If this show is going to repeat itself, we will see this. This is not the first time OP has created "puzzles," and the next time he gets bored, he will have to use the same accounts, if you think about the fact that he is developing a farm this way, or get used to the fact that his topic is popular only with a few. If you look at the merits he sent earlier, their number is evenly distributed among only a few, and they are unlikely to be his alts.
Well, we will find out if he does anything suspicious with his sMerits in the future. Most people wouldn't make it obvious and would carry out each operation separately to make it look natural unless they are fools.
But looking at other thread about puzzle, cracking or brute-force Bitcoin, i notice many low-ranked account make reply on such thread.
That's what makes it suspicious. They are not just random newbies but accounts that haven't made a post before that thread.
So, it's not Alt, but some kind of group that found a new place for their spam actions, so here they can dance around for the puzzle, in telegram they are not free to do so, in conclusion it's a bunch of bastards who found a new place.
I don't think it's a group, but it's more likely a single person controlling all those accounts for something we are not sure about yet.
This doesn't look like account farming. The only way to build an account is to get merits regardless of the amount of activity you can spam up. It's more likely the latter, they're shilling the thread to keep it up, but there still looks to be no end goal in that as the op is not selling a product or service.
The only pointer to there being something strange is the rank of the accounts and that's not enough indictment, so I'll say the conversation is normal. Possibly the op has a community where he shares his posts and members there respond to it.
I know it's not enough to reach the conclusion that it's a farm, but it's a suspicion that I had after looking at the thread and the accounts that were posted in it.