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 Forum index » Diversions » Perplex City Puzzle Cards » PXC: Silver Puzzle Cards
[PUZZLE] #251 - Silver - The Thirteenth Labour - READ POST#1
Moderators: AnthraX101, bagsbee, BrianEnigma, cassandra, Giskard, lhall, Mikeyj, myf, poozle, RobMagus, xnbomb
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QBKooky
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Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 281
sackofpotatoes wrote:
Any chance we could get a "Assault on the Thirteenth Labour" leaderboard? I sure would like to know just how many units some of you have crunched through. Everyone loves a little competition right? Wink


Agreed! I've been calculating my own stats (that is, what % of total WU have I myself calculated...) ... although when you get right down to it, none of that will really help us find the answer, because even though those of us that have our clients on longer have a better chance of getting the answer, the WUs we've already completed (with no answer given) are essentially meaningless. Sort of. Razz
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PostPosted: Wed May 31, 2006 6:03 pm
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groovygirl20
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Joined: 04 Jan 2006
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Location: Lincolnshire! ENGLAND!! WOO!!

 		i agree ... leaderboards will get people frustrated because if they find out a person did like 2 units and won all them prizes then people would be like... "but they didn't put as much work into it as us"
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PostPosted: Wed May 31, 2006 6:44 pm
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e_nygma
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Joined: 17 May 2006
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Location: Maryland, US
groovygirl20 wrote:
i agree ... leaderboards will get people frustrated because if they find out a person did like 2 units and won all them prizes then people would be like... "but they didn't put as much work into it as us"


Hey, my 0.5% is more important than your 0.5%! Laughing

PostPosted: Wed May 31, 2006 7:50 pm
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chimera245
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Joined: 09 Mar 2006
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 		I am strongly against leaderboards, for sound reasons, as are the administrators of the www.13thlabour.tk site. Remember, the presence of a leaderboard can be as much a disincentive to some people as it is an incentive to others.

Add to this the fact that all participants would need to be polled for their approval to release that information - and that approval would need to be maintainable; that the information would need to be kept up to date (adding a statistical extraction overhead to the database) etc - suffice it to say leaderboards will NOT be appearing for the Assault.

At the end of the day we are all in this together, we will all get access to the answer.

As to the question about how will I know, any possible solves (we are only expecting one) will be displayed in the client's process window in Plain Text.

If they are watching that - they will see it before I do (I only check if any solutions have been flagged once a day on average.

I am of course hoping that they will let me have the pleasure - but at the end of the day once solved it is solved.

PostPosted: Wed May 31, 2006 9:28 pm
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sackofpotatoes
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Joined: 07 Feb 2006
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 		I didn't mean to stir things up with my leaderboard suggestion. My apologies. Embarassed I certainly did not mean to imply that I feel that this is an individual effort, or that every little 0.01% does not help. I just thought it would be fun. Consider the suggestion retracted (not that you saying no didn't also do so).

I sure hope you get the first solve, chimera245, but I agree, just putting this in the done pile will be enought for me (and my lowly 0.01%).

PostPosted: Wed May 31, 2006 10:10 pm
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e_nygma
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Joined: 17 May 2006
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Location: Maryland, US
chimera245 wrote:
As to the question about how will I know, any possible solves (we are only expecting one) will be displayed in the client's process window in Plain Text.


Stupid question: would the client then stop or would it keep processing?

Quote:
If they are watching that - they will see it before I do (I only check if any solutions have been flagged once a day on average.

I am of course hoping that they will let me have the pleasure - but at the end of the day once solved it is solved.


Okay, I hope what I am about to say is extremely obvious to all here on UF, but I'll say it anyway:

If you get the solve via the client that chimera245 and company wrote, you really should give it up. I realize the joy of having your name at the top of the solve list is a great thing. However, without their hard work, perserverance, and time, there wouldn't BE a solve. While I understand chimera245 just wants the card solved, be a sport and send it over to him and Guin before solving yourself. I'm sure they'll be nice and hold it quiet while you get 3rd on the solve board. Yes, I realize this is a community solve, but some people deserve a heck of a lot of credit and should be recognized for it.

PostPosted: Wed May 31, 2006 10:49 pm
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Rawling
Guest


 		My client currently gets stuck at:
Code:

Commencing Procesing
Simply Close the Window to Finish
Waiting for Server response...

