Topic: WHO WANTS TO SPLIT THE PRIZE- NEED HELP! - page 2. (Read 2104 times)

This is supposed to be fun! If it's not, then it's time to stop - unless you really, really need that $25. You don't do a crossword for the prize money. (I'm hoping, in any case, that BitScan will double the prize money when the winner gets in touch. They had to rush to get it out before Easter as it was so that detail wasn't finalised at the time.)
Take a look at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=574700.0;all People seem to be bouncing ideas around there and coming up with some good stuff. Even enjoying themselves in the process.
I take your comments on board, though. The first episode was too easy and the prize went too fast. There's also no way of stopping people using password crackers, so that had to be factored in with tougher clues.
Regardless, please don't kill yourself.

Yeah I would agree but at a certain point it stops being fun.  Like I said, even if I spent 5 hours on it and won $25, I wouldn't be pissed like "Damn, I only made $5/hr."  The problem is after 5 hours I have no idea how close I am.  I could be days away

Salisbury is A1
Vides is an example of my frustration...  in French it is empty or MT?  or in Latin it is to see or you see so UC or 2C  But the problem is trying all the combos and still not knowing if you are close at all.

You are all worked up because you are focused on the prize and not the puzzle. The puzzle is the fun part, the prize is the icing on the cake. I was just shooting guesses to another guy on "salisbury" and "vides". I didn't care about the prize, I enjoyed the riddles and had a little bit of fun.

It is dumb. 

I am sure I'm not the only one who just gave up.  I'm almost positive that no one is even trying.  There is $25 bucks at stake.  I spent 4 hours and now I wanna kill myself.

And even the clues are dumb.  So one of the clues was 360' and from that you need to decipher a 2 character answer.  Well in crosswords their are "crosswords" that help you get the answer but in this it is a total guessing game.  Then the guy comes out with a clue saying it could be 360 ft or 120 yeards but it is probably minutes if you convert it to hours.  WTF?  So 6 hrs.  uh 6h?  If 6h is the answer this is the dumbest f'n game ever.  And last time the Whitey being YT, well now when you think an answer is 40 or 60 or 65 now you have to think 4t or 6t or 6t5 or could it be 4d or 6d or 6d5. 

I mean honestly one of the clues is this:    ...          and you are supposed to come up with a 1 character answer?  Uhhhhhhh, dumb. 

Lastly, the last 8 or so character, which are about 4 clues, are all bold.  And the game maker says, "The last row is bold, not sure what that means"  Well WTF?  How would anyone?  It could be reverse all of them or just the ends or just the inside or maybe the bold goes first.  Moral of the story is, me and another guy tried for two hours and it just isn't worth it.   The writer needs to realize that this is not a crossword where if I don't know 8 down, 7 across and 6 across will help me.  In this game, it's a crap shoot and getting 30 in a row is impossible.

My 2 Satoshi

I must be really tired or way out of my league. I under stood the 1 + ivy = IV but nothing more then that...Wish the best for all who play/solve that puzzle

Well , my analogy is done to the speed taken to generate a vanity address.

This generates using random private keys , and can create 10 million addresses per second ( atleast on average ).

The program maintains this speed , while also checking if the key corresponds to the specified vanity address.

The same program will need to be applied but instead of specifying the first few digits , you would need to specify the entire address and part of the hash.

I calculated 6 characters would take 1.5 minutes , so even if an answer was wrong , you are set back only one minute.

By the way , these timings mentioned are those needed to uncover all possible private keys with a certain number of characters missing.
It should take on average half as long.

Exactly. However, you've got to be pretty sure the answers you've got are right, otherwise you're wasting time brute forcing the wrong key!
I don't know how much time it would take to guess each one, though I'd think that ~6 characters was worthwhile. I don't know whether hashing is the right analogy or not. You've got to convert the key to the address, which I think is a more complex function than a hash (someone correct me here?), then check it against the known address.
Regardless, other episodes won't be so amenable to brute forcing.

A bruce force tool isn't bad...

It is just the equivalent of your lifelines in Who wants to be a millionaire.
Answer 24 , get 6 answered for you

What is the minimum chars to be exposed for it to be able to be bruteforced ?

