right, so the number index you got from decoding the passage doesn't correlate to the actual lines of the decoded text at all. Think alphanumerically...
Haha, incidentally... the name can also be found on Twitter (in a tweet by a former staff member). But I guess that's even harder to search than MSE. :-p
Also... for those who have found the name of SE chat, and are wondering what the heck it means and/or why it was chosen, you can find the answer in this blog post by Jeff Atwood. It was named as an analogue/reference to an existing chat server/tool, on which it was based.
does i have to follow the index number from its difference value means the number come out in each line while decoding or is there any thing i am doing wrong to find those words?
So... what I thought was a bug was that you don't actually enter the code from the location where you are. You have to back up a level, then enter the code.
Yeah. Took me a while. I thought I had the wrong number, but couldn't figure out how, so I literally brute-forced everything, found that nothing worked, and that was how I figured out I was doing it in the wrong place. :-|
Yeah. After you unscramble the lines, you need to derive one letter from each line (that's what the unscrambled lines tell you to do). Once you have those letters, you need to unscramble them.
I thought you were already at that second step.
@Lunartist Or /nounadjective. Or /noun-adjective. Or /adjective-noun. :-D
All right. For those who have been thinking about the first puzzle for a while and are tired / feel stuck, here are two hints to (hopefully) set you on the right track. They're encoded in rot13, so you don't see 'em if you don't want to.
@starball I have no idea. Nothing, I guess? Is that a trick question? I was referring to the "Hey, Listen!" hat, which Lunartist mentioned is "very hard to get". There are two ways to earn that hat; the second way involves editing a question that has been closed in the Staging Ground and then publishing it. That's no longer possible with the Staging Ground deactivated, cutting the number of ways to earn the hat in half.
Yeah, I was. The above conversation, specifically the reply from double-beep to me, suggests that I might be wrong, and that second way might not exist.
I notice that the official Winter Bash page does not list the second way.
right, so you've found out the letters from the lines? if not, remember the rotation index doesn't relate to the lines you decoded. Think alphanumerically...
then just unscramble BUT
read slate's hints pinned
and see what you might be doing wrong, flip something
@CodyGray thanks for the edit on one of my suggestions for 2023. Those post are not being well received. Any suggestions on how I should improve? Remove any humor in them? Remove my excitement? Make it more succinct?
The specific one I edited, I honestly did not understand how you were answering the question that was asked. I thought you were just telling us what hats you thought were cool this year. That's why I left the comment I left, and why I made the edit. It's very likely others downvoted for the same reason. Not much that can be done about that now.
I can think of two other reasons why it might be being poorly received. First is the obvious: people disagree with you, likely thinking we should not just bring back all the hats from this year in next year's Winter Bash. Another possibility is that they dislike the formatting (mainly how much space it takes up to show all those pictures).
For the others (I think you have another one there, too, but I don't recall what it says), any downvotes are likely just a result of disagreement, which is kinda inevitable with opinion-based answers to inherently opinion-based questions. Not much to worry about on Meta.
Well. If it’s “I hated those hats! No!” I can’t fix. My goal is to highlight cool hats. So if it’s my messaging, making it a better answer helps me (see those back)
Maybe some explanation about why you think the hats were good would make the answer better
The trick with Winter Bash is coming up with cool hats that also manage to encourage behavior that we actually want users to do. So you could talk about the different aspects. Do you just really like the design of the hat itself? Or do you think it encourages a certain desirable behavior? Or do you think they're nice because they're easy to trigger and earn? Or what?
I am still struggling to get even into the problem. So far I am playing with the alphabeth to make sense of the first riddle. Not really the kind of problem I am good at.
I have to do it by hand, as I do not have the computer skills to have a computer do the changes.
But then, in an earlier bash reaction I asked for hats only new people could get, so the member of all sites people did have a hat they could not win and that is there now.
What I do not like is that there are so many hats you can win if you are not active on a site, all smaller sites have the same person in the top 5, (often #1,) just because of those hats you do not have to be active on a site for.
@CodyGray, I lack the knowledge to search for those sites.
@Willeke did you use any numbers when decoding the message? Well, now those numbers will give you another message. It is simpler than it sounds... just remember Slate's Hint 2 when you're done
Winter / Summer Bash 2022