unforum

[Sgresso]

I may not know Code and stuff but Logic stuff I am pretty good at.
and besides how fun is it to crack something on the first try...

[Sgresso]

carlwebb said:
I like this strategy. The one concern I have is that we apparently need three answers for each question ("1/3 & 0/3 correct observations"). If that's true, we don't yet even know the format for entering them (comma-separated?) let alone having guesses for them.

I'm considering guessing 10,1,2 and 15,3,4. The first number of each is the one Tesseract assigned. I'll hold off on my guess until there's some consensus on whether this is a good idea. Also, if having some people enter multiple numbers IS a good idea, how many people should we have do it? And should we assign the other numbers using a scheme like Tesseract's as well? (Probably.)

this was just posted on the wakefull agent page.

i think Carl is right on his guesses
we are looking at 3 numbers for each guess

[LatentMoths]

Sgresso, one thing about your theory that I just noticed is that it doesn't fully coincide with the Batch 1 results. In yesterday's text (if I counted correctly) there was 1 semicolon and 4 commas which is exactly what ladyindigo submitted. It returned only one correct. So it could still be true that either semicolons or commas is correct for one of the solutions but I don't think it can work for both. Feel free to punch holes in my logic if I'm missing something. Still it's one of the better ideas I've heard.

[ALISDAIRPARK]

[Silverkun]

A few things I've rejected as probable answers:

-Number of sentences
-Number of capital letters
-Number of punctuation marks

A few things I'm pondering as things that'll help:

-Finding poisons or parasites in the text provided (I don't know any short forms of poisons, but it strikes me that perhaps "tick" or something like that may help...?)
-Counting different kinds of punctuation (There's 1 dash and 1 semicolon in the text provided that ladyindigo found, though that wouldn't explain why Kevin got a hit for putting in "6" in the first field.)
-Numbers of letters per word (6 letters in the word poison, 9 in the word parasites; perhaps significant?)

A few things that I figure could be solid answers/directions
-
-
-Okay, I don't have anything here, but it was a nice thought...

I'm still all for the idea of tossing in with the mass-batch idea that was mentioned above, assuming I'm not hit with a bolt of inspiration. T

hough it strikes me that perhaps there would only be one digit in the required number...? That would only require 10 people starting from 0/9 and moving over to 9/0? That would bring the number alot lower than the 24 originally proposed...?

I'm also thinking that we should gather and consolidate a post for the answers proposed.

Perhaps this needs it's own thread?

Hunting for Vacuum Tubes for the Batch Processor
-R

[ALISDAIRPARK]

@~*7%$ - forgot 0 in the list Doh!

BTW we should also be considering the numbers people failed with, that's a whole load of info that I hadn't thought of looking at until now..

[macwebby]

today's guess

[Silverkun]

Something else to consider:

What an annoying thought. What if we don't just need numbers? What if words or ASCII characters are required??

AUGH!

-R

[carlwebb]

Hi, all! Just got an account here. Thanks, Sgresso, for mirroring some of the stuff I posted on the wakeful agent board. Looks like there's some good discussion here.

First, a random observation: Given that The Jungle's claim to fame was exposing unsavory practices in meat packing, "poison" and "parasites" are certainly relevant to the text -- not to mention disturbing. However, the biggest problem with any scheme based on the overall text of The Jungle is that the text Kevin provided isn't from it, or from any other document we've been able to find.

I have a bit less faith in my proposal to guess multiple numbers, now that I know that Ladyindigo's guess had multiple numbers, and yet only the first of each was accepted as input. I may submit a guess with three comma-separated numbers (instead of spaces as she did) just to see if they're valid input. If the batch processor again treats such a guess as being a single-number guess, I'll assume only one is needed, and that Ilikepucks/Tesseract (I think you both proposed this) are right that we need to have correct answers over three days.

Assuming we do want a systematic attack (sounds so much nicer than brute force, no? ) for today's strategy (and I think we do), should we stick with the one already proposed? I liked Silverkun's observation that we might want to use smaller numbers, and include 0s. Mainly this is because the two numbers that got some positive response were the 6 in Kevin's guess and the 1 in Ladyindigo's.

[Silverkun]

"Systematic Attack" It has a nice ring to it...

Okay. Let's see here...

First, if Poison = a and Parasites = b, then for Batch 1 (5/1/2006):

a-1/3
1

a-0/3
2
3
4
5
6
7
18
27

b-0/3
1
2
3
4
8
9
10
15
21
27
60


I really think we should look into why Kevin got a hit on a 6 in the "example" phrase and ladyindigo got a hit on Batch 1.

What happened 6 times in the first and 1 time in the second?

Additionally, I suggest that a few more people try 3 numbers in each field I'll propose myself as a guinea pig for that little experiment. Commas have already been tried. Shall we try colons? hyphens? semi-colons?

I also think that whoever goes in for the systematic attack (approach? attempt?) should call out here and/or in the SC forums as to what they're trying so that we don't get duplicates.

And I'm still of a mind to have another thread started. Does anyone have any objections?

Pondering a Batch Processor Emulator,
-R

[Sgresso]

also i think we are forgeting it may be a book cypher wher we count leters from a start point.


poison is 6
parasite is 8?

just another random thought.
I am working thru the combonations

[Silverkun]

[carlwebb]

Silverkun: to answer your question, no, I wouldn't mind another thread.

[Svengoolie]

Good job at all the work you guys have done today. I'm still clueless, but I'd like to say that this thing better get more story-like soon. They promised an interactive novel... all we've gotten is a slight backround reason for this puzzle being there.

[Silverkun]

New Thread Started