32 possible alphanumeric characters and 30 digits in total are there in a private key as far as I know.

My PC can try generating vanity addresses at 10 million keys per second , but there are GPUs upto 25 million , so let me take 10 million as an average.

Assuming you give up all but 5 characters , it will need you to generate (32)^5 , which is 30 million keys. This will take 3 seconds.

Assuming you give up all but 8 characters , it will need you to generate (32)^8, which will take 30 hours.

Assuming you give up all but 12 characters , it will need you to generate (32)^12 keys , which will take 3600 years.

Once you are at around 7 digits it takes under an hour to brute force and it will take around a minute at 6 digits left

At this point only the hardest nuts will be left and it makes more sense to use a program.

TLDR ; Don't give out your answer so far if you have found 22 or more. If you can make a program , try using it at 6 digits left.

I get your frustration. However, a brute force tool is only going to buy you a few characters.
Plus the prize isn't the only reason. This is supposed to be fun...

Yeah, I think I'm out.  The problem is I didn't even think about brute force tools.  Last puzzle I spent hours and hours on, and I think I screwed myself because when I couldn't get the last clues (and it was not too easy.  If only $50 is up for grabs, 5 hours is max one could spend on it) I came here as you see and made the huge mistake of posting this: SETL54M6YT5Q7MUVL?DQ??LT3G3B9   It wasn't long after that the money was taken and not a word about it.  Why?  Easy... the person that took the btc did no work other than put my hard work into a brute force tool and take what I had worked on away from me.  So, if I ever do decide to take a look, I won't post here and honestly, it just frustrates me that a brute force tool can be used.  Maybe you could have people submit the password in a comment and allow each person 5 guesses or something.  I'm not wasting another 5 hours so some ass clown who can write a script can just let his computer solve it for them

The main thread for this episode is https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/guess-the-private-key-win-the-bitcoins-puzzle-game-574700
Updates about the game and hints are posted there.
And yes, the last one turned out to be too easy!

Anybody getting anywhere with this one?  I didn't even think that someone would use a brute force tool and I don't know how to use one so I'm not going to put forth any effort on it.  I will say it is much harder than last time.  If anyone is a crossword genius, here are some of the clues that have me stumped....  Feel free to answer here or if you have a brute force tool and wanna play tag-team split the winnings HAHA   you can find me available on chat at http://purechat.com/w/jc

All answers must be capital letters and/or #'s   

Examples of hard clues from last contest

One was "Whitey" and it had a two character answer    We were all guessing JB and other people's initials, answer was YT

Some clues

FIRST COLUMN   # of characters        SECOND COLUMN CLUE         THIRD COLUMN ANSWER   

ie   
1      ivy                    answer is 4  (ivy = IV = 4)
3      head scanned     CAT

This weeks game (looking for any help)

1       spot
2       vides
2       G - B - D - F
3       (u+m)(u-m)
4       Llyswen ------> south
1       ...
1       1001

I'm lost

That's kind of the point - you need to figure it out. The clues have different principles behind them. If you look back at the last one and some of the answers in this thread, you'll get the overall idea.


Not sure I know what you mean by direct chat. You can PM me or leave a message here (though since it's Easter weekend I won't be able to get back to you straight away).

Realistically, I expect that people will guess most of the clues and then run a brute force cracker for the last few characters - though since every character represents a 32x increase in the time it takes, the more you can get the better.

Hi,
this sounds interesting, but waht kind of rebus is that Also cannot access you on the direct chat

BR,

Gondel

Very good effort.
I've posted a new episode.
Good luck!
And this time - feel free to comment on the thread itself. All adds to the fun and you might get some hints as we go along. You'll also need to contact us to get the rest of the prize. Last time someone swept it without letting us know...

Sounds like some serious technical stuff going on with this contest.  I really hope to one day be able to better understand this stuff.  Sorry you didn't get the prize bud.

yes its gone   

i was going with JB as in James "Whitey" Bulger

I think YT

Nevermind it's gone

SETL54M6YT5Q7MUVL?DQ??LT3G3B9