PF Treasure Hunt - Solve the Clues & Crack the Code!

[Moonbear]

That's the part I wasn't sure about:
Mean. 13 is the mean of 7 and 19. That's what I meant by average above.

If that's not it, then I'm stumped. Chroot will probably swoop in at midnight and finish the solution for me.

 

[Gokul43201]

You've got it, save for the following tiny detail : "if u factor hardy’s cab#, the unlucky one is the _ _ of the others" - there's 2 words required.

 

[Moonbear]

Oh, wait! Is this what you're looking for?
arithmetic mean

 

[Gokul43201]

No. It's what you should be looking for !

 

[Moonbear]

No. It's what you should be looking for !

No wonder you got the homework helper medal! No new ideas yet. Dammit Jim, I'm a biologist, not a mathematician!

 

[Gokul43201]

Wait. I think you misunderstand. You are correct - it is the AM. Now you just have to figure out what to do.

 

[Moonbear]

Oh! Cool. Now there's something to be done? Alright, back to thinking.

 

[Moonbear]

Aha!
You started a thread titled: Arithmetic Mean that says:
Well done, brave adventurer ! This is THE END, my friend.
Thanks for playing. Hope you enjoyed the game !
(I didn't think the plea to not have the thread locked was part of the clue. )


Yay!

 

[Gokul43201]

Well done Moonbear.

This is THE END, I guess.

 

[Moonbear]

Sorry Chroot, got that in just in the nick of time before you were allowed back in the game.

 

[Moonbear]

Well done Moonbear.

This is THE END, I guess.

Yay! Cool game!

But that means it's over.

When should we watch for Part 2?

 

[Gokul43201]

Given the interest this generated...I'm not sure I'll attempt a Part 2. It's just too much work...even though I thoroughly enjoyed making it. Also, the possibilities are now greatly reduced, and it'll take a lot more thinking (and probably conspirators as well) to come up with more ways to hide clues.

Glad you enjoyed it !

 

[chroot]

I'm actually considering making my own. Too bad there wasn't more interest. I think it was one of the neatest things I've ever seen on PF.

Unfortunately, I think I will have a hard time making mine non-technical.

- Warren

 

[Moonbear]

I'm actually considering making my own. Too bad there wasn't more interest. I think it was one of the neatest things I've ever seen on PF.

Unfortunately, I think I will have a hard time making mine non-technical.

- Warren

I've never seen a scavenger hunt on any forum before. I thought it was great fun. I wonder if it would have gotten more interest if posted in General Discussion rather than Brainteasers? I don't think there's as much traffic in here. Of course, you'd have an easier time creating threads and characters without them being inadvertently locked by the admins!

I don't think I could be clever enough to come up with challenging clues on my own, but if anyone needs a conspirator...

 

[arildno]

I think it was great, but it moved too fast for snails like myself..

 

[Moonbear]

I think it was great, but it moved too fast for snails like myself..

Only insomniacs got to play...you know what they say...you snooze, you lose!

Maybe the next time, clues could be provided in stages, that you're not allowed to solve them out of order (this would be a disadvantage to both Chroot and myself since we both seemed to work backward more than forward). Or maybe they could rely on using some of the knowledge posted in threads here (like going to a homework problem and having to solve it, or solve another similar problem using that method).

 

[chroot]

I was considering writing a php script that would show my clues only at specific intervals, say, one clue per 3 hrs. or so. I'm designing one that is quite a bit more technological/scientific/problem-solving oriented. Are you interested in a techie hunt, Moonbear?

- Warren

 

[humanino]

Well, I did not have the chance to participate
Even from the outside, this game looked amazingly good
I guess if I ever did put my foot into that game, I would have been swallowed in a no-sleep-parallel-universe
Congratulations to the winner(s)
Ramanujan himself might have been trapped in a fractionally continuated elliptical erratic path while trying to solve this out...
And of course, congratulations and many thanks to the culprit of this fascinating masterpiece : namely Gokul

 

[Gokul43201]

Thanks for the feedback folks...I'm glad it was enjoyed, by some, at least.

Chroot, I'd love to take part in a techie hunt (though if I think I'm looking at a Vigenere cipher, I'll let someone else write the code for that). OR, if you'd like help or ideas, I'd be glad to offer.

humanino and arildno : where were you guys ? Oh, I guess everyone's not as jobless as me ! <shrug>

Moonbear : This game would have proceded on schedule (without the overnight break after you discovered for3to0won) had it not been for a curve ball, that chroot inadvertently threw me. By my original plans, I had created several (about 12 or 13) decoy posts for for3to0won in a text document, that I would have pasted into various threads. The actual clue, with the Greek text, was of course meant to go into the "LaTeX Math typesetting" thread. By a stroke of sheer misfortune, chroot locked that thread, virtually nimutes before I was going to do this...after that thread had been running for months now. Who'd have thunk ! So at that point, I had to change plans, and hence requested a time-out to figure things out.

