Puzzles Etc. - 2016-04-20

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10:58 AM

(coming into the conversation 15 hours too late) It took me forever to come around to soccer, but I still haven't been able to care about hockey at all

3 hours later…

1:33 PM

so I had an idea about the eden puzzle, but I'm not sure what to do about it

9

Q: Retrieve a phrase by assembling the string puzzle

You’ve never seen such a verdant shade of green as the leafy tops of the trees that now form a focal point up ahead, peaking over the high and solid concrete walls which surround Eden. The colour makes you uneasy, so you focus on the grey of the wall instead. Intellectually, you’re well aware tha...

story computer-puzzle cipher

2:14 PM

@Khale_Kitha Welp, grace period kicking in

heh

I'm extremely tempted to start a new one as soon as this one expires

40 more views, since yesterday, even with the bounty

I don't think anyone cares, is the problem.

Not even any comments or questions

I'm just going to burn through my rep, setting bounties on this one question

lol, d'oh

2:22 PM

I also set a bounty on an old "music" question, which is probably less interesting than I'd like to think in my head

and there's pretty much no attention being paid to that one either

A bit odd that this string puzzle has a 250rep from someone with only 4xx rep

250 bounty

Ah, I see it

No ideas on that one, personally

working the qr one now ... I'll tell what I was thinking in a couple of minutes

if I solved the QR code, I'll just leave that in a comment, or is a partial answer ok?

2:49 PM

anyway - here's what I was thinking

each row is binary 0 - 15, and then paired with a hex digit, also 0 - 15

I bet there's some pattern that links the two, maybe some sequence going down

the underscores represent blanks - 1s and 0s we fill in

there are 24 blanks, exactly 3 bytes worth.

3:39 PM

@Will and @Matt - did the guinea pig person straight up forget part of the puzzle?

perhaps not

it's possible to hide stuff inside a png

I'm looking at that now

ah true

@Matt was that the order of the QR sections?

it just seems like that should be a little more evident

I guess I should have kept track ...

give me a minute

3:43 PM

Seems like you've already solved the puzzle by simply finding the image, even if you assembled it incidentally, heh

3 9 10 5 4 11 1 13 12 7 16 15 6 8 2 14

left to right, top to bottom

Yup, just what I thought.

oh

so the image is the answer?

what

The ROT13'd Base64 gives the order

3:47 PM

@Matt seems that way

ohh

skipping steps like a boss

2

yeah

OK, that makes sense now

If it isn't, then the puzzle is lacking in the information department, majorly

Someone tell this technological Guinea Pig that pictures can be emailed, rather than sending a link.

I'm guessing they probably didn't count on somebody arranging the QR code by sight

3:49 PM

Amusingly, it was the first thing I thought of, since it was like a 12 piece puzzle

yeah

I just came in after Matt had it done

I don't know how easy it would be to do that - I'd have to probably print it out to work with it

Perhaps, but it's really only a 4 piece puzzle

Since the edge pieces are apparent

Removing the white border would have helped him

a QR code has those squares in 3 corners

3:52 PM

Actually, he could have made the puzzle difficult by pinning out the QR pieces into binary segments =D

No pictures, I mean

so it was trivial for me to piece together

I can confirm the "selfie" aspect of it :P

--qrcgcustomers.s3.amazonaws.com/account1154600/gallery/1932923/…

This is the filename of the image

--1461153730824_aury.png

well it's also the user's avatar

yeah =D

@question_asker Looks like it ended =D

lmfao I ordered chinese food. I ordered a general's chicken lunch special and an order of crab rangoons. they sent me (that stuff, plus) seven (7) fortune cookies.

4:00 PM

it's your lucky day

@Khale_Kitha re: QR code - I just mean that I'd still have to arrange the pieces, and since I don't have any decent (i.e., non-MSPaint) manipulation software it'd be easier for me to print them out

Yeah

I meant the bounty, anyhow

Also, the irony of 7 fortune cookies is not lost on me.

So on that string one...

If you take the first 4 columns and turn them into binary numbers, and append the number to the 5th column

@Khale_Kitha No, I know you meant the bounty, I was just catching up with the older message

It does get a series of "Hex'esc" numbers. But not quite

4b
50
11f
86
08
139
33
41
012
59
0a
78
5f
00f
7e
20
2b
21
64
20e
2d
2c
13e
004
15d
109
98
21c
210
148
015
38

(I am re-catching up because I dropped a piece of general tsos on my shirt like a goddamn slob)

4:10 PM

Also, converting those pieces to binary and appending was an annoying section of code

For posterity, the ascii is also useless -

KP3AY
x_

Tons of non-visible characters in there, that the chat isn't showing

afk fab

4:58 PM

did you guys see my idea about the underscores?

5:09 PM

I'm too stupid for this puzzle so I'm just going to sit back and watch y'all solve it

I don't understand why seasoned SE veterans encourage expanded answers on questions that will definitely be closed

5:33 PM

I aslo don't understand how this answer was arrived at, short of the answerer having googled the sequence (though the answer doesn't come up when I google the sequence)

Well, when the elements in some number sequence have factors 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 like that...

5:54 PM

huh?

I don't know what that's supposed to mean. You trailed off there.

n * something is a common pattern in number sequence puzzles

I'll take your word for it?

In this case, dividing by n gives you a sequence of powers of 2.

not... exactly?

(0), 2, 2, 4, 2, 4, 4, 8, 2, 4

and THAT sequence doesn't lead me anywhere

then (0), 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2, 3, 1, 2 is googleable

oeis.org/A000120

6:05 PM

right, and that's an extra step

my point is that the answer shows what the next number is, and how it is calculated, but not how that person went from the question to the result

True. Also, the polynomial answer is wrong, even by its own logic.

A polynomial fit gets me 19566475798, not what they get.

haha I hate those

those are the least interesting answers possible. in fact, when people refer to an answer being "trivial", that is the kind of answer they should be referring to.

Just Put The Numbers Into The Magic Box And The Magic Box Will Tell You The Answer

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