Yoruichi-san Posted July 17, 2013 Report Share Posted July 17, 2013 (I found this in the archives, thought it was really cute...) Freaking puzzles, nowadays. Oh, they might look nice, but deep down... they all have fundamentally the same things going on. produce a cryptic clue at first, of an ungraceful ungulate order words alphabetically. keep putting in red herrings to pad out the puzzle even when there are only about five things you've got to find endlessly drone on with reams of boring text where it is impossible to tell what's suppose to be the puzzle and what's supposed to be a clue and what is in there because someone is utterly determned to have a big rant about something they dislike and half the time they haven't spellchecked the blasted thig so you don't know whether the mistakes are deliberate or not, until they release errata one hour into the competition by which point some smart alec has solved it because it's able to be reverse engineered from the metapuzzle randomly reorder instructions so the puzzle isn't trivial have a set of words with 'precisely' the same length initially spell out a clue. generate a word by joining the dots, relying on a fiXed width font hide words, using capital letters convert letters to numbers, and convert numbers to letters require you to generate numbers from patterns in number sequences even though the sample size is too small and it would be totally logical to work out the next number but for some arbitrary reason you have to calculate the difference. demand that you solve all the first stage clues even when one of them is much harder than the others and the answer is short cuttable using other parts anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Pickett Posted July 18, 2013 Report Share Posted July 18, 2013 (edited) Reveal hidden contents that would be a GNU.... So there we go...that's the "cryptic clue, of an ungraceful ungulate"... Reveal hidden contents produce a cryptic clue at first, of an ungraceful ungulate GNU order words alphabetically. When you get all 5 words, put them in alphabetical order keep putting in red herrings to pad out the puzzle even when there are only about five things you've got to find 5 words/letters you're looking for endlessly drone on with reams of boring text where it is impossible to tell what's suppose to be the puzzle and what's supposed to be a clue and what is in there because someone is utterly determned to have a big rant about something they dislike and half the time they haven't spellchecked the blasted thig so you don't know whether the mistakes are deliberate or not, until they release errata one hour into the competition by which point some smart alec has solved it because it's able to be reverse engineered from the metapuzzle 3 misspelled words in this paragraph (missing a letter each)...gives us DIN randomly reorder instructions so the puzzle isn't trivial Self-explanatory have a set of words with 'precisely' the same length All words will be the same length...3 letters... initially spell out a clue. First letter spells out pokerhighcard...which is ACE generate a word by joining the dots, relying on a fiXed width font As stated above, this gives us JOT hide words, using capital letters Gives us FOX convert letters to numbers, Convert the 3-letter words to number sequences and convert numbers to letters Once you're done with the below clue, convert back to a letter require you to generate numbers from patterns in number sequences even though the sample size is too small and it would be totally logical to work out the next number but for some arbitrary reason you have to calculate the difference. Explained in my last post...take difference between the letters instead of the next logical letter... demand that you solve all the first stage clues even when one of them is much harder than the others and the answer is short cuttable using other parts anyway. Not completely sure what the short cut would be... Using all of the things in bold above, we have: ACE = B DIN = E FOX = I GNU = G JOT = E The answer is BEIGE. Edited July 18, 2013 by Pickett Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Aaryan Posted July 17, 2013 Report Share Posted July 17, 2013 (edited) Let's go. Reveal hidden contents "Initially spell out a clue" Remember my #1 pro-tip? The letters spell "POKERHIGHCARD", which in this case is an ace. On the other hand, a high card can also refer to any non-listed poker hand. Not sure what to do with that, but it's there. Last two seem important, but for the life of me not entirely sure. Also, "hide words using capital letters". There are only three letters capitalized, so FOX. Unfortunately, I think I just solved and semi-solved, because for the rest I'm all Edited July 17, 2013 by Aaryan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 plasmid Posted July 18, 2013 Report Share Posted July 18, 2013 Reveal hidden contents They circled the word "blasted". That's all I got for now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Pickett Posted July 18, 2013 Report Share Posted July 18, 2013 Reveal hidden contents All of the "periods" in the puzzle are in a single line...with the exception of the ellipses and final period on the second line. Not sure yet what it means, but that explains the "generate a word by joining the dots, relying on a fiXed width font" piece... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 plasmid Posted July 18, 2013 Report Share Posted July 18, 2013 On 7/18/2013 at 1:51 PM, Pickett said: Reveal hidden contents All of the "periods" in the puzzle are in a single line...with the exception of the ellipses and final period on the second line. Not sure yet what it means, but that explains the "generate a word by joining the dots, relying on a fiXed width font" piece... Reveal hidden contents Looks like they might not have been trying to circle the word "blast" after all. Periods form a T, commas a J, apostrophes an O. And that's all the punctuation in the puzzle. "Jot" to go along with "Ace" that Aaryan pointed out? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Pickett Posted July 18, 2013 Report Share Posted July 18, 2013 Reveal hidden contents We have: ACE, FOX, and JOT...I'm guessing that's 3 of the 5 things that are mentioned. I'm also seeing DIN, maybe...because there are 3 misspelled words in the paragraph that talks about them: SUPPOSE (should be supposeD) DETERMNED (should be determIned) THIG (should be thiNg) The last part probably has to do with the letters-numbers (and vice versa), and the sequence...from what I initially see, I see these "numbers" in the text: "five", "half", "one", "one"...there's also "first" and "first" in there... Another thought I had, was the word precisely has 9 letters and is in quotes...so maybe find all the 9 letter words in the puzzle and they mean something: determned something precisely sequences arbitrary calculate Just throwing out some ideas as I come across them... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Pickett Posted July 18, 2013 Report Share Posted July 18, 2013 (edited) Reveal hidden contents I have the answer: BEIGE... If that's right, we definitely have 4 of the 5 keys to solving this puzzle...the only part I'm not sure about is the "G"... Reveal hidden contents We have ACE, FOX, JOT, and DIN... "Convert letters to numbers": ACE = 1 3 5... "it would be totally logical to work out the next number"...which would be 7... "but we have to calculate the difference"..which is 2... "convert numbers to letters"...we have a "B" FOX = 6, 15, 24...difference = 9...letter is "I" JOT = 10, 15, 20...difference = 5...letter is "E" DIN = 4, 9, 14...difference is 5...letter is "E" So, if there's a fifth letter, I just tried to find 5-letter words that have BEIE in them...and I can only come up with BEIGE. But I'm not sure how to get a sequence that has a difference of 7 from the puzzle, though. Here are the possible letter combinations (which it should have 3-letters, because of the "have a set of words with 'precisely' the same length" clue): AHO, BIP, CJQ, DKR, ELS, FMT, GNU, HOV, IPW, JQX, KRY, LSZ So, somehow in the puzzle, one of those should come out... This is a fantastic puzzle... Edited July 18, 2013 by Pickett Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 Yoruichi-san Posted July 18, 2013 Author Report Share Posted July 18, 2013 Nicely done! The "connect the dots" part was the one that threw me for awhile, since I'm apparently not very good at recognizing what random shapes are suppose to look like , but you guys breezed right through that. Now we can move on to where the real fun begins... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0 kestrelknight Posted July 19, 2013 Report Share Posted July 19, 2013 Aw, man. I was too late... You guys solved it so darn fast. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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