drawling “mendokusē” (“what a drag”) as he met other residents. His shadow-bind technique worked on the second try, though a bystander noted it was closer to a shadow-copy move. Later that night he watched a Halloween fashion event, where the centerpiece was an outfit-price ranking: viewers guessed which of seven models wore the most and the least expensive looks, with a 10 million yen prize for those who got both right. The lowest was model No. 2 at 99,000 yen with its wings left out, the highest the No. 4 clown at 230,000 yen. Nobody had named the clown, so the prize rolled over to the next ranking.

Later in the evening he talked with another resident about how long he had been in town, saying he joined on Aug. 20, about two months earlier. He signed off after about five hours and 15 minutes, saying that whenever something interesting looked about to happen in town he ended up coming back, and that there would be no stream the next day.