 

[Gokul43201]

Another thing that was fun : When chroot and Moonbear were working on the clues, I just happened to be logged in too at the time, and I could tell whether they were on the right track by watching their movements on "Who's Online"

For instance, towards the end, I was spying on chrooot's movements and I saw something like this :

viewing thread The PF Treasure Hunt
searching forums
viewing thread Simplifying Radicals
viewing thread Group vs. Phase velocity
viewing thread The PF Treasure Hunt (and some minutes later)
replying to thread The PF Treasure Hunt

That was fun !

For whatever it's worth, I'll post a complete solutions to the game in a new thread.

 

[NoTime]

That was fun Gokul43201

 

[Gokul43201]

Thanks NoTime...much appreciated.

 

[TenaliRaman]

Gokul its been fun !
(too bad i could give little time to this ... but i guarantee i enjoyed every moment of it)
though i expected this to go a little longer than this ... :(

-- AI
P.S -> chroot , if u are planning anything like this ... u can definitely count me in ... i have my exams coming up and many things have gone haywire lately but still it would be a pleasure to play this game again ...

 

[Moonbear]

I was considering writing a php script that would show my clues only at specific intervals, say, one clue per 3 hrs. or so. I'm designing one that is quite a bit more technological/scientific/problem-solving oriented. Are you interested in a techie hunt, Moonbear?

- Warren

I guess it depends on how techie it is. As I pointed out to Gokul, I'm a biologist, not a mathematician (mean is one word, not two in my vocabulary)...and I'm definitely not a computer programmer. So, if I need to write programs or understand code to solve puzzles, I won't do very well. Then again, if you throw some of those types of clues in with others like Gokuls that required knowledge of how to search PF, then that would be okay, the technical parts I'd just have to leave for the other game players.

Since you're the code wizard behind PF, are there tricks you can employ that us mere mortals couldn't even dream? Such as making an old deleted thread reappear with now embedded clues?

And now that I know Gokul was watching my every move, and that means other treasure hunters could be doing the same, I'll have to remember to turn myself invisible for the next hunt!

I'm very amused that Gokul managed to create his own conspirator. When I asked about conspirators, that certainly wasn't what I meant. I thought he may have had an admin or mentor on his side to go back and edit threads older threads in order to insert clues without risking them getting noticed by someone quoting them.

When I saw Gokul's comment about threads being locked, it was soon after I saw that for3to0won had started posting, and was worried those were the posts getting locked or deleted.

Oh, just want to add one more thought on getting more participation. Perhaps something as simple as starting the game near the end of the week and into a weekend would work better than starting at the beginning of the week. More folks around who can spend some time time playing if it's a weekend and they aren't supposed to be at work or spending their nights doing homework, etc.

 

[Gokul43201]

I'm very amused that Gokul managed to create his own conspirator. When I asked about conspirators, that certainly wasn't what I meant. I thought he may have had an admin or mentor on his side to go back and edit threads older threads in order to insert clues without risking them getting noticed by someone quoting them.

I gave some serious thought to seeking special favor from the uberlords to allow me to "break some rules", but I decided against it. As a result, the manouevering required to get the clue into "stupid quetion" was quite extensive. When I had the idea, that thread had about 1497 posts. If you look again, ou'll see that I suddenly started putting in a lot of effort into getting that thread rolling. Not only did I want to get to 1504, I also wanted to get that thread into the next page before I put in the edit (which gave me a 24 hour window to ask some really stupid quetions and hope The Bob would be there for me) so people wouldn't inadvertently notice it - espicially if they hit QUOTE. A post is most any other thread suffers the danger of being quted, and hence discovered. Of course, the other thread that doesn't have posts quoted is the LaTeX thread.

Oh, just want to add one more thought on getting more participation. Perhaps something as simple as starting the game near the end of the week and into a weekend would work better than starting at the beginning of the week. More folks around who can spend some time time playing if it's a weekend and they aren't supposed to be at work or spending their nights doing homework, etc.

I agree.

I spent most of the weekend completing and checking the game. By the time I was ready, it was late sunday. It was either "now", or "wait a week", and I was just too anxious to see how it would go...

 

[hemmul]

Huh, good job Gokul! You're the MAN!
Unfortunately i didn't have an opportunity to participate, because, due to my timezone the main part of discussions was held when i was sleeping but anyway i can't forget myself scanning the list of new members starting from member.php?u=17950+ down to 17700+ while trying to find profile of /already/ famous for3to0won :D argh this was evil ...
Looking forward for chroot's challenge!

