Cardano Puzzler #1 (Closed)
Posted on twitter on April 18th 2019: https://twitter.com/vsubhuman/status/1118793860384210944
Solution is available here: solution
“There’s 1000 #Cardano $ADA behind these numbers. Take it. Bounty will slowly grow with time, but remember that someone else might take it first at any moment.”
Reward address:
https://clio.one/tracker/address/Ae2tdPwUPEZGEAXH8tPVZU5fFxmFoYrqPwyvXpCCkPRgFF1LMoyYrFzC7uA
https://adascan.net/address/Ae2tdPwUPEZGEAXH8tPVZU5fFxmFoYrqPwyvXpCCkPRgFF1LMoyYrFzC7uA/
Closing
This was the first Cardano Puzzler created in these series. It sparked a surprising lot of interest in the community, but unfortunately it is the time for me to admit that it’s not a good puzzler at all, and much more than this, it seems to me at the moment that even if solved - it might not provide the feeling of an achievement, because I realize now it might overly-depend on blind guessing, which was not the initial intent.
Having created and published this puzzler allowed me to learn way more than I understood before, about what a good puzzler is. The main point and the main complication is, of course, to make a puzzle not only complex and interesting just as a riddle, but also to make it just the right amount simple, so it can be solved without blind guessing and, which is more, without requiring an additional input from me. This first puzzler was a great teaching excercise for me, but unfortunately lacks the quality of being just enough solvable.
In order to not suddenly steal people’s attempt to maybe still solve it the closing workflow will be:
- The closing of the puzzle is announced on the website and on twitter
- Anyone still has a chance to solve it before the closing time
- On May 27th 2019 12 pm (noon) UTC - puzzler will be closed (if not solved before that)
- Anyone can also join the Gitter Chat (https://gitter.im/cardano-puzzle/community) and propose their best solution theory before the closing time. Each proposed theory MUST include hashtag
#solution - When puzzler is closed - the author of the first message with the closest theory will be reworded the puzzler price (will be sent manually to the address provided publicly in the same gitter chat). If there are multiple equally-good theories proposed - prize can be split equally between them all.
In the meantime I will work on and publish new better puzzlers, with lessons learned from this first one.
Hints
1
2
No specific technical or protocol knowledge is required to get from these numbers to the wallet with the prize
Including looking thru the BIP39 list of words
3
4
5
What historically happened to some alphabet letters you now can do to words. (This hint will not help you if you don’t know yet what previous hint means)
6
D for Different
Breadcrumbs
1
If you know how 24 is related to letters: TTOV - you are on the right track
2
If you are down to 3 symbols - you are on the right track