Description

Follow the rules listed below to determine the GA code, All rules are numbered.

  1. The GA code consists of α characters.
  2. The arithmetic solution to (2α-β) is a Prime Number
  3. There is only one NUMBER in GA code.
  4. The alphabetic position of the 4th character in the GA code is 4 letters after the character in the code's 2nd position.
  5. Last letter in GA code is upper case.
  6. The first three letters of the GA code are the same case.
  7. The rule two rules before this one is false.
  8. The NUMBER in GA code is the first or last character in GA code.
  9. One of the characters is either first or last letter in the English alphabet.
  10. The character mentioned above is not the final letter of GA code.
  11. The NUMBER in GA code is not a Prime Number.
  12. The alphabetic position of the character in the 2nd position of the GA code is the The arithmetic solution of ([It's position] + [NUMBER from GA code]) (i.e. n'th letter of alphabet.)
  13. Not all letters are the same case.
  14. Letter in 4th position of the GA code looks similar to a number and is often confused with it in GA codes.
  15. The alphabetic position of the last character from the GA code, which is a single-digit number, and the NUMBER from GA code are two different numbers yet both are evenly divisible by the same number β=/=1 (without remainder).
  16. The arithmetic solution to (α+β) is NOT the NUMBER from GA code, and the number of rules in this puzzle divided by 4 is also NOT the NUMBER from GA code.

PS. There is no hidden reason behind bolding some NUMBER words. Sometimes i use number to talk about numbers themselves and sometimes I talk about one specific NUMBER so made it this way just to make things easier for you guys ;)

PPS. If you have questions, find a bug or anything, want to beg for hints (not that I'm gonna give you any;p) - post comments in this topic not in main GA topic. If all people start posting about all 2X puzzles in main topic it will become unreadable ;)

PPPS: I'm an idiot, forgot to add link to event topic ;p

MORE PUZZLES AND AWESOME REWARDS AT MARCH PUZZLE EVENT TOPIC


SOLUTION:

Solution to Logic - Reasoning:
GA code you were looking for was http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/9KZOf/blackguards . Only 4 GA codes meet all rules set in Entry GA. 9K[AZ]O[cf] so you had only a total of 4 codes to check: 9KAOc, 9KAOf, 9KZOc and 9KZOf.
There were multiple ways and routes to get solution plus some rules were totally not necessary and only there to let you check with multiple sources if what you got is right. You can see a lot of discussion over the puzzle and solutions in Blackguards GA linked above, so below I will just present you one of possible solutions.

  1. From #3 we know there is only one NUMBER in GA code.
  2. Rule #8 tells us NUMBER is either 1st or last character of GA code.
  3. Rule #15 says about alphabetic position of last character in GA code mreaning it must be alphabet letter and it cannot be number, thus NUMBER must be 1st character of GA code and 4 next characters are letters.
  4. Rule #13 tells us that not all letters are the case mase, aka we have lower and upper case letters in GA code.
  5. Rules #5+#7 tell us that last letter in GA code (and we already know it will be on 5th position) must be lower case.
  6. Rule #6 tells us that 1st three etters must be the same case. since we know there are both lower and upper case letters in GA code and 5th character is lower case it means letters on positions 2,3,4 bust all be upper case.
  7. From #14 we learn that 4th letter is often confused with number in GA codes. We can think of several letters like that - O confused with 0, l (lower case L), I (capital i) both confused with 1, b confused with 6.
  8. So it cannot be l (lower case L) or b, because they are lower case. 4th character can be O or I (upper case i).
  9. I is 9th letter of alphabet, O is 15th.
  10. From #4 we can find possible corresponding letters for 2nd position in GA. I->D or O->K.
  11. Using #12 we check these letters. for D it would mean that 4=2+NUMBER, NUMBER would be 2, and as #11 tells us NUMBER is not Prime it cannot be 2. So it must be O, K combination.
  12. Using #12 again knowing it's K we get 11=2+NUMBER. So we know the NUMBER is 9.
  13. From #15 we get that alphabetic position of last letter is a single-digit number (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9), and NUMBER (9) are two different numbers divisible by the same number β=/=1 (without remainder). We can divide 9 without remainder by 1, 3 and 9. β=/=1 and these are 2 dfifferent numbers, so β=3. What other numbers 1-8 are divisible by 3? Only 3 qand 6. aka last letter in GA code is either 3rd or 6th letter of alphabet, so it's c or f.
  14. Let us look on our GA code now: 9K?O[cf].
  15. Rule #9 tell us that one of the letters is either first or last letter in alphabet, so a or z. We don't have a nor z in GA code yet so it must be on 3rd position. We also know it must be upper case. This way we ended up with GA code 9K[AZ]O[cf] which gives us only 4 possible solutions and which we can easilly bruteforce :>