 

[chroot]

I guess it depends on how techie it is. As I pointed out to Gokul, I'm a biologist, not a mathematician (mean is one word, not two in my vocabulary)...and I'm definitely not a computer programmer. So, if I need to write programs or understand code to solve puzzles, I won't do very well. Then again, if you throw some of those types of clues in with others like Gokuls that required knowledge of how to search PF, then that would be okay, the technical parts I'd just have to leave for the other game players.

I wasn't anticipating actual complete C code -- I was thinking more along the lines of simple pseudocode, like this:

SET X = 1
REPEAT TEN TIMES {
ADD 1 TO X
}

Which I think most people can logically understand even if they don't know how to program a computer.

Since you're the code wizard behind PF, are there tricks you can employ that us mere mortals couldn't even dream? Such as making an old deleted thread reappear with now embedded clues?

There are an astonishing array of tricks I could use. I am currently devising my treasure hunt plan, and I have put some serious thought into using these tricks. I can pretty much make anything I want appear anywhere I want. I can embed hidden statements inside other people's posts without even showing an edited message, I can change people's join dates, user ids, post ids, anything I want. It would be really easy to make a treasure hunt with all those tools available to me.

On the other hand, is that fair? Should I really design a treasure hunt that no one else on the site but Greg could design? I think it might be more fair if I only use the member tools. That way, other people (besides Greg) could follow in my footsteps.

And now that I know Gokul was watching my every move, and that means other treasure hunters could be doing the same, I'll have to remember to turn myself invisible for the next hunt!

Except, I can still see you.

- Warren

 

[chroot]

Huh, good job Gokul! You're the MAN!
Unfortunately i didn't have an opportunity to participate, because, due to my timezone the main part of discussions was held when i was sleeping but anyway i can't forget myself scanning the list of new members starting from member.php?u=17950+ down to 17700+ while trying to find profile of /already/ famous for3to0won :D argh this was evil ...
Looking forward for chroot's challenge!

Can you think of a way around the time zone issue?

- Warren

 

[Gokul43201]

Can you think of a way around the time zone issue?

- Warren

Sorta.

If it all happens during the weekend, and doesn't last forever, you could announce the precise start time in advance (and like you said, release new clues every couple of hourse or so). People who are really crazy about this will stay up if they have to.

And as far as a good start time goes, I think, early Saturday morning (would 7:00am PT be crazy ?) would be best. 7:00 am PT = 10:00 am ET = 3 - 6:00 pm in most of Europe/Africa = 8:30 - 11:00 pm in South/East Asia. Only the Aussies and Japanese get a bad deal.

 

[chroot]

I just thought of a much easier way to deal with time zones. Offer perhaps four independent threads, one for each region of 6 time zones. People would just have to use the honor system to avoid peeking at the solutions in the threads for time zones ahead of them.

- Warren

 

[hemmul]

Can you think of a way around the time zone issue?

- Warren

What about creating extra difficult tasks, so only godlike hunters could solve them faster than 24 hours? :)

 

[TenaliRaman]

If honor system is followed then we can even have separate teams system i.e if anyone is still interested in such a system...
we can have separate threads for separate teams and the team members must go to their threads alone and discuss and not peek into other team threads...

-- AI

 

[hemmul]

I just thought of a much easier way to deal with time zones. Offer perhaps four independent threads, one for each region of 6 time zones. People would just have to use the honor system to avoid peeking at the solutions in the threads for time zones ahead of them.

- Warren

good idea, but only for very very honest people... i do promise not to watch others' threads, but what about other members? also it somehow divides the community - ei it's better when all the discussions are open for all hunters

P.S. it seems the time zone makes its job! Good night! ;)

 

[chroot]

Well, dishonesty just makes the game less fun. I'll bet that anyone who's intelligent and educated enough to solve the kinds of problems I am likely to provide is not going to be dishonest.

And really, you have two mutually exclusive choices:

1) Make all discussion open for all hunters.
2) Make the competition fair for people in all time zones.

Which one is a better choice?

- Warren

 

[TenaliRaman]

If u ask me the first is better,
reason 1> that way no one will be even tempted to cheat or anything like it and we can all be clean souls with nice golden rings over our head...
reason 2> dividing into time zone may not attract equal number of members in each ... prolly it lessens the interactions between the members ... (isn't interaction betn different part of the world an objective of a discussion forum?)

me#1 : But we have problems as ppl from different time zones don't get to work out things ...

me#2 : a few ways round it are ...
1 ... make it really hard so that no one gets it quickly (not an interesting soln)
2 ... make a condition that one can post an answer to the clue only after say 24 hours of posting the clue .. this prolly gives everyone a chance to view the clue ...

me#1 : this is slow going and not only that ... it could extend beyond the weekend and mess up schedules

me#2 : we can live with this i suppose rather than getting stuck in a time zone where participation is less and u find out that some other time zone has already solved everything .. and all because it had good participation ..

I rest my case!
-- AI