Topic: [OVER] Riddles - Second edition - Solve them and harvest the loot! (Read 11671 times)

Consider those just as a training (& entertaining, hopefully) session before more serious enigmas.
Next set should be out within a week, stay tuned!

No, but it helps.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/10468112/The-internet-mystery-that-has-the-world-baffled.html
Looking forward to Jan 4th?

My proclivities draw me to solve puzzles and mysteries, but my sense of dire urgency keeps me focused on the ones that have a concrete impact.  There is no shortage of those, and while it would be a delight to meet others of similar mind that, and personal satisfaction of curiosity is a purely selfish motive for me when important work is also calling.

We have a limited number of words at hand, and this kind of confusion will always happen.
Sorry, but you really need to follow the instructions, even if intuition can (and will) help, sometimes.

For the record, I thought the last one was a reference to late at night, and that the answer would be my username.  That's why I thought I might be in there somewhere.

Obviously, I was wrong.

I find amazing coincidences well.... amazing !!

So it was kind of funny and joyful finding that I got some crazy alternate universe (mis)leads there.

Thanks for this great feedback.

I actually tried all google search on the french and murrikan results. Maybe I should have been more thorough, that's an excellent point.

The usernames was first to give an edge to people hanging around. Second time was supposed to be a tribute to btc devs.
Next one won't have any username in solutions (or will it?  )

I'm really sorry about the false lead you followed on the poem one. Altough the fact Coursers didn't have to go through a shaker to come up, should probably have left you with some unsatisfaction feeling.

The fact that Inn name was related to it was an absolute coincidence, too.

Anyway, feedback like yours will help me crafting better riddles, and I thank you again for that.

Nice work Kouye, you really kicked it up a notch on this one !

Regarding constructive feedback, I've got two or three observations on where to improve:

+ Too much reliance on knowing lots of forum usernames. Our brain works kinda funny and sometimes, you need to already know the answer to your current problem and just let you brain dig and work out the connections for the answers to surface to consciousness. This process is short-circuited when you're looking for something you never even heard before in your life, and your brain starts to wander and make false positive connections with stuff you are familiar with. In a sense, this is handicap for newer users, who are working with limited knowledge.

+ The "mates" thing basically allowed brute-forcing or similar techniques. Not much more to add here. It wouldn't have been cracked yet if the usernames were not scrambled and that hint given away.

+ Some clues too ambiguous (this one might just be my impression based on where my guesswork took me). For example:

The poem:
"If you strictly focus on the key" meant keeping only 3rd char from each line and discard spaces, you get: "eritwa"

At first I had focused even more strictly, so I applied 3 from general to specific:

I went to the 3rd search result on Google, which was this: http://www.shmoop.com/there-is-no-frigate-like-a-book/stanza-1-summary.html

If you go there, you'll see that the poem is actually broken in its verses and you even have the title "Lines 3 and 4", so naturally, I went for verse 3. This was a coincidental misled.

In verse 3, the 3rd word looked nice and capitalized: Coursers

Now Coursers did not sound to me like any username, but then I see:

"(*)This guy holds the next key. And key has a tail!(**)"

And as you might know, a "courser" is a horse, and they have tails !
and even then:

"(**)For a tail-less confirmation, see riddle #2"

and riddle #2 had the thing about The Three Horsemen, so I naturally took the Horsemen as the tail-less confirmation !

Hahaha, this was such a coincidental mindfuck. Or was it?

Something similar happened with #4 and the timestamp I had to grab.

Also last thing i just remembered is I kept second-guessing myself with the fact that Google gives different results for everyone, and if that was or not taken into account during riddle creation.

But all in all, it was great fun, so grats and thanks for your time and effort (and btc for the winner )!

No problem. Thanks for setting this up. The riddles were really difficult! If brute-force attacks weren't possible, they probably would have never been solved without hints or a lot of community cooperation.

I'm eager to have any feedback, even if very negative/trollish.

Some things I learnt during this set:
- Never reply when drunk.
- Make sure people have to crack all 5 riddles to find the treasure
- Posting both riddles and solutions to an admin to fix typos/ language mistakes prior to going live might be a good idea.

Overall, I'm still pretty happy with those riddles, apart from the first one, and the fact they were not suited for underaged members.
But consistency was mostly acheived, in my eyes, at least.

