?
Bump for confusion. Btw.. I thought xyz was "examining your zipper" haha
Comment has been collapsed.
I just saw your puzzle and I wanted to say that I'm thankful. I am thankful that I didn't choose to become a programmer, but chose to become a food technologist instead. :D Phew! And I was always unsure if I should have chosen to become a programmer, but you obviously showed me here that I made the right decision. Thank you and bump! :D
Comment has been collapsed.
Well, it looked like programming language. :P Anyway, I solved it already. ;P Thanks again.
Comment has been collapsed.
Bump for solved.. thanks for the awesome puzzle and giveaway
Comment has been collapsed.
120 Comments - Last post 9 minutes ago by MSPachina
47 Comments - Last post 3 hours ago by Thedarksid3r
16,239 Comments - Last post 4 hours ago by BHTrellis188
217 Comments - Last post 5 hours ago by RCSWE
1,003 Comments - Last post 5 hours ago by sensualshakti
397 Comments - Last post 5 hours ago by Serj27
473 Comments - Last post 6 hours ago by eeev
18 Comments - Last post 5 minutes ago by Rattacore
55 Comments - Last post 9 minutes ago by Tsukeman
84 Comments - Last post 9 minutes ago by misterhaan
102 Comments - Last post 21 minutes ago by lav29
45 Comments - Last post 36 minutes ago by Axelflox
376 Comments - Last post 46 minutes ago by Mhol1071
428 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by GreyF0xx
Warm-up UEWV5ELV24 - this is a totally non-pornographic code. Experiment with xlate and see for yourself.
Hint it is really fast and simple, just open the page and try decoding with the various methods. You will recognize when you see it (not necessarily in the box you are expecting)
Warmup solution
It was really nothing: open xlate, start putting the data into the various fields and pushing decode. When trying with BASE32, it decodes to oS1ekXXX in the BASE64 box. XXX is porn, but this code is non-pornographic, so oS1ek remains, which is the Lost Planet 3 of the warmup train.
Main: +2189623809685983033395820256967 - this has nothing to do with xlate, so see description below.
Story There was a Morse-code puzzle a few weeks ago, which is a kind of variable-width code. However, besides dots and dashes, Morse-code heavily relies on the pauses, otherwise it becomes hard to interpret: .....-.-.-..----..-.-..-..--..-..- (no worries, this is just the code for "hard to interpret" without any breaks). Fixed-width encodings (like 2-digit hexadecimal or 8-digit binary representation of ASCII codes, both often appearing in puzzles) obviously do not have this problem, exactly because of their fixed length per codeword.
Puzzle There are variable-width encodings, which allow unambiguous decoding even without spaces. Depending on where you live, you may have to use one of them every time when you xyz. Where xyz is a quite common activity, people may do it several times a day, some may even seem doing it all the time.
Here is the code again: +2189623809685983033395820256967
It encodes a giveaway code in 12 letters (there is a number inside, simply written out, and upper/lowercase is denoted by U-s and L-s).
A bit more than a week. Games: some parts of a Capcom bundle, an obvious fake AAA giveaway, and one of the biggest AAA flops from this year, deluxe edition.
Hints
(Clarification hint: when you xyz in real life, you use a single code at a time)
Obscure pre-hint: this is not a Huffmann code, do not read too much about it...Second part of obscure pre-hint: not much = read the first sentence only (English Wikipedia).
Third part of obscure hint: follow the links, and look for a short list in one of them. Keep the + in mind.
In short: this is a common type of prefix code, and definitely not a Huffmann code.
Revealing hint: the plus sign added (in front of the sequence)
Medium hint in my bump-chain.
When teachers wanted us to learn a lot of numbers (history lessons typically), we summarized the task as "learning the phonebook". Why would I write it here? I do not know.
Main solution
The puzzle was built around dialing prefix codes. While they have somewhat varied lenght (like +1 for North America, +36 for Hungary or +356 for Malta), they never start with each other. So they can be told apart without putting breaks into the sequence.
I used http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country_calling_codes, English names of the countries. The simplest way to look up was keeping a + in front of the numbers as you were typing into a find box.
jOG5Y is the giveaway code for the Lost Planet 3 of the main train.
The description explicitly said that there were 12 letters, so if someone found the 2-letter ISO country codes (24 "letters" in total), that should not cause too much problems either.
Warmup stats*
Pony stats*
* Data was updated in 8-12 hour periods for the last 3 days. It shows the final entry statistics now.
Comment has been collapsed.