hacker.org

Am I the only one to check a new challenge against a possible representation of »the answer is …«? I have not even looked up the first part of the country code list – after +7 matched the r in »answer« (+7=Russia), I was fairly certain that the rest would work out as well.

I solved Big Fib using the Ruby REPL, Bigger Fib directly with Mathematica (since I couldn't be bothered to think about whether the approximation I had in mind would be precise enough), and Biggest Fib finally using the »intelligent« solution, i.e. the relation of Fibonacci numbers with the golden r...

Another straightforward version: NOP slides! xD

I wonder how people who have not seen the obfuscated C contest entry »Pi« (http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~manuel/obfuscate/pi.c) solve this. Googling? Guessing? Actually trying to make sense of the code?

Nope, did it just the same. I took longer than needed because I had recently switched to a new hex editor, and because not being used to it yet, unintentionally inserted another byte after the major version – shit happens…

Oh well, I guess the solution I found is the most stupid around – but at least, I didn't need to think very hard while writing this: 02g1+0^<6?094+-gp.

Why didn't I think of doing the increment in the »loop body« -.-

I agree that this challenge seems fairly trivial. My first thought was to load the images on top of each other in Photoshop and to play around a bit with the layer modes – total time: 10 seconds. But, on the other hand, there are not so many people in the solver list, and I am stuck on problems whic...

How did you extract the data from the image?

For me, convert (from imagemagick) and the BSD »file« command made the challenge very easy…

Currently studying chemistry and physics – the time it took me to type "5a 63 08 47 16 08 07 35 10 4b 6e 0a 59 13 44 10".split.map { |n| n.to_i 16 } into irb and look up the atomic number in a periodic table. Somehow, I was sure that this cipher would be used just after I read the title at...

Never mind, I solved the puzzle by trying random movie character names…

It's easy on OS X too:

matter wrote:Yea, I used the BC libraries in PHP. Code was about 5 lines.

5 lines? Ruby: »28679718602997181072337614380936720482949.to_s 7«

I only have relative pitch, but this is enough – good luck to the nonmusical folks!

I played a bit with Photoshop and can quite clearly see a portrait of a person, the face angled to the right (from the viewer) and a quite prominent hair-line. Unfortunately, I can barely remember any faces (yes, that is a medical disorder), so I have absolutely no chance of recognizing the person. ...

I didn't have any fancy decompilers at hand, but FLASM did the trick: I just located the conditional branch in the bytecode which jumps over the piece of code displaying the answer, removed it, and recompiled – problem solved.[/url]