Puzzles Etc.

Jonathan Allan

2:00 PM

also encoding the base 10 digits to binary with no leading 0s results in a length 117 string so that's not it

encoding a single base 10 number into binary results in a length 160 one though

Khale_Kitha

Same thing with individual numbers to binary

Yeah, my routine I've setup to display the blocks

Jonathan Allan

hmm I get 165

oh wait did something wrong

Khale_Kitha

Only displays if the total number of character mod my count = 0

IOW:

  if (newPhrase.Length % maxCount != 0)
  {
    continue;
  }

while maxCount is incrementng

so it only displays even length lines

Jonathan Allan

240

Khale_Kitha

in this case, turning to binary, appears to be8, 11, 16, 22, 32, 44, 88, and 176

Jonathan Allan

2:03 PM

does this say something?

.#..#..###..#......#..##
#....#.......###..###..#
.#....#.#..#.........#..
..#..#.....#....##...#..
.#.#..#.#..#.#....#.#..#
....#..##....#...#.#...#
...#....##....##...##..#
.#...#...###...##..#.#..
.#....#....##.#.....##..
.#....#.#..##.....#.#..#

Khale_Kitha

I get 352 chars

fondor

I fear that I led you off a bit, because you're no more referencing/considering the first block of numbers. Remeber "It looked somehow familiar". The first solution is not required for the second. This does not mean, that you can/should ignore part one.

Jonathan Allan

uh needs code block

copy and paste into a better font

Khale_Kitha

edit it and click fixed length

No, not that I see

The first block of numbers we converted to 3-bit

Which isn't possible with 0 - 9

Since we need 4 bits for 8

fondor

Why convert it?

Jonathan Allan

2:05 PM

seems to have the right kind of distibution of 1s and 0s though

fondor

Thinking out loud: am I talking too much :-D

Khale_Kitha

how so, Jon?

question_asker

one thing that never fails: whatever puzzle I am working on, everyone else is working on a different one

Jonathan Allan

it's almost exactly 1/3 1s

Khale_Kitha

ah

Gordon Allocman

2:07 PM

I'm trying the strange correspondence if that is what you are working on @question_asker

question_asker

well, until I get close to figuring it out, that is. at that point, somebody swoops in and finishes it for me.

@GordonAllocman yeah, that's what I'm on right now.

Gordon Allocman

I'm not getting anywhere but I am certainly staring at it

manshu

:D

question_asker

same

Khale_Kitha

The only thing that can be said, for certain, Jon..

Is that both series have the same amount of characters

Jonathan Allan

2:08 PM

true!

question_asker

so, the only one that uses a single "character set" is the last one. There's nothing common to all of them, or even to any two of them, that can be attributed to anything more than coincidence.

Jonathan Allan

which is why I tried 1 if in (2,6,5,3) else 0

Khale_Kitha

yeah

We could also try converting them to 4-bit binary, since 3-bit won't work

manshu

를 means "The"

Khale_Kitha

though it was just implied that converting wont' help - hmm

question_asker

2:09 PM

(visibly/on a surface level, that is)

@manshu I dunno if that's meaningful - none of the other stuff is "in a language"

Gordon Allocman

the second to last one is all in english characters

manshu

@question_asker maybe we all will figure it out. :)

question_asker

@GordonAllocman Ah, yeah, sorry, I retract my earlier statement

Gordon Allocman

I tried vignere on that but no luck

question_asker

third-to-last is all "latin extended" (this is just what I'm calling 'english latin alphabet plus a few characters with diacritics')

manshu

2:12 PM

나 means 'or'

in Korean language, like the last one

Gordon Allocman

this is the last one in english
lyoeittniyaitimrepzh

*according to google translate

question_asker

right

Gordon Allocman

and apparently google thinks its bulgarian

question_asker

so, to repeat this:

Jonathan Allan

@manshu does it?

