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        riddles >> medium >> HackClubPuzzle
        
(Message started by: nakli on Jan 11^th, 2011, 4:48pm)

Title: HackClubPuzzle
Post by nakli on Jan 11^th, 2011, 4:48pm

Hack Club, the hands-on hacker fest from the minds behind Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian's "uncorporation" Breadpig, is happening in New York on Friday.

The time is 9 p.m. and the location is Manhattan, but the exact address won't be published: Hack Club is restricting entry to those who can solve this word puzzle(at the bottom), derived from sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, to decipher the address of the location:

To prevent just anyone from showing up and to boost the mystique of Hack Club, each Hack Club will be at a different, secret location! Only those 1337 enough to solve a (geeky, of course) puzzle will be granted the whereabouts.

Is it in a blanket fort?

------

[HackClubPuzzle] can be downloaded from http://breadpig.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/HackClubPuzzle.doc

Title: Re: HackClubPuzzle
Post by SMQ on Jan 13^th, 2011, 5:28am

I, for one, wouldn't post a solution until after Friday, just to ensure no one is using our pleasant little forum to boost their hacker cred without actually solving the puzzle! ;)

--SMQ

Title: Re: HackClubPuzzle
Post by Grimbal on Jan 13^th, 2011, 9:22am

~~I don't think that~~ I know for sure I will not make it to New York on Friday. That's why I haven't tried much to solve the problem.

This being said, the document reproduces exactly Asimov's rules of robotics as they can be seen on Wikipedia. So don't loose your time decrypting that.
I would look for:
- some form of steganography
- some obscure property in the document
- the http headers

Title: Re: HackClubPuzzle
Post by ThudnBlunder on Jan 13^th, 2011, 12:19pm

on 01/13/11 at 09:22:58, Grimbal wrote:

This being said, the document reproduces exactly Asimov's rules of robotics as they can be seen on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics) is good but has nothing about Asimov's rules for LEGO robots. :P

Title: Re: HackClubPuzzle
Post by Grimbal on Jan 14^th, 2011, 12:22am

That can be fixed ;).

Title: Re: HackClubPuzzle
Post by nakli on Jan 15^th, 2011, 1:15pm

Some obvious observations:
(But none of them helping me so far)
[hide]1. linebreaks
2. All the spaces are in Ariel
3. The letters alternate between Courier New points 10 and 11

I have been digging around with a hex editor but couldn't find any useful patterns.[/hide] :(

Title: Re: HackClubPuzzle
Post by Grimbal on Jan 15^th, 2011, 1:37pm

I also noticed the 2 sizes, but couldn't decode the pattern.
For the line breaks, it seems the text has been cut into roughly equal lengths.
Removing spaces makes nice 48-character blocs

Title: Re: HackClubPuzzle
Post by towr on Jan 15^th, 2011, 2:24pm

Remove the spaces and all full lines are 48 character, and the last 24.
I suspect it's 45 characters in 8-bit ascii code, but I can't really be bothered to turn the thing into ones and zeroes by hand.

[edit]
Ok, fine, maybe I can.
[hide]210 elizabeth st 4th floor New York, NY 10012[/hide]
[/edit]

Title: Re: HackClubPuzzle
Post by Grimbal on Jan 15^th, 2011, 3:41pm

That's exactly what I was about to post... :-/

Title: Re: HackClubPuzzle
Post by nakli on Jan 15^th, 2011, 5:48pm

Sorry for the verbosity, but is this moving to 'easy' :P