And again, many thanks to theymos, who I have had my share of disagreement with, and who still accepted to include a part of the solution "somewhere around".

EDIT : Thanks to tysat, too, for letting me post here.

#5

Yaaawn. What time is it?
*looks around*
Whatever. Carpe diem.


Come on, shawshankinmate37927, try to chew on this one.
Clock says it's "bcef".
When are we? WHEN?

============================================================================

Last was very easy, and a tribute to shawshankinmate37927 for this:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2907723

Just the usual Caesar shift, with the following correspondance:

Quote

TODAYBCEFGHIJKLMNPQRSUVWXZ
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

#4

Ewww. Are you really going to swallow that key?



Looks pointy and dangerous to me...
Yuck. Cheers, I guess.
Let's play hangman with that fruit!

_ 5 1 2 4 _ _ _





Wow,
this
is
S....ICK!

Want the next key?

This is for grownups only! I'll come up with an alternative way by tomorrow for younger people, sorry.

Look for the previous one on the dictionary holding Inaba definition.
5th definition.
Just keep the timestamp. Not the timestamp. (*)

(*)For a dizzy confirmation, see riddle #2

This is for solid kids, same result, softer way.

Look for the fruit on the dictionary holding Inaba definition.
(01) 00-04-72-80-WHY
Just keep that as the timestamp.


=================================================================================

Picture was showing (the key?) a hammer. A tool.
But description did not fit.

"Looks pointy and dangerous to me..." was a hint to find the right tool.
"Ewww. Are you really going to swallow that key?" was a confirmation you were looking for a cocktail.

Tool, pointy, cocktail
was supposed to lead you to "Screwdriver"

Let's play hangman with that fruit!
The only fruit in screwdriver recipe is "orange".

playing hangman with "orange" and this:
_ 5 1 2 4 _ _ _

was supposed to lead you to:
_ G O R N _ _ _

with letter 3 and 6 excluded, and thus building up the gallows.

result, combined with:


was giving SGORNICK. A quick google search on that:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/User:Sgornick

Again, was pleased with the "SICK" result here.

Bitcoin related, all you had to do then is to find his nick on btctalk.

==> StephenGornick

For the key, you needed to use the urban dictionary, which has the best definition for Inaba I could find.

Searching for "orange", you found

The colour which vain assholes turn after a session in the tanning salon; Often confused with Hepatitis.

apply (01) 00-04-72-80-WHY
(01) = first definition

Then



==> today

I won't go through the initial key hint, but it required looking for the timestamp on the 5th (initially 4th) screwdriver definition of the same dictionary.
That was supposed to be a self-confirmation (which I was again pleased with), too, but I understand we have some youngsters, and will be softer in the future.
Sorry about that.

#3

s When the frigate lands like poetry, strictly focus on the key.
: Space does not matter. Ignore it.
/ Stuff all that remain in the shaker(*), then enjoy your meal.
/ He's hiding somewhere around... Think out of in the box. That /index/ isn't helping.

(*)This guy holds the next key. And key has a tail!(**)
(**)For a tail-less confirmation, see riddle #2

=================================================================================

The poem was just a google search away.
When the frigate lands like poetry = http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19730

If you strictly focus on the key (3), keeping only 3rd char from each line and discard spaces, you get:
"eritwa"

Which, if you're good at anagrams or just stuff it in any anagram solver, turns out to be:
http://anagram-solver.net/eritwa

The only word related to an incoming meal seems to be waiter.

s://
He's hiding somewhere around... Think out of in the box. That /index/ isn't helping.

That was a hint to think both "out of the box" and in the current context.
The index, followed by the php hint, was supposed to make you curious and try:
https://bitcointalk.org/waiter/

Which, thanks to theymos help, held the answer for this one.

Many, many thanks again for that, theymos.
Please let it live for a couple more weeks until most people are done reading this.
Just for the record, I asked theymos for a 2 weeks clearance to have this url showing the answer.
It took several months, after all, because I underestimated the difficulty. He still kept it alive even after the couldflare-hack&rollback.

For late people, this url was just showing :

==> escrow.ms

Key was pretty straightforward.
Shaker holds the key
==> Cocktail
With added confirmation : "And key has a tail!" (I won't go through the confirmation of the confirmation for PG rated reasons).