나

Pronoun: 나 • ‎(na)

I, the first-person singular plain (non-polite) pronoun

Also Google translate: I, we, yours truly

Matt

2:15 PM

you guys are looking at A Strange Correspondence?

manshu

I took the whole string to google translate and i got its meaning as 'or'

Khale_Kitha

I must have something wrong with this routine, Jon

manshu

@Matt yes

question_asker

character sets included are: cyrillic (+ 'extended'), georgian, armenian, latin (+ 'extended'), korean, greek, maaaaybe IPA (ɑ)

Khale_Kitha

When I turn all of the digits into 4-bit numbers, I'm getting 193 characters - which shouldn't be possible

Jonathan Allan

2:16 PM

KK you must have made a mistake

Khale_Kitha

there was a space at the end

question_asker

but I don't think translating makes sense for this

Khale_Kitha

however, nothing comes of it

Jonathan Allan

oh god 4 bit - I think I did 5... face palm

Matt

I have an idea ... one sec

Khale_Kitha

2:16 PM

Closest I get is:
█░░█░███░█░░░░░█░███░░░█░░░░░███░███░█░█░░░██░░█
░░░░░░░█░░░█░█░░░░█░░░██░░█░░█░█░█░█░█░█░░░██░░█
░░░█░██░░░█░░█░█░░█░░█░░░██░░░██░░██░█░█░░█░░███
░░██░█░█░░█░░░█░░░███░░░░██░░█░░░█░█░██░░░░██░░█

Which is meaningless

Jonathan Allan

ok 4 bit numbers 192

Khale_Kitha

yeah

divides into...

96, 64, 48, 32, 24, 16, 12, and 8

none produce meaningful imagery

share.linqpad.net/ofi6u6.linq

If you want that, so that you don't have to make anything similar, and be redundant

question_asker

(there may be other character sets, but I don't think so - also, I don't know what might be considered 'extended' wrt georgian or armenian or korean the way that the latin and cyrillic ones are extended. I'm doing this all by eyeballing it)

Khale_Kitha

requires linqpad (free)

Jonathan Allan

what's that?

to produce the image

Khale_Kitha

2:19 PM

What I made to show myself the imagery of the numbers

Yeah

Jonathan Allan

I just look at the #. transformed 1 0...

Gordon Allocman

I think the first line becomes this when all the non-english characters are translated: yuddaeaauthrасvehrnlkaetnrngjnoatingbuoawmonoceaoеarinogjjхthelhebjsрeraaduareis‌thaattitisapy

Khale_Kitha

True, but takes a lot longer to do by hand, and hope you see something =D

Jonathan Allan

Python

Khale_Kitha

The main part, is that it's showing all variations, instead of just one

IE

Jonathan Allan

2:21 PM

oh all n*m?

question_asker

@GordonAllocman That first e should be a D

Khale_Kitha

Jonathan Allan

ok yeah I just run through the factors :)

Khale_Kitha

hehe

manshu

@question_asker in which string?

question_asker

2:22 PM

and that h should probably be a o

@manshu in gordon's transliterated string

Gordon Allocman

you are right it should be a d

which h?

Matt

aaah, nowhere

yudda4aauthr0AveNrnlkaMtnrngjG2ingbuoaw<azceaz5arinojjE|lhebjL@er1aduarMsthaaB‌BiaAy

Khale_Kitha

Yudda 4 Author, 2016!

Matt

that's the answer to the first string, converted to unicode, mod 128, to ascii

manshu

@Khale_Kitha It might be august instead of author

Khale_Kitha

2:25 PM

I liked my idea, better :( lol

question_asker

yudda[d]aauthrасve[o]rnlka[e]tnrngj[ch][v]ingbuoaw[m]áúceaúеarinoğjjх[를 - don't know]lhebj[soft sign]рer[a]aduar[e][나 - don't know]sthaa[t][t]éa[r]y

Gordon Allocman

the first don't know is "the" the second is "i" i think

question_asker

given things like the soft sign, I'm not totally convinced we need to transliterate

manshu

yuddabuddachadda

Gordon Allocman

idk what the g thing was

question_asker

2:26 PM

the g thing shows up in turkish

probably other turkic languages

it's... a softening... thing

Khale_Kitha

Jon - but pretty sure we shouldn't be converting any of this, anyways, from what he said earlier. Just trying to figure out what he meant by looking at the first part, since that's what we did to solve that part. --- other than the scrambled letters

Jonathan Allan

not converting to binary at all maybe?

but "think twice"?

