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Men At Work

Written by @jb007db5.

Men At Work was a quite difficult OSINT challenge that was a great example of using multiple people's knowledge and observations to form a solve. The correct solution required dropping a pin on a map for where the photo was taken and specifying the date

A photograph of a Turku train station. The photo is taken from an elevated position, showing the various lines going through the station, as well as work vehicles on those lines, and an outdoor concert style stage in the back right

Some basic observations were easy to make. I could tell by experience that the station looked Scandinavian, so was likely either in Sweden, Finland, Norway or possibly Estonia or Latvia. Reverse image search quickly confirmed this suspicion, returning a handful of different stations. Very quickly, someone else in our team was able to narrow it down to the correct station, Turku Åbo, aka Turku Central Station.

To narrow down the exact location, we noted the relative position of the buildings around the bridge, correctly identifying the one it was taken from. I then worked out the exact spot on the bridge by observing the track layout below, working out that it was just to the left of one of the lifts on the bridge. This was clearly the easy part of the challenge, as finding the correct date would prove far more difficult.

I saw that the tracks were blocked by work vehicles, likely meaning the station would have been closed when the picture was taken. A quick google identified that the station had been undergoing major work since 2022, and the relative complete state in the photo limited it to 2024 or 2025. There was an outdoor concert style stage visible in the image so I found station closure dates and tried to line them up with concert dates that another team member had found, but none lined up neatly. They also discovered that The Voice Finland films in a building adjacent to Turku station, but this was once again a dead end, as they do not use outdoor stages. By increasing image contrast, we could make out some text on the stage, that I believed spelt '_aü', with the first letter hidden. A small marquee to the right had 'ha' and then a letter with an umlaut, so we tried to find any concerts by a band with that name or what it might mean in Finnish but found no useful results. We then took a break from the challenge after running out of ideas.

Another of member of our team returned to the challenge many hours later and was able to increase contrast even further. Their work made it clear that the word on the stage was actually '_aj'. I spotted that the first letter looked like it might be a K and they identified that it could be the Finnish band Kaj, who represented Sweden in the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest, due to their lyrics primarily being in Swedish. A quick google found that they had performed in Turku on August 20th 2025. Inputting this date along with our pindrop gave us the correct flag and the challenge was thus complete.

Answer:

  • Location: Approx. 60°27'22.5"N 22°15'32.0"E
  • Date: 20th August 2025
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