This happens whether or not I set my (www) proxy in the config file. Any ideas?[/code]

PostPosted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 6:00 am
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Kender
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Joined: 09 Aug 2004
Posts: 264
Location: The Netherlands
e_nygma wrote:

Stupid question: would the client then stop or would it keep processing?

It will display "Possible on Key number:number" and on the next line the decoded text.
Then it will continue processing the current workUnit, after which it will contact the server to submit the work (with a flag indicating a possible success) and ask for more workUnits.

PostPosted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 6:02 am
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JebAtUni
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 		Just to add to Kender's post above, GuiN (IIRC, may have been chi tho) in IRC said that they would like to do the whole keyspace for completeness - so it would be nice if even when we've got the answer to continue running the client just to finish it off Wink

Jeb

PostPosted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 7:12 am
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anansi
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Joined: 11 Mar 2006
Posts: 51
Location: Leeds, UK

 		I'm all for Guin and chimera245 to get the first solves, without them noone would be getting it.

One question:
my girlfriend has been a star and runing the client if I forget to start it before I leave in the morning, but since she doesn't know what to look for, she's just turning it off when she thinks we're using too much electricity ( Rolling Eyes ). If I were to get decoded text, how would I know if it were the solve?

Jack

PostPosted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 8:20 am
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e_nygma
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Joined: 17 May 2006
Posts: 247
Location: Maryland, US
anansi wrote:
I'm all for Guin and chimera245 to get the first solves, without them noone would be getting it.

One question:
my girlfriend has been a star and runing the client if I forget to start it before I leave in the morning, but since she doesn't know what to look for, she's just turning it off when she thinks we're using too much electricity ( Rolling Eyes ). If I were to get decoded text, how would I know if it were the solve?

Jack


Based on the above message from Kender (that's the reason I asked my previous question), I would have to assume that if you are running it full time, that unless she saw the "Possible Solve" message, you wouldn't know. That's okay because the server would flag the work unit and then a more in-depth analysis could take place, and eventually, everyone would be told of the solution.

Out of curiousity, how many "Possible Solve" flags have you guys gotten in the first 12% of the search space? I also see we are back down to 10 WU downloads. Is this going to stay this way?

PostPosted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 9:09 am
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QBKooky
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Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 281

 		On further consideration, I can definitely see where you guys are coming from as far as no-leaderboard. Makes a lot of sense. Smile

On another note: I understand the reasoning behind sharing the solution (when someone gets it) with chimera and Guin before solving it yourself, but also keep in mind - this is a silver card. There are 800+ people running the client, and I am sure not all of those people own the card. Razz
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 1:50 pm
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chimera245
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e_nygma wrote:
Out of curiousity, how many "Possible Solve" flags have you guys gotten in the first 12% of the search space? I also see we are back down to 10 WU downloads. Is this going to stay this way?


We have had none so far, and (contrary to my original opinion) we are now not expecting any possibles other than the real answer.

The reasoning for this is as follows:

By our success criteria, each byte has to be below ASCII 127 (i.e. something printable). The odds of this for the first byte are approximately 1 in 2 (as there are 255 possible values for that byte.

The probability of both first and second byte being < 127 by accident is therefore 1 in 4 (1 in 2 * 1 in 2).

Now there are 160 bytes in the text, so the probability of a random solution being printable is 1 in 2 to the power 160. That is a BIG number, far far bigger than the actual number of actual combinations in the keyspace.

PostPosted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 7:24 pm
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Lilian
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Joined: 08 Jan 2006
Posts: 48
Location: Derbyshire

 		and after that this sounds like this way may be a waste of time Confused
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 7:41 pm
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Flynn
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Joined: 11 Nov 2003
Posts: 240
Location: UK
Lilian wrote:
and after that this sounds like this way may be a waste of time Confused


I disagree... Based on the assumption that there is an answer that lies within the ASCII range, by the time we've done 50% of the keyspace we'll be in pretty good territory. And if it's not all ASCII (although I expect it will be), then we start again with a wider range.

Thanks to the work of a few damn good coders, we have a client that is lots faster than what we started with - we will do this. And what does it cost you to run the client? Nothing, so even if, in the worst case, we don't find the answer then we've lost nothing.

An aside - I always thought there would be lots of false positives to sift through. I am extremely happy if this is wrong, but I'd appreciate if someone could explain why this would be the case. Cheers Smile

PostPosted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 8:26 pm
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