Khale_Kitha

The only other thing I could think of was trying to change those letters into numbers, using the phone - but we'd only be converting the first half of the numberset

basically 1 - ..what...5?

4

Jonathan Allan

not sure what you mean there

Khale_Kitha

converting A-B-C to 1, D-E-F to 2, etc

Jonathan Allan

2:29 PM

oh

Khale_Kitha

reverse of how the first half was solved

But We'd only end up with 1-4's

no, 1-5 was right

Jonathan Allan

and if we coloured them red, green, yellow, black?

maybe we get a pretty picture

*red, green, blue, black

or cmyk even :p

Khale_Kitha

543242244325
222323233325
242323433324
332234433425

manshu

using T9 on 'lyoeittniyaitimrepzh' I get '59634886492484673794'

ring any bell?

question_asker

uhhh, where I said "softening" above I really meant "lengthening"

Khale_Kitha

2:32 PM

tried converting those to 3-bit, but no image again

Gordon Allocman

The last one becomes this [all][and]ое[and][t][t][n][and][i][and][t][and][m]рe[p][is] maybe that will help

manshu

@GordonAllocman how?

Gordon Allocman

how did it become that or how will it help?

LeppyR64

@Khale_Kitha @JonathanAllan He looks at his watch. That and upline seem to stand out to me.

question_asker

@manshu no, I can't say that string of numbers is one of the many twenty-digit numbers I've memorized

Khale_Kitha

2:32 PM

Yeah, but the watch line has been stated to be arbitrary

The hint seems to be "think twice"

Jonathan Allan

@LeppyR64 me too but ^

Khale_Kitha

I tried a few different renditions, but i can't get anything from it

taking every 2nd letter..

fondor

Maybe I should remove this misleading watch sentence...

Khale_Kitha

pairing..

manshu

лйоеиттнияитимрепж literally translates to 'summer netwo'

Gordon Allocman

2:33 PM

@manshu i translated every non english character and got what i posted

question_asker

I don't think it actually translates to that @manshu

Gordon Allocman

not all those characters are from the same language though

question_asker

like I said, I don't think this is about translating, per se

Khale_Kitha

I think that doing something with the number pairs is the key here

I just can't figure out what

manshu

dammit..

Khale_Kitha

2:34 PM

Though, if I was thinking "twice", then taking each half and doing something with it, might be important, too - sigh

manshu

I won't speak until I get something really good now.

Khale_Kitha

Those numbers, again... are:

711759143559654357528469
and
947071012251122632323651

Gordon Allocman

Maybe the characters represent the first letter of their language

*non english characters

Khale_Kitha

The pairs were 97 41 71 07 75 19 01 14 23 25 55 19 16 25 24 63 35 27 35 22 38 64 56 19

question_asker

@manshu yeah I tried it and "summer netwo" is actually a translation of a different phrase

@GordonAllocman The problem with that is that some of the character sets are used for more than one language

Gordon Allocman

2:36 PM

good point

interestingly, the e in the last one makes google think it is in bulgarian when copy pasted

question_asker

korean, georgian, and armenian are (effectively) unique, but cyrillic and latin could be a lot of things, especially with the 'extended' characters. and there aren't any languages (that I know of, at least) that use all of the extended latin characters in the puzzle.

(some native american languages are written with extended latin characters, but chances are slim that knowledge of native american languages is necessary for this puzzle, unless our boy @JonathanAllan is an ethnographer playing a hella mean trick on us)

Jonathan Allan

mwuhahaha

question_asker

>:(

LeppyR64

@Khale_Kitha or multiply by two maybe?

