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The Mystery of redredred.red

· 5 min read
Deirdre Hennigar
Deirdre Hennigar
Nerd-o

Overview​

Today's oddball comes from a mysterious website shared on the r/WeirdWebsites subreddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WeirdWebsites/comments/1ul62ry/me_and_my_friend_found_this_mysterious_website/

The site in question is redredred.red. It features a cryptic grid of colored squares and dots under a header that reads COLORS > 2040.

redredred.red homepage colored grid

And so the Reddit community went down a rabbit hole trying to decode the site. Some folks hypothesized that the grid represented complex binary codes, and that "4 reds remember in year 2040" could be a warning about upcoming Canadian political legislation.

Let's do some internet archaeology and figure out what is actually going on!

The Mystery​

If you navigate around the site, you find pages warning about "4 reds" and "remembering in year 2040," along with a contact email [email protected] and a retro digital page counter.

redredred.red contact email and counter

Looking at the raw HTML links, there are also direct links to Environment Canada weather pages for specific geographic coordinates: 49.245, -123.115—which map directly to Vancouver, British Columbia!

To some, this felt like the start of an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) or a cryptic conspiracy. But looking at the source code reveals a much simpler story:

redredred.red view source head

redredred.red view source body

The presence of the function MM_reloadPage in the <head> is a classic, automated artifact generated by Macromedia Dreamweaver (dating back to the early 2000s, prior to Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia). The layout is built entirely with old-school table grids and single-pixel spacer images (like /Images/1_pixel.jpg). The hit counter is powered by a standard CGI script pulling GIF assets from /digits/muffin/.

So, at the least, it's a retro site built by a non-developer using tools from twenty years ago. But what about the actual content?

Decoding the Site​

When I looked past the retro grids and read the actual text compiled in the nine set pages, I quickly realized it has nothing to do with binary ciphers or political activism. Instead, it is a massive reference guide dedicated to driving and traffic safety:

  • COLORS > 2040: This is a slash-omitted typo for COLORS > 20/40. In British Columbia, the standard driver licensing vision screening requires applicants to pass a test checking color vision and visual acuity of 20/40 or better.

  • The 200 Units: Across Set-1.htm to Set-9.htm, there are exactly 200 study units covering BC Motor Vehicle Act (MVA) regulations, municipal bylaws, and mechanical checks.

    redredred.red Set 8 search preview showing ABS brakes

  • Case Law & Safety Rules: The site compiles notes on real-world BC Supreme Court cases (like R. v. Jahani and R. v. Tannhauser) that define what constitutes the illegal "use" of a phone while driving, alongside diagrams explaining structural safety, like how a cracked windshield affects airbag deployment.

    redredred.red Unit 209 windshield integrity and dashboard accident warning

  • Educational Embeds: The embedded YouTube videos are standard physics and driver education aids, including IIHS crash testing guides and Michelin tutorials on hydroplaning.

  • The Final Hint: Direct confirmation comes from the site's media assets. If a YouTube video embed fails to load, the player box fallback displays the video's actual metadata title: COLORS EXERCISE.

redredred.red colors exercise video error

The WHOIS Lead​

I ran a WHOIS lookup for the domain redredred.red. The registrar was listed as Register4Less, Inc.:

redredred.red WHOIS domain info

While the billing address was hidden behind their standard privacy proxy in Laredo, Texas ([email protected]), the registrar left the registrant's (likely) real name unmasked in the public database: David Wanke!

redredred.red WHOIS registrant contact details

In fact, scrolling to the bottom of the site's pages shows a copyright signature that confirms the name: © 2020-2026 Wanke Design.

redredred.red wanke design copyright

Connecting the Dots​

So who is David Wanke? A search of Canadian news archives immediately turned up a 2012 Globe and Mail article on distracted driving in British Columbia:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/distracted-driving-laws-havent-deterred-motorists-who-talk-and-text/article551659/

The article interviews and quotes a key expert:

“David Wanke, a driving instructor for the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC)...”

The Globe and Mail David Wanke distracted driving quote

The puzzle pieces fell together. The creator and owner of the site appears to be a ICBC driving instructor based in British Columbia.

Conclusion​

Ultimately, redredred.red is not a political conspiracy or an ARG. It is a highly detailed, hand-crafted personal study guide created by an ICBC instructor to help their students study road physics, memorize bylaws, and prepare for their licensing tests.

redredred.red thumbs up confirmation

Mystery solved! 🚗👍

The Domino's V/W Cipher

· 3 min read
Deirdre Hennigar
Deirdre Hennigar
Nerd-o

Overview​

Today's oddball comes from a fresh r/codes post about an old Domino's Pizza Japan puzzle campaign:

https://www.reddit.com/r/codes/comments/1tje98x/code_that_has_been_made_about_15yrs_ago_by/

Domino&#39;s Pizza Japan Big Challenge V/W cipher prompt

Context: roughly 15 years ago, Domino's Pizza Japan ran a cipher contest where the first solver for each puzzle could win a year of free pizza. Most puzzles were solved during the campaign, but this one was apparently one of the stragglers. The post also says MENSA Japan was involved in creating the cipher - neat!

