Bad Robot, the production company behind the Fox TV series Fringe, is no stranger to involving audiences in Easter egg hunts. Lost, their best known series, is peppered with them. Untold numbers of websites are dedicated to tracking these visual clues, which on Lost range from the mysterious sequence of numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42) to Egyptian hieroglyphs to shark fins tattooed with the Dharma logo. If Lost set the standard, Fringe has picked up the challenge and run. The producers readily admit they have created any number of challenges and embedded them into each episode.

Fringe, which airs on Tuesday nights directly after American Idol, is the story of a mad scientist, his son, and a young FBI agent. Each week the trio explores a new case of what they call "Fringe Science," which is what normal people call "entertaining malarkey".

Update Our own Julian Sanchez has solved the Fringe cypher

Fringe makes little or no attempt to stay within the bounds of what is real or possible. The second episode featured a "magic old man baby" that was born, aged, and died as an elderly person within the space of a few hours. In that episode's wake, retired science teachers around the world spontaneously experienced nervous breakdowns, muttering feverishly about the conservation of mass and the temporal limits of cell mitosis.

That's not to say the show is not worth watching. It is. But leave any expectations about proper science behind. Go in expecting what one IO9.com poster called "Mad Science." This mad science is performed by a proper mad scientist, who has been ruled clinically insane and whose son is his guardian. You'll be entertained by the action and adventure and by the touching relationship between the father/son team. The female lead, playing the young and eager FBI agent, is best described by Digital Spy poster LostFool, who compared her to Ikea furniture: functional, nice enough to look at, but a bit wooden.

The games

The puzzle component of Fringe is something that the show's creators have described as optional extras. You can watch the show, enjoy the story, and move on. Or you can stick around and accept their invitation to play. This engagement strategy has been a huge success for Lost and is just starting to gain an audience and awareness for Fringe.

Unlike Lost, where clues come and go almost randomly, Fringe games are part of each and every episode. You can watch the show and know that you can participate in any of several games. These include:

Where's Baldo. The mysterious (and hairless) character of "The Observer" was properly introduced to audiences in Episode 4, "The Arrival." He has appeared, however, in every single episode made. Spotting him, whether in a window reflection on a train or standing by a tree behind the main action, offers a sense of real accomplishment. Viewers have complained that he appears to be photoshopped into a few of his appearances, such as on the soccer field of Episode 13. When playing "Where's Baldo," it helps to record the episode in high definition. Some of his "appearances," with his 1950's style fashion, his fedora, and his briefcase have been quite small in a screen-size sense.

The mysterious "observer" appears in each Fringe episode.

Spot the "Next Episode" clue. Hidden in each episode is a clue to some detail in the next episode. In the pilot, that clue was a rebus on a newspaper stand of a pen plus a rose. The next episode featured a character called Penrose. Episode 8 showcased a little butterfly; monarch butterflies played a pivotal role in the plot of Episode 9. Admittedly, these clues are better recognized than guessed at. It's easier to go back and find the clue after each succeeding episode has already aired than to figure out which of the many visual details in the episode hints at what's to come.

Analyze the rectangular pattern. Scattered throughout every episode are patterns of, well, rectangles. As you can see here, they are always laid out in grids--most often on buildings but sometimes on walls or on tables. The patterns are obviously intentional as some light intensities vary between adjacent windows.

Grid pattern images appear in each Fringe episode.

Highlight the repeating motifs. Scattered through each episode are little visual tweaks. Posters for Massive Dynamics products, the fictional company that lies near the heart of the show's conspiracies can often be found on walls and billboards in the background. Also recurring are patterns of "green green green red," a light sequence that was central to episode 8, but which has appeared on binocular readouts and on knit hats as well. Several viewers have spotted repeated "He's not dead" messages, apparently referring to FBI Agent Dunham's "was he or was he not a traitor" boyfriend, on grave stones and in stairwells. Website FringeTelevision.com offers the most comprehensive watch for these visual motifs.

And these are not the only extracurricular games available. Viewers regularly enjoy guessing which food mad scientist Walter Bishop will be craving each week. Apparently a viewer request for cheese steak inspired the craving that showed up in episode 11, "Bound." The episode's associated "Walter's Lab Notes" release from Fox also featured the iconic Philadelphia treat. (The show is set, incidentally, in Boston.)

Bishop's constant struggles with lab assistant Astrid's name ("astro" and "asteroid" were two near misses) has also led to some predictions, although the series writers seem to have abandoned the name game in recent episodes. Other games include "spot the accidental Aussie accent" (two of the three leads hail from Australia) and "find the hidden Lost/Alias/etc. references," which abound. The biggest mystery however remains rooted in the images that appear before most commercial breaks.