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Telecran

Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 2:22 pm
by tog
It's funny, but this was one of the hardest challenges for me. Since first approaching the challenge and finally solving it, I solved like 150 other challenges. (I thought it had something to do with Luxembourg and its media or its connection to the other 3 countries. I also thought about some encoding where Lu=1 and the others =0.)

The main problem was that the german google.de only returned links to Luxembourg and the TV-magazine. Only when I tried the english version, I found the etch-a-sketch clip, which gave me the right hint. So I guess this is harder for non-english google users.

Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 7:55 pm
by papa
I had the same problem. Took me some time until I finally tried the english google.

Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 8:24 pm
by adum
odd -- 'telecran' is a french word.

Evil Luxembourg flag

Posted: Sat Jan 31, 2009 7:59 pm
by guxx
Oh yes, the evil thing is the Luxembourg flag which made me think that it got something to do with the telecran magazine. There is an article called "Secret Project Dolphin - revealed" ...
I found the etch-a-sketch connection by wikipedia but the Luxembourg flag led me to further investigate in the magazine direction.

Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 10:39 pm
by Belriel
I had the same problems, google only returned me links to Luxembourg and the telecran magazine, even though I have my firefox configured to request pages in English and I use google.com configured do talk to me in English and to display results in all languages. But seems Google still brings localized search results :evil:. Only when my wife searched on her Spanish windows the first hit indicated me what "Telecran" means in this challenge and then it was easy. Why is this toy such a dangerous thing that google censors it in Germany? :roll:

Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 7:20 pm
by megabreit
Finally made it... huh, this was hard in general. It's not hard to find out, that the numbers are directions... but which ones? :?:
I assumed, that the flags would be hint for the orientation... Denmark is North, Luxembourg West, Ukraine East and Romania South like on the map. I wasted one sheet of paper and then tried other approaches.
Just using the first letters seemed to easy and too obvious. :shock:

Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2009 10:52 pm
by cutter
i thought about how often every direction must occur and came to the conclusion that the most steps are to the right and that up- and down steps are almost equal
after counting the flags (77,44,41,20) i knew what was right and left
finally you need luck or a mirror :D

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 12:22 pm
by homeas
@Belriel just use www.google.com/ncr and you get no country redirection

Posted: Mon Jun 22, 2009 11:43 pm
by klavierspieler21
omg the luxemburg flag looks almost the same as netherlands

Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2009 6:10 am
by fdmartin
Luxembourg = (L)eft
Romania = (R)ight
Denmark = (D)own
Ukraine = (U)p

To solve this, I took the source code, parsed every <img> tag and converted them into an array of chars, containing '>', '<', '^' or 'v' depending on the direction, and then used this Python code to create the answer (btw it uses a non-standard module PIL).

Code: Select all

directions = ['>', '>', '<', 'v', 'v', '>', '>', '^', '^', 'v', '>', 'v', '>', '>', '^', '<', 'v', 'v', '>', '>', '>', '^', '^', '^', '>', '>', 'v', '<', '<', '>', '>', 'v', 'v', '>', '^', '^', '^', '>', 'v', '>', 'v', '>', 'v', '>', '^', '^', '^', 'v', 'v', 'v', '>', '>', '>', '^', '<', '<', '^', '^', '>', '>', '>', 'v', '>', 'v', '>', 'v', '>', '^', '>', '^', '>', '^', '>', 'v', '>', 'v', '>', 'v', '>', '^', '>', '^', '>', '^', '>', '>', '>', '<', '<', 'v', 'v', '>', '<', 'v', '>', '>', '>', '^', '^', '^', '>', '>', 'v', 'v', '<', '<', '>', 'v', '>', '>', '>', '>', '^', '^', 'v', 'v', '>', '>', '^', '<', '^', '>', '<', 'v', '>', 'v', '>', '>', '>', '^', '^', '^', '>', '>', '<', '<', 'v', 'v', '>', '<', 'v', '>', '>', '>', '>', '^', '^', '^', '<', '>', '>', '<', 'v', 'v', 'v', '>', '>', '>', '^', '^', '^', '>', '>', '<', '<', 'v', 'v', 'v', '>', '>', '>', '^', '^', '^', 'v', '>', '>', '^', 'v', 'v', 'v', '>']
from PIL import Image
im = Image.open('telecran.png')
x,y = 10,10
colour = (0,0,0)
for i in directions:
    for j in xrange(6):
        im.putpixel((x,y),colour)
        if i == '>': x+=1
        if i == '<': x-=1
        if i == 'v': y+=1
        if i == '^': y-=1
im.show()
im.close()
It uses a blank 100x100 px png file and writes the answer on it.
Here's the program output:
Image
This was the neatest challenge so far.

Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2009 3:08 am
by Allosentient
haha, interesting! I actually guessed this one without drawing those lines

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 2:35 pm
by xulfer
I had a lot of fun with this one. I decided to implement mine using gd. When ran this will output the answer in a jpeg file (white on black). The string given is in the format "udlr".

compilation: gcc -o telecran telecran.c -lgd -ljpeg

Code: Select all

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <ctype.h>
#include <gd.h>

#define BY_PIXELS 4

struct coord {
    int x;
    int y;
};

void
usage(char *name) {
    fprintf(stderr, "%s output-file <direction string>\n", name);
}

int
main(int argc, char **argv) {
    gdImagePtr im;
    FILE *jpegout;
    int black, white, chr;
    char *sp;
    struct coord xy;

    if (argc < 3) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Didn't provide sufficient arguments.\n");
        usage(argv[0]);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    im = gdImageCreate(256, 256);

    black = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 0,0,0);
    white = gdImageColorAllocate(im, 255,255,255);
    xy.x = 10;
    xy.y = 128;

    sp = argv[2];

    while (*sp != '\0') {
        chr = tolower((int)*sp);

        switch (chr) {
            case 'u':
               gdImageLine(im, xy.x, xy.y, xy.x, xy.y - BY_PIXELS, white);
               xy.y -= BY_PIXELS;
               break;
            case 'd':
               gdImageLine(im, xy.x, xy.y, xy.x, xy.y + BY_PIXELS, white);
               xy.y += BY_PIXELS;
               break;
            case 'l':
               gdImageLine(im, xy.x, xy.y, xy.x - BY_PIXELS, xy.y, white);
               xy.x -= BY_PIXELS;
               break;
            case 'r':
               gdImageLine(im, xy.x, xy.y, xy.x + BY_PIXELS, xy.y, white);
               xy.x += BY_PIXELS;
               break;
            default:
               fprintf(stderr, "Bad character given.\n");
               gdImageDestroy(im);
               exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
        }
        sp++;
    }

    if ((jpegout = fopen(argv[1], "wb")) == NULL) {
        perror(argv[1]);
        gdImageDestroy(im);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    gdImageJpeg(im, jpegout, -1);
    gdImageDestroy(im);

    fclose(jpegout);

    return 0;
}
[/code] :D :)

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 9:23 pm
by DaymItzJack
For some reason as soon as I Googled telecran I knew what to do. I didn't hesitate or double check anything I went right along and started a python app for it.

Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2010 8:25 pm
by nighthalk
i took things a little more off the wall, after identifying the countries the flags belonged to i then looked at the map thinking the north most would be up ect... well 2 of the countries are (relativly) to the right and 2 are (relativly) to the left and so i thought about the knobs and guessed "left 2 are one set, right 2 are other set" but it didnt work.... so i scrapped that idea and just brute forced the directions (yay c# graphics draw lines!) and kept hitting go till it wasnt giberish ^_^

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 5:34 pm
by Axxaran
wehaa, just solved it. Funny idea, even though there were a lot of wrong ways to go. I'm german and yes, i first jumped on the flagtrain and tried to get some binary pattern out of it. Bad clue was the "dirty translation", best clue was to use google.xx not google.de. I gave my daughter (4y) a pen and just told her to paint nice lines on a squared paper sheet, so pure pen and paperwork :)