larryboyko
Joined 2 years ago
Karma
53
Submissions
22
Member since
Apr 4
dad, photographer, editor.
[email protected]
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Comment · 1 year ago
Yes, there are a variety: logic problems, word puzzles, alphametics, various kinds of ciphers -- transposition, substitution, steganographic --, some coding challenges, and a whole slew of other puzzles that I don't quite know how to categorize.
Comment · 1 year ago
And hopefully this one won't take 85 years to find its audience ...!
Comment · 1 year ago
Perhaps I too should have offered a prize to the first to solve it!
Comment · 1 year ago
Suitable for all ages, I think, though there are a couple of cuss words a few dozen chapters deep ...!
Comment · 1 year ago
Some slight edits and revisions, yes, but the substance of the story hasn't changed.
Thanks for playing!
Comment · 1 year ago
I believe I'd call it finished now; hopefully Christine would agree. :)
Comment · 2 years ago
Thanks for the feedback!
The tricky part of this puzzle is how to handle spaces. Prose sentences have regular spacing rules that the ensuing ciphertext doesn't follow. For instance, what to do with several spaces in a row? Should they be rearranged along with the words (effectively be treated AS words), or should they stay put, the words moving around them?
Hint: There are some extra spaces in the waiver that will become indentations if you take the former approach. (It was hoped that the fact that there is no space between the period and "risk" would suggest this: Sentences [following a period] normally start with a space, and end without one; here that is reversed.)
I'm still looking for a better way to hint this, as too many readers are getting hung up on puzzle #2 than I'd like. :)
See also this discussion: https://github.com/larryboyko/dimityjones/discussions/2
Comment · 2 years ago
Thank you.
Comment · 2 years ago
Thank you.
Comment · 2 years ago
Ah ha! That's an older version alright.
Latest at https://github.com/larryboyko/dimityjones/blob/main/DimityJo...
(I hope I've fixed the error ...!)
Comment · 2 years ago
Hm. My 01.txt that yields the expected SHA256 sum of
a2e617919bc0b981a4f9bb8470ed37d189958e4c5b167e58b417a84c29a66c29
is:
... 0x3e1175 bytes long
... starts with «Congratulations!»
... ends with «ZO?-m[FmGp-+;KM»
Comment · 2 years ago
This is odd! We can visually troubleshoot this, and see that the first characters following 1.##### are «Cnrtltos » and the final characters at the end of the (original) file are «!niauago». Taking [SPOILER] alternately the first of the first and the last of the last gives us C, o, n, g, r, a, t, u, l, a, t, i, o, n, s, !. If there is an extraneous character inserted at the end, e.g. a newline, the transformation should be spoiled and illegible: C, newline, n, o, r, g, t, a, l, u, t, a, o, i, s, n, space, !.
Comment · 2 years ago
>This may not have any other real purpose than to be a piece of art.
Christine would've loved this answer.