Khale_Kitha

Yeah, I'd wondered that, just couldn't find a point behind it

Gordon Allocman

2:40 PM

Yeah I think I have expended all my efforts on this one :/

Khale_Kitha

I changed my: `newPhrase += Convert.ToString((int)letter, 2).PadLeft(8, '0');`
to `newPhrase += Convert.ToString((int)letter * 2, 2).PadLeft(8, '0');`

But no better imagery appeared =D

pokes ` marks for not working

Gordon Allocman

well I have some stuff to get done, ill be back later

Jonathan Allan

1 hour ago, by Gordon Allocman

oh man, how did two already duplicate twisted corner rubik's cube questions get posted so close together...

@GordonAllocman - asked by the same user too

question_asker

ooh ooh, did we close both of them with the reason that they were duplicates of each other?

I love when we do that here

Jonathan Allan

@GordonAllocman oh the duplicate was not same user - my bad

@question_asker no :)

two duplicates of a another question (which has been duplicated before too)

"why cant I twist a single corner of a Rubik's cube" [swap two edges / flip one edge]

Khale_Kitha

2:52 PM

Jon - stopping looking at this, for now - eye hurting too much to focus, anymore, and I have no more ideas.

LeppyR64

@Khale_Kitha You converted the first numbers to a three bit binary number, these don't fit because they go up to 9, but maybe we use a six bit?

manshu

@JonathanAllan bcz Rubik's cube was made to be solved by breaking it and putting the blocks together again correctly :p

Jonathan Allan

thing is as soon as you start typing that it will show you similar questions which answer your question, yet people still post???

LeppyR64

Sorry to drag you back :)

Khale_Kitha

I tried with 4-bit leppy

Jonathan Allan

2:53 PM

@manshu see my answer and how I first solved the cube

LeppyR64

Take a break :)

Khale_Kitha

You can try 6 - but I don't know why

Jonathan Allan

@manshu

1

A: Rubik's cube without any algorithms

Having independently worked out how to solve the cube a long long time ago, I would say it is definitely possible without a prescribed algorithm or plain luck. The only thing one really needs to understand is commutators and, speaking from experience, one does not need to be shown the idea to rea...

(I resisted the urge to write "in a galaxy far far away")

manshu

My best record for this cube is solving two faces

I could never solve more than that

Jonathan Allan

my best record is 26 face turns - pretty lucky though

usually more like 40

Linear fewest moves that is

manshu

2:57 PM

I need to buy a Rubik's cube now :p

Jonathan Allan

Google doodle took me 36

(it actually took 38, but only because it was fiddly to click and did something I didn't mean for a turn which I then undid)

sad face

manshu

You can't just play a game on pc which is meant to play physically in real world.

question_asker

I always wanted to learn how to solve a rubik's cube, until I actually looked at the steps and realized it was boooooring

Rubik's Cube: Do You Want To Do Math, Except By Twisting A Thing?

manshu

you were just one 'o' away from making that word a GTA VC cheat code

Jonathan Allan

Boring to learn by rote, fun to make and improve a method

question_asker

3:03 PM

yeah but at the end of the day, it's all rote

Jonathan Allan

Also, because I smoke, I can do it in one hand too :p

@question_asker disagree

question_asker

don't get me wrong - I still kind of wish I knew how to solve them purely due to the fact that people find it impressive

I mean, you're still doing something programmatically

Jonathan Allan

I had no instructions other than the faces turn - my parents had a scrambled original cube in a drawer, they came with zero instructions

I was told the goal

I knew no one who could solve it

there was no internet

how is that "programmatically"?

question_asker

well, yes, I'm not claiming that the discovery can't be fun

Jonathan Allan

ah the repetition

18 hours ago, by Jonathan Allan

I like repetition repetition repetition repetition repetition repetition repetition repetition

question_asker

3:07 PM

but I was under the impression we were still talking about, effectively, grown adults who already knew how to solve one "correctly" trying to essentially create their own algorithm

