Hunting Down the Mystery Picture

The first thing you have to know is: What is the mystery picture? Easy of course. A mystery picture is a slightly large distorted image that is taken from some place on the Neopet site. Now that you know that, you don't have to be searching all over the internet for it. Hopefully you caught that one already. Err..

Secondly, what I do is I open up a paint program. Paint, Paint Shop Pro, Adobe, etc. Any program is good where you can zoom on the picture to see the pixels of the distorted image. I mean, TNT can't expect you to be that good without a paint program, can they?! *Gulp* I also suggest a program where you have an eye dropper tool to match up the colors. Okay, now save the mystery picture and open it up on the paint program. You are now done with step two.

Thirdly, if the mystery picture just appeared out on the news I suggest going to the Games board. Usually they have a 'Mystery Picture' board up. There is usually a whole bunch of people there willing to help find it. Unfortunately, there can be lurkers on the board that don't help at all. They easily take the answer if anyone posted it. So if you find the mystery picture, try not to post it on the board. But you might be able to give helpful hints to the people who were helping on where to look :) I think that that's a pretty fair way on dealing it out.

Now, it's onto actually finding the mystery picture and where to look. First, I usually look at the type of image it is. Sometimes you just know if it is a shopkeeper, banner, game icon, etc. by easily recognizing the colors. But if you don't recognize the colors, one of the first places I usually go to is the Neopedia. Yes, going through every article looking at every picture in it to see maybe if the colors might match up with the mystery picture. A lot of work, I know, but no one said this was going to be easy! If you are unable to find it, I would check the game icons next. Only check the ones that seem kind of obvious by their colors first. Then check a few other ones that seem close. You never know. After that, it's onto the shopkeepers. If you are a restocker, you may not have a problem of what shopkeepers to check first. But for those of you who don't, I guess you're going to have to look out for every one! Now, if you still are unable to find it (AGHH!!), it's onto the banners. Not the advertising banners, but the ones that you find on every page at the top. If you noticed, all the main Neopia Central shop banners are all purple (most of them anyway). So if anything has the slightest purple tint, you'll know where to look first and you might just get lucky.

Okay, if you looked through ALL of those and still yet have not found it yet, chances are it's none of those. Or you accidentally missed it, which is the worst thing that can happen during a mystery picture hunt. Now it's onto the more tricky things to check. AKA collectable cards, neopet backgrounds, Neogreetings (my least favourite), blogs, avatars, shop shopkeepers, petpets, Neopets -- gah, there is so many other things! But the good thing is, TNT rarely puts any animated stuff on their site for a mystery picture. So you don't have to worry about owning a program that can run animations to view every slide.

Now if you looked through all of those, and haven't been able to match the pixels or colours up with any of them -- the mystery picture may be an item, Neopian Time image or a completely random image on the site. These are the most complicated and probably takes the most time to find. Because usually, these are what people look for last.

Whew, after all that hunting and searching, hopefully you ended up finding it. Oh yeah, and I'm not saying you absolutely have to go in that order, but I find it the most easiest and common way to do it.

Now here are some handy tips for you to remember:

1. Just because the colors may match right up with the picture, it doesn't always mean the pixels will! Make sure to check this.

2. Try working with a close Neofriend or two; that way it is less time consuming. And make sure they keep quiet!

3. If you think you found the mystery picture, ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS double check. Trust me, I've been too quick for my own good sometimes.

4. Even if an image looks even slightly close to the mystery picture, and even though you know there is a chance that it won't match up, try anyway!

5. Make sure to keep your answer nice and simple but yet understandable. If the mystery picture is a shopkeeper, don't just say 'shopkeeper'. You have to say which one. If that wasn't the case, then you might get a pretty good chance of getting it right every time.

6. Remember, if you are one of the first 200 people to get the answer correct, you'll win a cool item and a trophy! If not, at least you'll get some Neopoints from the prize pool :)

Well, that's it for now. I hope I was somewhat helpful. Now you know where to look. I am not guaranteeing you by reading this article, that you will find the mystery picture every time. It takes a lot of hard work and practice to become very good at it. Good luck and keep bugging TNT to make a avatar for the mystery picture just like they did for the Lenny Conundrum! *HINT HINT*