Reserved for important updates :>

8 years ago
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Puzzle got a 1st solver :>

8 years ago
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2nd solver

8 years ago
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Done !
It's kinda confusing to resolve, it took me like 1/2h ... so I don't even imagine the time to create this :p

8 years ago*
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Congrats ;) Didn't take that much time itself tbh - maybe an hour, probably less - the real struggle was translating it - it could not be out-of-my-head translation, everything had to be spelt correctly and could not be interpret in different ways and for that I needed a native speaker, first got a help from a friend but he had to go in mid-check to get back later, then I got mrlint from below, a real grammar nazi and translation + proofreading ended up taking at least 2-3 times more time than creating puzzle itself :>

8 years ago
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Can we expect the rules to not be misleading / useless ?

8 years ago
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Besides what Rule #7 covers there is no misleading ;) If there was there would be a rule for that ;)
As for useless - nothing is useless, but some rules cover the same character for example to allow getting to it from different positions ;) So if you already figured something using rules #X and #Y rule #Z may be useless to you :>

8 years ago
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Can I ask you something here, even if it could spoil the solution? Or can I add you for 30s on steam? The mistake I'm making may just be a misunderstanding of my part .

Edit: it was a misunderstanding on my end

8 years ago*
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even as you answered yourself I will still answers for sake of others ;) If you have comments that do not spoil/hint solution or what you think it may be - feel free to post here. If you believe you may be spoiling solution - add me, better safe than sorry, I have no mercy for puzzle leakers ;p

8 years ago
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I didn't want to make any extraneous comment myself.

Just as disclosure, I assisted with checking the english of the puzzle, so any perceived pedantry and/or extraneous verbosity can be blamed on me... also i don't know the answer to the puzzle.

8 years ago
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Even if you think that some clues may be "misleading / useless" I believe they are all internally consistent.

8 years ago
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I'm an idiot, added link to event topic :>

8 years ago
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changed one rule even more to give you all even a better hint ;p

8 years ago
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I don't get this part => "The alphabetic position of the character" What does it mean?

It's "x character from left side", or does it have something in common with alphabet? I don't understand syntax xD

8 years ago
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letter on 1st alphabetic position will be A, letter on 2nd will be B and so on ;) I'm using english/latin alpabet for this puzzle :>

8 years ago
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7. The rule two rules before this one is false.

So is it rule 4 or 5? Because 7-2=5 but 7 > two rules (6&5) > 4.

8 years ago
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That's not how language work ;) is number before 1 0 or -1? ;p

8 years ago
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Well, both 0 AND -1 stand before 1...

8 years ago
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the number 1 position before 1 is 0 or -1...?

8 years ago
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Ok, ok, I get it :P

8 years ago
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Got 2 characters...job well done I think :D

8 years ago
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GJ, 2 done, 3 to go :D:

8 years ago
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In theory...yes... :P

8 years ago
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Questions:

Rule 2: The alphabetic position of the 4th character in the GA code is 4 letters after the character in the code's 2nd position.

Does this mean if, for example, the 4th character is "E", then the 2nd character is "A", because E is 4 letters after A?