Jonathan Allan

Well mine modified loads over the years - I aim to do as few turns as possible without any backtracking

At first it would take 100-120 turns now 26-50

manshu

this number is infinite for me. :p

Jonathan Allan

but I dont do it much now :)

question_asker

lol I just read your answer, @JonathanAllan

the one you linked to

Jonathan Allan

:)

question_asker

3:09 PM

and... I don't know what those things are, and can't imagine knowing what they were when I was a kid

Jonathan Allan

I didn't

I just realised the concept

question_asker

but apparently you could wrap your mind around it

I couldn't

Jonathan Allan

do something in the middle such that the start and end invert each other's action

question_asker

see? I'm already lost

Jonathan Allan

Yeah question was is it possible [without dumb luck] and I answered from experience, yes

question_asker

3:11 PM

and people wonder why I hate math """puzzles""" on this website

oh, I believe you

Jonathan Allan

yeah I find other puzzles hard but I just choose not to look at them too much :)

manshu

oh wow..that question has a close vote.

question_asker

unfortunately there's not much left aside from those :(

Jonathan Allan

I like math based puzzles and think almost any genre of puzzle can be bad due to it "not being a puzzle" LOL

question_asker

math problems and very bad riddles, and a handful of complicated puzzles that get solved while I'm still staring at them

Jonathan Allan

3:13 PM

need another 50 rep to see the close votes

the rubiks cube no algo question?

manshu

@JonathanAllan yes

Jonathan Allan

because it's a duplicate?

question_asker

OK since there are no puzzles left to do, what should I get for lunch

manshu

@question_asker Spinach leaves with Cauliflower

question_asker

hmm. it's a shame that cauliflower is a trash vegetable with no taste or value

manshu

3:18 PM

@question_asker ohh...well then maybe some green chilli?

Jonathan Allan

@Khale_Kitha familiar ish

Khale_Kitha

found what I was looking for - ty anyways

Jonathan Allan

wrote a hand replayer for triple draw to review my hands since I couldn't find one

ok

Khale_Kitha

I have to say this looks silly, though =D

BidPeriodStart = DateTime.Now.Date

hehe

works for what I need, though

Jonathan Allan

seems fine :p

"If you keep randomly rotating it you will solve it an infinite number of times in an infinite amount of time." #TheMoreYouKnow

Khale_Kitha

3:21 PM

It reminds me of something I saw these guys in my unity tutorial do, that was nonsense.

They had a variable of type Translation

which had a .translation property (referring to itself)

Jonathan Allan

did it "return this"?

Khale_Kitha

And they used variable.translation - I asked why not use variable.translation.translation.translation.translation.translation for as much good as that did

Jonathan Allan

:p

Khale_Kitha

yeah

Jonathan Allan

LOL

recursive: see self-reference

Khale_Kitha

3:23 PM

I still don't really understand why that Unity datatype refers to itself.

fondor

Question: Can I put a (non expiring) bounty on real world "Unsolved Mysteries" questions to try to make people working on them or at least share their ideas?

Jonathan Allan

self-reference: see recursive

Khale_Kitha

Yes to the bounty, no to non-expiring, but...

14

Q: List of bounties with no deadlines

This is a list of unofficial, deadline-less (hence not searchable) bounties offered by users on various challenges on the main site. Disclaimer: There is no guarantee that the user will award the bounty for you in case you fulfill its requirement. Especially if the user isn't an active member an...

You can add to the list of promised bounties, here.

Jonathan Allan

Unity?

Khale_Kitha

As in Unity3D, not Microsoft's Unity

Jonathan Allan

3:25 PM

dont know either

Gordon Allocman

I was very disapointed when my coworkers told me I would be learning to use Unity, but they meant Microsoft's Unity

fondor

Can't we show this bounties aside the question? I did know of this. I think that this won't make people work on the questions, if they don't find this very meta post.

