23/06/2004
Lanthanide decrypts the viewable part of a URL which was also written on the white board in ROT13. The unencrypted URL is "...Life2.com/secret/pwn3d" which left people guessing what the first part was. Lanthanide presumed it was www.halflife2.com (http://www.halflife2.com) which proved incorrect. That particular URL is owned by Gamespy Networks and is unrelated to Valve. The real URL was revealed after a forum member e-mailed Valve and received a reply stating the real text as www.half-life2.com (http://www.half-life2.com) ( the official HL2 web site).

Upon entering the correct URL, people were greeted with a user name and password box.

Relevant post: Lanthanides post (http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showpost.php?p=518066&postcount=88)
Relevant thread: Merc's trip to Valve (http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=25737&page=4&pp=15)

23/06/2004
Both SAJ and SMT make interesting observations on the the words "Nova prospekt" which are written on the white board under "Keep" along with some other words/names that appear to make up some kind of timeline:

Dark energy: I have no idea what action or place this corresponds to.
Razor train: The train you get off at the beginning of the game.
Nova prospekt: City 17's main plaza which you get to explore after your interrogation (see the E3 2004 video).
Barney: You meet Barney.
Strider: You meet a Strider.
City 13: You visit City 13? It makes more sense if you swapped City 13 with Dark energy. Then that would explain where Gordon got on the train. It also seems likely to me that "Dark energy" is referring to zero point energy which would suggest this is when you pick up the manipulator. On the other I could be barking up the wrong tree.

23/06/2004
As mentioned previously, the photograph of the white board was not complete — some of the text was cut off. It turns out that some of this text just happened to include the user name and password for the "own3d" URL as Merc vaguely remembered. Only "...452" was visible of the password and the user name couldn't be seen at all. Inadvertantly, by cutting off part of the whiteboard, merc had made the first test unsolvable. But it didn't end there.

n30n had the bright idea of simply e-mailing Valve for the answer. It was a surprise to some when Valve's Erik Johnson replied (within two minutes) with the long coveted username and password.

Upon entering the user name "valve" and the password "437N452" you are given access to a page with the picture of the G-Man and a congratulations message.

Hint: look at the source code of the page (in IE/FireFox: right click on the page and select "view page source"). You should see some ASCII art including a bird and Gordon Freeman.

Relevant threads: n30n's original post (http://games.bigpond.com/pc/messageboards/536/index.php?action=show&id=2451258) (now deleted)

24/06/2004
celerityfm makes an interesting post on the password for the "own3d" page. Nobody knows if this is coincidence or was deliberately done by Valve.

Relevant post: Celerityfm's post (http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showpost.php?p=522983&postcount=64)

The Second Test

28/08/2004
Calhoun discovers a suspicious .jpg picture of the g-man in the Steam shared materials.gcf (to put it as simply as possible a .gcf file is similar to a zip file). Upon opening the .jpg file in notepad he discovered that along with the image data there was also some text, one sentence of which was relevant to "test 2".

The text reads: "password is nova/prospekt this is the second test". Remember nova prospekt? It's the third element in my supposed time line, a place in City 17 and also appears to be a password for something.

Relevant post: Calhoun's post (http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showpost.php?p=693784&postcount=14)
Relevant thread: After last nights fun (http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=34699&page=1&pp=40)...

31/08/2004

While viewing the official site's media section (http://half-life2.com/media.html), gatts666 finds something rather peculiar. If you put your cursor over the 6th screen shot, instead of rolling over a zoom symbol in the corner (like it does on the other images), it changes to an image of the G-Man.

Upon clicking the picture it asks you for a user name and password which just happens to be nova/prospekt. At this point I should just mention that the nova/prospekt combo also works for the "own3d" page.

When you enter the correct user name and password combo it shows you a black page with a white bar in the middle.

Relevant thread: I found something (http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=35325&page=1&pp=15)

31/08/2004
Straight after the thread was made, several people simultaneously looked at the new page's source code to discover an ASCII picture of Alyx and the answer to what should be typed in the white bar.

At the bottom of the page there is the URL "/secret/secondtest/whatsmyname.jpg". Adding www.half-life2.com (http://www.half-life2.com) to the front of it and slapping it in your address bar gets you a nice picture of a barnacle.

I'll let you work out what to do next, failing that you could just look at the thread.

Relevant posts: too many to list.
Relevant thread: I found something (http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=35325&page=1&pp=15)

The Third Test?
23/09/2004
Manook find's www.half-life2.com/hl2.php (http://www.half-life2.com/hl2.php) . A couple of people suggest that it is test 3, but it turns out it isn't, as confirmed by this (http://www.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=1074699#post1074699) post.

Relevant post: Manook's post (http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showpost.php?p=768618&postcount=1)
Relevant threads: HL2.php (http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=39071) Steam forum: Second Test (http://www.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=1074699#post1074699) HL2.net's/f|uke's summary (http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=39107)

23/09/2004
DaFreak finds www.half-life2.com/admin (http://www.half-life2.com/admin) and suggests it's the third test. When people originally tried to accesse the page it asked for a user name and password, it no longer does this suggesting it is not the third test.

Also it is common practice to name your admin control panel "admin".

Relevant thread: 3rd test (http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=39074)

Final Word
Will there even be a test 3? Either way, I won't be the one to solve it ;-)