Rule 15: ... number ß=/=1 (without remainder).

This is ss, and not the beta that is found in rules 2 and 16?

8 years ago
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@2 exactly :>

@15 thanks for catching up on that ;) I must have clicked wrong symbol when copying from special symbols tab into text file :> Fixed already - the thing in #15 is the same beta I'm talking about in other rules ;)

8 years ago
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Hmmmm I must be missing something, the codes I tried don't work. Also rule 16 seems kind of redundant with the number I derived. Ah well...

8 years ago
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there are 4 possible codes in total that fullfill all rules of the puzzle, 1 of them being GA code ;) during solving you should get where there's a choice between 2 possible characters ;) So if you do everything right you have 25% chance for right code asnd if it doesn't work change the character which you should know may be different ;)

8 years ago
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I solved it now :)

8 years ago*
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GJ

8 years ago
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What does ß=/=1 mean?

8 years ago
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that β does not equal one or β is different from 1.

8 years ago
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I think I understand everything stated except for number 7... have no clue what that means....

8 years ago
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what don't you understand? it says something is false aka the opposite thing is true :>

8 years ago
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The "rule two rules" before this one, would mean rule two, I suppose? I am also meddling at the same part.

8 years ago
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not sure if I follow, maybe I understand something wrong, so explain me - how is rule 2 rules before rule #7 rule #2?

8 years ago
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So, the "rule two" rules before this one. There is only one "rule two" before rule seven. That is how I get it. Or do you mean that two random rules before rule seven are false?

8 years ago
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ok i get you now :> It doesn't mean Rule #2 (aka 2nd rule) but rule that is two rules before aka not the previous one but one before it :>

8 years ago*
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Wow I thought I had this.. time for a break...

8 years ago
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Nah, don't have idea how to solve it. Just as this puzzle with logical gates, mathematic / logic in not my strong point D:

I preffer to leave computioning to excel / statistica :E

I'm curious how many people will be able to solve all puzzles, there is possibility that there won't be enough people to even get 5 entries in these bonus GAs xD

8 years ago
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no idea ;p This was solved by 15 ppl in less than 2 days so not so bad :>

8 years ago
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I think I'm having problems with Q12.. so does it mean ([It's position in the ga code] + [NUMBER from GA code]) ?
and the position of the character in 2nd position is 2.. so ([2] + [NUMBER from GA code]) ?
don't know what else I could've got wrong in my version of the code :P

8 years ago
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it does mean it's position in GA code, so 2+NUMBER=Alphabetic.Position of mentioned character.

8 years ago
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hmm.. can't figure out my mistake then :/
can I message you on steam about that? :D

8 years ago
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This is completely incomprehensible, I can't make any sense out of it :

"7. The rule two rules before this one is false."

8 years ago
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then maybe read the other comments - it was already discussed, at least twice ;)

8 years ago
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At 12 it says :

The alphabetic position of the character in the 2nd position of the GA code is the The arithmetic solution of ([It's position] + [NUMBER from GA code]) (i.e. n'th letter of alphabet.)

Specifically the part I made bold, does it refer to the desired position of the NUMBER in the GA code?

It's the only part of the puzzle that gives me a huge headache along with the supposed letter/number that everyone confuses in SG (question 14) because you see I can think of at least 3 different letters/numbers that can be confusing, ffs....

8 years ago*
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no, why would it refer to number's position, if number was not mentioned in the sentence before? Let me present you with more life-like sentence using the same form:
Jackie's position in queue was 8th, his position was close to the end of line.
so [It's position] refers to mentioned lcharacter's position in GA code not to NUMBER position in GA code.

As for letter that looks like a number in GA codes - there are exactly 3 letters like you mentioned that may be confysed with number in GA code, but ONLY ONE of them also fits other rules as well :>

8 years ago
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I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this puzzle. I could swear I have the right answer, but no variant of it is working. Possibly it's because I'm conflating the words "character" and "letter" in the puzzle? They appear to be mostly interchangeable as the puzzle is written, but if they're not then I'm not even sure where to begin.