The Prompt​

The original ask is:

Please decode the following cipher and provide the last two words. Separate the words with a single space.

The transcription:

WvVwwwVvV VVwVwWVWVWwv
vvwvWwvWwVvVVWw WvwWWw
wwVwvWVvvVwv WvWWwVvvWvvw
wwWwVw wWWVVvWWvWvV
WWwvVWwVWVwvwWW WVwWVW
WVW vWvwvvVwvVvvVWwWVwWVw
wvWwVWvWWVwW

There are only four visible symbols: v, V, w, and W.

That is immediately tempting as binary, base 4, or a Bacon cipher (the latter is a nice red herring with pizza in mind, I think...).

The V/W Layer​

For fun, lets treat the lowercase letters as valid Morse and figure out the segmentation later:

  • v or V becomes .
  • w or W becomes -

Morse code reference chart

That produces:

-..---.. ..-.---.-.--.
...-.-.--....-- -.----
--.-.-....-. -.---...-..-
---.- --...--.-..
--..--.-.-.--- -.--.-
-.- .-.-....-...---.--.-
-.--.-.--.--

Lets remove the spaces so it's a single long Morse stream:

-..---....-.---.-.--....-.-.--....-- -.------.-.-....-. -.---...-..----.- --...--.-..--..--.-.-.--- -.--.--.- .-.-....-...---.--.--.--.-.--.--

Now, because Morse letters and numbers can be 1-5 symbols long, we need to do a little bruteforcing/guessing at the beginning of each Morse stream.

Morse logic (from the Morse code reference chart above):

  • shortest = 1 symbol
  • longest letters/numbers = 5 symbols

Using the first mini-stream:

-..---..

The first decoded character can only be one of the valid Morse prefixes below:

CandidateMorse meaning
-T
-.N
-..D
-..-X
-..--invalid

From here, we want to see the next-character possibilities for each branch.

Branch 1: T

Remaining:

..---..
Next chunkLetter/numberRemaining
.E.---..
..I---..
..---2..

So possible starts:

TE...
TI...
T2...

Branch 2: N

Remaining:

.---..
Next chunkLetter/numberRemaining
.E---..
.-A--..
.---J..

So possible starts:

NE...
NA...
NJ...

Branch 3: D

Remaining:

---..
Next chunkLetter/numberRemaining
-T--..
--M-..
---O..
---..8empty

So possible starts:

DT...
DM...
DO...
D8

The D8 branch is the most tempting of the lot, because it consumes the first mini-stream exactly:

-.. ---..
D   8

If we keep parsing, a few branches briefly look English-shaped. For example, forcing DO instead of D8 can lead into:

DOESNT MAP

Ha!

After that probably coincidental dead end, the next possible Morse chunks turn into awkward fragments instead of a readable phrase.

Current Read​

The stronger structural clue is the one Reddit commenters were already circling: every whitespace-separated chunk is divisible by three. That makes the cipher look less like Morse and more like a 64-symbol alphabet:

4 possible characters ^ 3 positions = 64 possible triplets

So the next serious attempt should probably treat each three-character group as one encoded symbol:

WvV www VvV / VVw VwW VWV Wwv / ...

I tried something different, and it was worth doing, but the answer doesn't seem to be hiding in Morse. The vVwW alphabet seems more likely to be a triplet-based encoding, base-4-ish symbol table, or custom substitution layer.

For now: no last two words yet - can YOU figure it out?

endofthisworld

· 7 min read
Deirdre Hennigar
Deirdre Hennigar
Nerd-o

Overview​

Today's oddball begins not with a login, binary, or payload, but with a Reddit post!

reddit post

https://www.reddit.com/r/strange/comments/1spt2qf/found_at_a_rest_stop/

Red text = endofthisworld.hotglue.me

TLDR;: This appears to be an art project.