#2

Oooh, a key!
Replace that unique one with the mark Mary Read left on the map.
Consider the mark as a mirror, and fix the reflection.
Ooooh, exciting!

Now, open the book.
The 1883 one.
No, not Zarathustra... You know, the one about... The mirror thing...

.... ....'.'......

Haha. Funny shit. Wait. How do you pronounce that?

Hey, don't forget the key!
Think she hid it in the inn, Arrrrrr!
Just keep the number.

=================================================================================

Mary Read was a pirate, so the mark she could have left on a map was an "X"
This was consistent with the whole "treasure hunt", too.

The unique one in "sense" is 'n'.
So if you replace it with the mark, you get "sexse".
Fix the relection : "sexes"

Open the book. The 1883 one.
This needed just a bit of culture to deduce "kama sutra", and a little google work, to find an online version of first 1883 kama sutra english translation. (public domain... I think)
http://www.classicly.com/download-the-kama-sutra-of-vatsayayana-pdf


Nietzsche's Zarathustra was published the same year, the "tra" ending was the same, and was supposed to be a hint, echoing from first riddle.

Then you just had to look into the book the required extracts:

- Preface, last paragraph, unfortunately wrecked ? ==> many
- the china => rose
- Preface, (First word)[1] (that's "get the second character from first word of the preface) => n
- In the paragraph after the Solution of riddles, whoever ? to repeat (was glad about a riddles being mentioned, so used it) => failed

Ended up after you put all this in
.... ....'.'......

many rose'n'failed

which was a self-confirmed (although a "mature" joke, I guess) result.

Use the bad ears again, and...

==> MeniRosenfeld

For the key, just google "Mary Read Inn".
http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/Pirates/p/Biography-Of-Mary-Read.htm
This comes up, just keep the "number"
so key => 3 or three

#1

This happens in a shady pub, somewhere in the future.
Two guys are discussing, both of which hold one part of the solution.
One also holds the "ke (an)y ______".


=================================================================================

Case was important, here.
Bad ears helped, too.

The idea, as hinted just a bit later, was to reply to the question.
WHAT'S... COME ON?!

Which, I hoped, with bad ears, could transform in "what's common?"
But apparently that failed miserably.

Then all you had to do was to notice some words from one of the guys were in italic (the fact they were really weird words was supposed to help notice them).
I was hoping the repetition of the letters in those words would hint to take a closer look at the letters they had in common, too.

if you keep only the letters they have in common, you end up with
m, g, a ,x

Which I, at some point, thought would be sufficient.
On a second thought, I added the rest in the first guy replies, in the form of an obvious typo, which I warned in initial post was probably here because I wanted it to.

Maybe I should not have, but we'll discuss this after I posted all the solutions.

==> gmaxwell

The key for next one was not too hard, most people found it.

ke (an)y _____

So this tells the key is 5 chars (I won't ever reply to a riddle thread while drunk, sorry again, Voodah)
Also tells it's after "ke any"
(The "an" was smaller to let just key appear, for elegance.)

==> Key = sense

Here's a first draft of the solutions!
Might be edited for clarity later, but it should be enough for a start.

No programing skill was required to crack those, apart maybe for the meta-riddle that just helped to reorder in the end.
I thought it might be understable by anyone, sorry if it was not, but we'll discuss that after I post the whole solution, if you don't mind.

This chunk of code was also a confirmation because apart from escrow.ms (which I promised would be part of it), I tried to pick users involved in bitcoin dev, to pay my respects in my own way.

Congrats to the winner !

I was so close

I had gmaxwell, MeniRosenfeld and GavinAndresen.

I think my biggest downfall was the fact that I don't even remember having seen a post by StephenGornick. My guess is we just don't use the same sub-forums.

#2 was the easiest imo.

Good job 12648430 & Kouye , fun times !!

I'm on it, not sure if I'll have time to finish tonight, but I'll try my best.

In the meantime, I can tease and tell you the brainwallet passphrase was:
gmaxwellGavinAndresenStephenGornickMeniRosenfeldescrow.ms

I wish there were puzzles for people who were not learned about super complex puzzle solving.  But I guess making that kind of puzzle would be too easy.  Wish I was part of the niche of people that could solve this.  It looks super interesting.  Wouldn't know where to start though (probably first step is to take a programing language course)...

Okay, so what was the solution?