8 years ago
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character may be either letter or number. GA code 123Az consists of 5 characters but only 2 letters ;)

8 years ago
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Found four different codes that matches all the rules, however I either reach the "steamgifts page not found" page or the home. I've never solved a puzzle pointing to a GA before, just ITH puzzles that shows the link to the GA page, so probably I have the code right but I'm failing when I try to use it. Time for a break and put my pulsating brain to a better use, as watching TV...

By the way, congrats to the solvers!

8 years ago
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Then I recommend looking here: http://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/TLR8m/zelgh-magic-guide-to-basic-sg-puzzling-update-june-2015 :> (shameless selfpromotion)

But if you got the puzzle right and get page not forund - you probably forget that you have to add "/" at the end of every GA code :>

For example - to enter this GA http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/W9izh link will not do, you have to use http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/W9izh/

8 years ago
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Thanks for the answer, very nice guide indeed.

You are right, I'm getting the page not found error when the final / is omitted, but adding the /, I'm being re-routed to steamgifts.com, so need to check my logic again, with a fresh brain...

8 years ago
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GL then! :>

8 years ago
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The rule two rules before this one is false.

I find it hard to understand what does this one means.

8 years ago
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read comments - it was already covered in several comms b4 ;)

8 years ago
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Got it. Thanks!

8 years ago
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Do alphabets go from 0 to 25 or 1 to 26?

8 years ago
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1-26

8 years ago
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I have 4 codes that i think that are following your rules but they arent working, can i add you in steam?

8 years ago
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sure

8 years ago
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Nvm, the problem was the initial letter :)

8 years ago
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The rule two rules before this one is false.

I found this completely comprehensible. I don't why it's tripping people up-- either language barriers or overthinking...or maybe both.
BTW, I just discovered this whole "event." This is one of the few puzzles that appeals to me-- maybe I'll have a go at it later today. Thank you.

8 years ago
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Always forgot it, zelghadis, thanks a lot for your guide about puzzles. I began with it and its in my favourites :)

8 years ago
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glad I could help then :>

8 years ago
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Hmm.. I'm stuck here and I'd afraid to get locked out if I try any more combinations. I'd like to ask a few questions, if I may, without giving to much away, and see if I'm on the right track

Clue 14: Given the upper/lower case clues, it seems like there is only one obvious answer here.... perhaps?

Clue 9-10: So if this isn't the final character, and there are limitations on the final character, can we make any assumptions on whether this leads to the first or last letter?

Clue 15: Is the wording here is that β is the number that these can be divisible by? Is if possible for either number to be the same as β?

Thanks for whatever help you think is fair to give.

8 years ago
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lat me add you on Steam, not to give away too many hints publicly as I see you got quite a few things right but any details would be too much for people who get nothing right :>

8 years ago
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ping me on steam when you accept invite, then we may talk :>

8 years ago
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never mind solved...

PS: Also feel free to correct the typo : "of the of the" on bullet 15.

8 years ago*
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Sorry for making some advertisement, but I just thought of this science event and reasoned that you'd probably enjoy my current Murder Mystery-puzzle. It's all about skills of deduction.

7 years ago
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thanks for invite, but I don't have neraly enough time atm to do any puzzles ;p

7 years ago
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Hey!! I remember how much fun it was having you in the Science event as a puzzle creator... here's a chance at another event I'm doing-- hope you can return with designing a puzzle!!

6 years ago
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Sorry jeff but not a chance ;p I don't even have time to play games atm ;p I am preparing for very important job interview, learning a lot of stuff and it's occupying most of my time ;p

6 years ago
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Sure... good luck on RL! Wish you the best.

The event runs from Oct till Jan 2019... 15 months with landmarks every week so if you ever have a breather and want to... we will be here!

6 years ago
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will see ;p If I manage to get the job I will be first going for 2 month training delegation to USA so even less free time ;p

6 years ago
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