hacker.org

Nice challenge!

Congratulations, gfoot, you're the first to solve that puzzle!
I'm really happy that you did, because Adum keeps telling me that my puzzles are too obscure for people to solve. You just proved him wrong. Thanks.

-- bok

humph =)

And that comes from the man who wrote "Find Me" - which I'd also assumed was bok's until I looked just now.

I kind of agree, but obscurity is also a kind of depth, and I like puzzles that take a while to solve. It's also good to be in a position where not everybody solves every challenge, and better still, different people fail to solve different challenges.

Partly the reason I liked this one was that standard cryptanalysis techniques yield some results, but also a lot of red herrings.

Besides, not all of your challenges are obscure - e.g. "Say It" is about as explicit as you can get, without being solved by anyone! (I'm getting there...)

It's interesting that "State Your Position" is a crypto challenge and "Find Me" is not, while they look similar.

gfoot wrote:I kind of agree, but obscurity is also a kind of depth, and I like puzzles that take a while to solve. It's also good to be in a position where not everybody solves every challenge, and better still, different people fail to solve different challenges.

I like the one where you have to work on some time too, but many of them are just too hard if you hardly have a clue about cryptology.

That's true, but then, I'm no expert on it and I'm not doing too badly. I read a casual book on the history of cryptography, and remembered a few things, but nothing too deep. From what I can see, there are plenty of websites that take you through the basics at least.

Most things are just a matter of being creative; it's also not just a matter of applying standard techniques, you often need to use your brain, watching out for patterns even if the text is not decoded yet, and working out how to adjust your approach until the message is fully decrypted.

Many of the crypto challenges are not using traditional techniques anyway, so keep an open mind.

Bear in mind that it's not just the crypto challenges that require some knowledge - I had no idea how to debug Java applets until some of the challenges required me to learn, and I still have no idea how to hack a swf file, which is currently my main blocker - I'm going to have to learn a lot more about swf file structure in order to progress, and I'm looking forward to finding time.

It's also been nice having a prompt to better explore other things... learning is always good. I guess all of the following are things I've either learned, or got better at, specifically to solve challenges on this site:

* Scilab - recap on wav file loading, FFT, graphs
* Python - found out how to load wav files, perform FFT, read/write png files, perform web requests, ... loads of other things
* Java - format of compiled class files, debugging compiled class files without source
* Flash - file format, approximate disassembly

That's just computer languages - on top of that, there's topics like speech recognition and fibonacci numbers, which you really need to read up on in order to solve the challenges.

If you add in the other areas of the site, you also learn about general ways to improve algorithms, making them scale better, and sometimes about specific known algorithms, although the authors try to present at least novel takes on existing problems, so it's not just a matter of implementing a standard algorithm (in most cases).

I've found all the problems on this site rewarding to solve (or fail to solve), you just need to see it as a challenge, and a prompt to expand your knowledge, which, as I said, is always a good thing.

Can you please give me a hint?

I solved it now, but I've got no idea why this should be the solution... Just guessed it. Even now that I know the solution, I cannot find much evidence for it. Maybe I miss something?

Bok, if you or someone else could to explain me why this should be the solution, I would hope for a PM. Many thanks in advance!

After trying all possible ciphers (e.g it's not an Enigma cipher), i noticed that people living in the US have an advantage on this challenge

dangermouse wrote:After trying all possible ciphers (e.g it's not an Enigma cipher), i noticed that people living in the US have an advantage on this challenge

Thank you for the hints!

I read your hint and then I got an idea when I view the challenge page again

dangermouse wrote:After trying all possible ciphers (e.g it's not an Enigma cipher), i noticed that people living in the US have an advantage on this challenge

This is a big hint haha.