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The man making puzzles for hackers (bbc.com)
58 points by jackgavigan on Aug 9, 2015 | hide | past | favorite | 13 comments


Somewhat related: Are there any puzzle subscription services out there? I think it'd be a really interesting business to receive an innovative, creative puzzle weekly or monthly that show some real effort and artistry. Maybe it would be a mix of physical and digital puzzles. Does that exist?

If not, I might have to do that :)


One such thing was http://blacklettergame.com/ which I guess is being re-run (with new content) periodically.

Also there's P&A Magazine (pronounced "Panda"): http://pandamagazine.com/


Here's a puzzle...

Decode me 3 times or 64:

WW0wNFoyTklTbkJsYlZWbldtMDVlVWxJYkhaa1V6UTk=

winner gets the prize written in the message.


:-)

No soup for me!


given that by random chance the first decoding was 32-bytes, the same size as a bitcoin private key, the actual decoding was a bit of a let down :(


:( no prize for me


Got anything tougher?


Here you are:

  Vm0wd2QyVkhVWGhUV0d4VFltdHdVRlp0ZUhkVU1WcDBaVWhrYWxKc1d
  ucFhhMk0xWVVaS2MxZHVhRmRTZWtFeFdWY3hTMUl4WkhOWGJGcFhUVE
  ZHTTFaclpEUlpWMUpJVm10V1UySklRbTlVVmxwM1ZWWmtWMVZyU214U
  01EVjVWR3hhVjFWdFNrbFJiVGxWVm14YU0xbHFSbHBsUm1SMFVteGtU
  bEpHV2paV2JUQXhWVEZSZUZkdVRsaGhlbXhoV1d0a2IxVXhjRmhsUjN
  SWVVsUldXVmt3V2tOV01rVjNZMFpTVjFaV2NGTmFSRVpEVld4Q1ZVMU
  VNRDA9
SCNR


watch my name, I'll throw something out there.


In case anyone is wondering about the odd font on the yellow press pass, it's actually a phonetic alphabet for English called Shavian. It was a project of George Bernard Shaw, who was a vigorous spelling reformist. It didn't get very far, but there was a book published in Shavian and a more useful spinoff called Quikscript. If you're interested in a rare or cryptic shorthand for note taking, either might be for you.


This sounds really cool. Anyone written about the previous puzzles?


Here's a pretty nuts write up from last year's winners: http://elegin.com/dc22/.





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