Khale_Kitha

haha, Gordon cry

No, you'd have to put a normal 7-day bounty on it, fondor

The closest to Microsoft's Unity that I've really used is it's connection to Prism

I don't really know much about it, though

fondor

We could give a hint to the promised bounties as a comment in the question.

Khale_Kitha

Yeah

"Wow, what happened here? Do you need any help?" — Khale_Kitha May 13 at 15:39

I'm a little amused at the number of upvotes that got

fondor

3:30 PM

Has anyone worked on Agapeyeff Cipher once?

Gordon Allocman

@Khale_Kitha Its just used for Dependency Injection, whereas Prism is used to facilitate the MVVM pattern. Nothing too interesting

both are related to c# wpf apps mostly

and universal apps

Khale_Kitha

Yeah, my only real usage of it was to create a design-time view provider (that included support for unity) so that the viewmodels could be seen during design time in their containers, which isn't possible with prism's default setup, due to the AutoWireViewModel.

(regarding regions)

Gordon Allocman

Yeah, I use prism to help make viewmodel classes that you can bind to views with, but thats about it. I don't really use unity unless it was already built into the app i'm working on, otherwise I roll my own dependency injection (since my apps are usually small)

Khale_Kitha

Yeah, this app is a full conversion of a crew member scheduling algorithm (using linear optimization) from a Borland C++, to WPF. It's been .... fun.

When I'm awake.

Gordon Allocman

I'm still a pretty novice wpf programmer, not sure I want to become an expert tbh

Khale_Kitha

3:37 PM

With all the bugs this XAML designer has.....sigh

Gordon Allocman

I'm a pretty novice programmer in general actually, but I think I want to try my hand in Graphics, but that's to be seen...

Khale_Kitha

Heck, I keep getting an error stating that it can't find any of the classes that are being used in the xaml (though it builds and executes correctly), and the only solution is to change the program from x64<->x86, rebuild, and switch it back, and rebuild again

I keep having to do that every few hours, when the xaml viewer stops working.

Tired of it

Gordon Allocman

that seems like a pain

most of my xaml issues are actually issues that I have to fix, though not being able to really debug xaml is kind of the worst

fondor

Working with Visual Studio? Maybe platform specific settings? Was facing this some days ago...

Gordon Allocman

The fun thing about debugging/testing stuff is you memorize obscure mostly useless numbers!

Doubly true if you are working with assembly

fondor

3:46 PM

I wonder if we could break a public cipher. The platform would surely gain public interest. We have some smart minds here...

Khale_Kitha

Not me =D

<-- No smart minds here, lol

3

Gordon Allocman

I mean if we solved Kryptos we would also probably get a huge public interest

fondor

That's what I mean.

Khale_Kitha

And then, days later, we'd never be heard from, again.

Hehehe :P

fondor

I cherish your humility KK. But then think of PSE as some kind of think tank.

I see some potential..

Jonathan Allan

3:54 PM

I had to star that so it now points to all of us :)

fondor

So what... Am trying to promote interest on public ciphers...

Khale_Kitha

lol, Jon

Yeah, I was just looking at Kryptos again - but I can't focus right now

might try later

Jonathan Allan

@Khale_Kitha I tried just doing mod 2 on the digits sort of looks like sign language but coincidence I think

..#...#.....
#..##.#.....
.##.###...#.
..##.###.#..

Khale_Kitha

He's saying he loves you. =D

Jonathan Allan

# is 0 this time

Khale_Kitha

3:56 PM

My son was so proud of himself for finally managing to get his hands to do that, the other day =D

Jonathan Allan

oh Vulcan?

Khale_Kitha

No, the "I Love You" sign

which I think that looks more like, than the Vulcan hand-sign =D

Still - I think it's coincidental

Jonathan Allan

yeah

well I'm running out of ideas on this one

prob missing something blatent

gonna make a coffee and see if that helps :)

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