Follow the White Rabbit​

The first page is a Hotglue site at endofthisworld.hotglue.me. Visually, it is a collage of grainy faces, RPG UI textures, fantasy menu art, and big white all-caps navigation labels scattered off to the side.

start page

visible links in devtools

The start page exposes a small site map:

  • /?dream
  • /?photograph
  • /?clipping
  • /?who
  • /?daily
  • /?found

The Start Page​

The flyer from Reddit matches one of the DREAM assets on the site:

dream flyer asset

Other direct image objects are just as deliberately weird: an old "Who are the Angels?" style clipping, a face under a "Who is Angela?" title, a red arrow image, small standing figures, and a flipped illustrated head.

who is angela clipping

angel clipping

The Free Book Detour​

The angel clipping has small text which points to freebk.org, which is a free religious book site with a catalogue of downloadable PDFs and physical-book request options.

freebk america in prophecy

freebk finding peace within

freebk health and happiness

freebk hidden treasures

freebk who are the angels

The page repeats a very specific apocalyptic/religious vocabulary: prophecy, angels, hidden treasure, moral midnight, world order, and "the perfect storm". It dovetails with the Hotglue site's angels/dreams/end-of-world vibe.

freebk moral midnight

freebk perfect storm

freebk new world order

freebk will america survive

The freebk site has a request form asking for name, address, city, state, and zip, plus book selection checkboxes.

freebk request form

The donation button leaves freebk.org for PayPal and identifies the recipient as Inspiration Books East, Inc. (which lines up with E. G. White publications).

paypal donation page

There is also a linked theperfectstormiscoming.org site, again branded around Inspiration Books East, with free PDFs, QR codes, mailers, and campaign pages.

perfect storm homepage

mission new york page

mission new york delivery list

The PDFs themselves open directly in-browser. For example, America in Prophecy is a 657-page PDF, and the back pages include order-form style material for other titles in the same catalogue.

america in prophecy pdf

america in prophecy order page

america in prophecy back cover

finding peace within pdf

Dream Log​

Anyway, back to the endofthisworld site!

The dream page entries are long, anxious, violent, and surreal, with repeated images of duplicated bodies, art shows, hospitals, stalking, faceless people, etc.

dream page

There are three labeled entries visible in the source code:

  • DREAM ENTRY #1
  • DREAM ENTRY #12
  • DREAM ENTRY #46

Found And Clipping​

The found page pivots from static collage into embedded YouTube videos.

found page

The page source lists three embeds:

  • w3XMeoOirv4
  • H01x82jQy3w
  • Oqutta557sI

One of them resolves to a YouTube upload titled clockwork christmas, posted by a channel named lv. The visible metadata in the screenshot showed a tiny channel, a tiny view count, and the word FOUND in the description.

clockwork christmas

Opening the other found videos keeps the same language. Who Mike? has FOUND in the metadata. LOVE also carries FOUND, while clockwork christmas opens on a degraded Christmas-card tape frame.

who mike video

clockwork christmas video

clockwork christmas child frame

love video

The clipping page follows the same pattern, but with four more YouTube embeds:

  • ImYftBjYfD0
  • cRuCS7ldoHE
  • MbyOQuYyOso
  • 58-tLdv_mO4

Those videos use the companion label LOST instead of FOUND. The thumbnails show: a reflective orb in CALM, staged indoor footage in SAVANNAH, a television screen in Channel 69 is acting funny again today, and warning-sign footage in HELLO THERE.

calm video

savannah video

savannah close frame

channel 69 video

hello there video

hello there warning sign

The YouTube Channel​

The small YouTube channel at @crankyflower is also labeled lv.

youtube channel

The channel screenshots show seven videos, a handful of subscribers, and titles that keep the same feel as the Hotglue pages.

There is also an Instagram profile at cranky.flower using the same IV name, with the bio line "my name is IV and I like creating, so here it is."

instagram profile

Who Am I?​

The who page has redacted portraits, staged images, and journal blocks dated March 2026. One entry describes a town full of faces but "no bodies"; another frames a stack of photos in an abandoned office as if the viewer has just found a haunted archive:

who am i page

more who am i page

Photograph And Daily Affirmations​

The photograph page is a gallery of source imagery: signs, storefronts, performance stills, altered photos, and a DREAM OF ME label.

photograph page

The daily page changes the tone again. It places bright drawings around a long repeated affirmation: I WILL CREATE EVERY DAY (a great mantra, really).

daily affirmations

Conclusions & Observations​

What I found:

  • A Reddit post pointing to endofthisworld.hotglue.me collage site
  • Internal pages for dreams, photographs, clippings, identity writing, daily affirmations, and found video
  • Embedded YouTube videos split between LOST and FOUND metadata
  • A small YouTube channel and matching Instagram identity
  • A freebk.org detour with PDFs, physical-book request forms, QR codes, and a PayPal donation path

So, my take on this is that endofthisworld is an art expression using freebk/theperfectstorm content as associated lore material.

All in all:

hello there lovely day frame