On March 9th, JetBrains posted this tweet:

JetBrains Quest has begun, so this must means solving various puzzles. Hopefully the reward is good, as JetBrains is always generous when giving free licenses.

Let’s get back to the tweet.

48 61 76 65 20 79 6f 75 20 73 65 65 6e 20 74 68 65 20 73 6f 75 72 63 65 20 63 6f 64 65 20 6f 66 20 74 68 65 20 4a 65 74 42 72 61 69 6e 73 20 77 65 62 73 69 74 65 3f

This looks like HEX bytes. By converting this array to ASCII we get our next clue.

Have you seen the source code of the JetBrains website?

This clue was obvious. We need to navigate to www.jetbrans.com and view the source code of the home page. By searching the term ‘quest’, I found this piece of text in the source code:

<!--
      O
{o)xxx|===============-
      O

Welcome to the JetBrains Quest.

What awaits ahead is a series of challenges. Each one will require a little initiative, a little thinking, and a whole lot of JetBrains to get to the end. Cheating is allowed and in some places encouraged. You have until the 15th of March at 12:00 CET to finish the 3 quests.
Getting to the end of each quest will earn you a reward.
Let the quest commence!

JetBrains has a lot of products, but there is one that looks like a joke on our Products page, you should start there...
It’s dangerous to go alone take this key: Good luck! == Jrrg#oxfn$

                 O
-===============|xxx(o}
                 O
-->

The main clues here are:

…there is one that looks like a joke on our Products page, you should start there…

and

Good luck! == Jrrg#oxfn$

The first one leads us to the product page on JetBrains’ website. We have to look for the ‘Joke’ product. Funny enough, there was one.

By clicking on ‘Learn more’, the menu opens.

To get these digits you need to know how many prime numbers there are between 500 and 5000

Ok, I just need to find all prime numbers between 500 and 5000 and then count them. I initially wanted to write a program to give me the answer, but I found a solution online. First I found all prime numbers between 500 and 5000, and after I used a word counter to count them up!

Fun fact: There are 574 prime numbers between 500 and 5000!

The link redirects us to the PyCharm help page, at a very specific section

If you are following the JetBrains quest and would like to go to the next challenge, here is your clue.

Great! I recognized the logo of YouTrack and I’ve opened a couple of issues there before, so I know that the MPS-31816 is an issue number.

“The key is to think back to the beginning.” – The JetBrains Quest team

This one probably took me the most time.
I knew the clue is probably on the first quest, since it told me to think back to the beginning.
Couple of minutes later I noticed the double equals sign in between these two:

Good luck! == Jrrg#oxfn$

The double equals sign is usually the sign of equality in programming langauges. This means that these two texts are identical. Or are they?

I will not reveal any keys or codes. Try and beat this quest for yourself! I will give you a hint and that is Caesar cipher. Enjoy!

After getting the link and the promo code, you can get your prize!

The quest is over! I would like to thank JetBrains for providing us a free access to their professional tools!

I’m looking forward to more quests from JetBrains!