You have the strangest feeling of deja vu...

Yesterday, we received a mysterious transmission from a previously unknown exoplanet. Our best scientists have been working around the clock, but so far all they've figured out is that it contains codes for two VR games. Seeing as how there is so little grant money in the area of "free games" (probably because publication always leads to ninja infestations), they have elected to assign this research to their graduate assistants.

...That would be you. Here's the transmission. Get to work.

* * * *
Begin transmission 23 21 24
31 16 21 25
19 08 06 End transmission

Meanwhile, the military has decided to take action against this clear threat to world economic stability. You only have seven days before the fleet arrives and nukes the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure--unless you crack the code first.

Good luck.


Apologies for the short duration. I only decided to make it into a puzzle after I'd already created the giveaways. D: Fixed. Now there's a reasonable amount of time to solve the mystery. (Giveaways end on August 5th.)

As usual, I will be adding hints at random intervals. The first one is rather necessary to solve the puzzle, but the rest will be optional.

Hint 1: All but the first two letters of the transmission are capitalized.
Hint 2: Numbers come before letters in alphabetical order.
Hint 3: Only one of the codes contains numbers.

Solution:
The transmission consists of a simple substitution cypher. Two main questions must be answered to solve the puzzle: What is the key to the cypher, and which direction is the transmission read in?

Hint 1 simplifies the possibilities considerably. There are 26 letters and 10 numerals, a total of 36 possibilities. If capitals were encoded separately, there would be another 26 letters, bringing the total to 62. Since the highest number in the transmission is 31, we can safely assume that capitals and lowercase are not encoded differently.

Hint 2 leads to the key to the cypher. The transmission doesn't contain enough characters to do a statistical analysis, so the key should either be found in a secret keyphrase hidden in the description of the puzzle, or it could simply be the alphabet in order. By referring to alphabetical order, this hint implies it was the latter, and that the numbers 0-9 come before the letters A-Z. Therefore, we have the following key:

00 = 0     06 = 6     12 = C     18 = I     24 = O     30 = U
01 = 1     07 = 7     13 = D     19 = J     25 = P     31 = V
02 = 2     08 = 8     14 = E     20 = K     26 = Q     32 = W
03 = 3     09 = 9     15 = F     21 = L     27 = R     33 = X
04 = 4     10 = A     16 = G     22 = M     28 = S     34 = Y
05 = 5     11 = B     17 = H     23 = N     29 = T     35 = Z

Hint 3 gives us the final piece of information we need. There are two obvious ways of reading the transmission: left-to-right or top-to-bottom. (The begin and end transmission cells eliminate right-to-left and bottom-to-top as possibilities.) It would be simple enough to try both, but looking carefully you can see that top-to-bottom produces two codes with numbers. Therefore, left-to-right must be the correct way to read the transmission.

Having worked all that out, the transmission reads "23 21 24 31 16 21 25 19 08 06", which can be deciphered into "N L O V G L P J 8 6". Group by fives and lowercase the first two letters for "nlOVG LPJ86". Plug those codes into the appropriate URLs, and you get links to the giveaways: Archangel Hellfire - Fully Loaded and Star Trek: Bridge Crew.

I had fun making this puzzle and hope you all enjoyed trying to solve it! Let me know what you think in the comments. :)

4 years ago*

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omg ┐(´Θ`)┌

Is it the basement of area 51?

🛸🛸🛸

4 years ago
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The content and hints have changed since the first appearance.XD
Anyway, I do not have VR.

I look forward to the next puzzle.
(*p'Θ'q)

4 years ago
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I decided that two days wasn't long enough, and since no one had entered yet I deleted and remade the giveaways with longer deadlines. (Not sure I'd do that again now that I know I'm never getting those slots back, but c'est la vie.) The first version had different codes so I had to change the first hint, but the other hints didn't even exist in that version so they haven't been changed. :)

Oh and by the way, I was informed that one of the games doesn't actually require VR. I should put a note in the main post about that.

4 years ago
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.. bump

4 years ago
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Literally as I was adding another hint to the puzzle lol

4 years ago
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BUMP FOR SOLVED

4 years ago
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Congrats!

4 years ago
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How should i read it Left to Right or Up to Down ?

4 years ago
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Isn't that part of the puzzle? :P

4 years ago
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Dont know as it has Begin transmission and End transmission, i thougth it was supoosed to give the directions of how we are supposed to read it

4 years ago
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I mean, kind of? I'm not entirely happy with it though because I'm not sure you can logic it rather than guess. It's ok in this situation I suppose because there's only two logical possibilities*, but having to try both still leaves a sour taste in my mouth. (Ideally, both solutions would work, linking to valid giveaways either way, but I have yet to be that lucky with my GA codes!)

I dunno, might give a hint for this, but only after I've found a sufficiently cryptic way of saying it.


*Or at least, only two that Captwookie mentions in their post. There may or may not be others. ;)

4 years ago
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I was just asking cause of first hint

4 years ago
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Before trying any, I did create the codes for multiple solution methods. Personally, I think this kind of guess is just fine, since there are only so many options. If the code was AbCdE, but we had no idea which were capitalized, that would be bad. (I appreciate your hint)

4 years ago
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Bump for solved, but already had both. :(

4 years ago
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Very interesting puzzle. Yesterday I wasn't able to figure anything out but today with your hints I found the solution after messing around with the alignment.
I'm not a VR gamer but thanks for the fun with the puzzle!

4 years ago
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New hint.

4 years ago
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Turned out to be more simple than I thought

4 years ago
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Btw what are the games??

4 years ago
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Bump!

4 years ago
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bump

4 years ago
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Huh, went to solve it both ways, but based upon the 3rd hint, only one way can logically work.

Of course, it still didn't work for me. Not sure why. Any chance that you didn't include zero?


edit: answered my own question. Bump for solved. :)

4 years ago*
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Thanks for the hint, never ever would I have been able to come up with that. It would have been easier if I was a roman :D
But it was enjoyable, so thanks for the ride Droj :)

4 years ago
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Yeah, I'm an IT guy and used to be a "real" coder (before I got old and was able to ask younger, smarter people to do all of that for me :D), so I ALWAYS start with 0. But when I took off my coder hat...wondered if my entire data set was shifted one position. Yep. ;)

4 years ago
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Solved for bump

4 years ago
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Solved! Didn't enter because I'm too poor for VR ;w;

4 years ago
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bump

4 years ago
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Bump to add warning because GMG is changing the rules. Every once in a while they pull something like this reminding me why I swore never to buy from them again. Maybe I'll remember this time.

I am so sorry for the mess, everyone.

edit: Appears to be a false alarm, thank goodness.

4 years ago*
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Added the solution. What do you all think? I would love to hear whether you used the same logic as I did, whether the hints helped or not, was it too easy, too hard, should I keep doing puzzles like this? I want to know! Thanks, and hopefully I'll see you again next time. I have something rather ambitious planned, but in the meantime I could probably do a few smaller puzzles like this if there's interest.

4 years ago
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