Thursday, June 24, 2010

Wang is moving!

Well, not technically but I am moving my blog to a new one over at my own domain: http://www.wangyip.ca.

Please update your feeds or bookmarks accordingly!

Although I haven't been posting very frequently, you may have missed two posts that I have made in the mean time:

One is on a better design for cookware handles:

http://wangyip.ca/2010/06/too-hot-to-handle-a-better-handle-for-ovenware/

And the other is some comments about a speech I heard at a Toastmaster meeting:

http://wangyip.ca/2010/06/4-types-of-speeches-4-types-of-audience-members/


See you soon at my new blog !

- Wang

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Toughest Developer Puzzle Ever 2

While checking out my feeds, I came across the toughest developer puzzle ever 2. No one has yet to solve it yet but then again, it was probably recently released and contains 100 'stages' or puzzles.

I'm going to keep track of where I am and try to work through the levels as best I can. I'll post the answers / hints to all the levels I have completed. Remember to always check the source for hints. I've included the answers in white below - you'll have to mouse over to see it.

1: Pretty easy - just change the step1 to step2

URL: http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/step1.aspx

2: Again, fairly easy, it involves changing the url to step3 (except changing the 3 to text)

URL: http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/step2.aspx

3: You can already see the morse code in the back. You can translate the morse code into english (say at a site like http://www.onlineconversion.com/morse_code.htm).

Spoiler: It says "FOUR DOT ASPX"

http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/stepthree.aspx

4: To get to step five, look at the grey text.

Spoiler: It spells "F IVE IS IT"

URL: http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/four.aspx

5: To get to step 6, check out the source for hints. It looks like you have to find a certain e-mail. If you enter the wrong value, you'll see an error message that tells you it has to do with a title of an e-mail.

Spoiler: You'll quickly figure out that its strong bad e-mails that you're looking for. If you google strongbad e-mails and then read from bottom up to get to the 44th e-mail, you'll find the password as "lures & jigs"

URL: http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/fiveisit.aspx

6: You'll encounter an error page. This error page isn't actually an error page and if you check the source, you'll see this.


URL: http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/lasteasyone.aspx

7: This is where it starts getting tough. You'll see some numbers in an image with black and red text. If you check the source, you'll see that the picture says "accounting.png".

Spoiler: If you take the black numbers and subtract them from the red, you'll get 5537. Converting this to text gives you the answer (LESS)

URL: http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/Level1.aspx


8: Where I am now. It looks like you have to take all the symbols and spell out the riddle, then solve the question to get the password. Working on it now.


Spoiler: So far, I have RUBY - RU = BY
Some kind of FOX - PO - FOX
PYTHON - P - T - (HAY - A) + S = ONS
DELPHI - PHI - EL = D
JAVA - VA - J = A
(PUGS? + H - G + TE + R + ?)


Spoiler2: Finally got it! I found out that the fox symbolizes FOXPRO and I quickly realized that it spelled out BYRON S DAUGHTER? who is Ada Lovelace.

URL: http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/levelthesecond.aspx

9: Looks like I have to look in the source for hints as to how to get to the next level.

Hm, not getting any insights. I get an error message that seems to say there shouldn't be any errors but at the same time, the puzzle.png image I see in the source isn't showing up. I feel like it has to do with getting that image to display. I'm also not sure if the URL is a hint to do anything.

Spoiler: Interesting. On a hint from one of my commenters (Thanks Sean!), I decided to try to see why the png image wasn't displaying. I started trying to change the format of the picture and such but that was getting nowhere quickly. On a whim, I decided to change my browser and in IE, I typed in the puzzle.png url and got the answer

URL: http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/elnumerothree.aspx

10:



So it looks like a math problem. Putting the figures into google, gets you: http://www.google.ca/search?q=115.524963+-+32.008958&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a and you then get an 'error' message that says:

you'll learn quickly that just because it looks like a math problem does not MEAN it's a math problem. Google can certainly help you find the answer. Bing, in this specific case, cannot.

Now on to Bing to see what it says. Well, its just a calculator which is disappointing. A quick lookup of the URL name "Thats not a knife" leads me to the movie Crocodile Dundee. I also used the figures in the image as longitude and latitude and have found that it matches the coordinates of a city called Perth Rottnest Island in Australia. Now, I'm trying to figure out the link between the two.
 

Spoiler: Rottnest is the password

URL: http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/ThatsNotAKnife.aspx

11: Interesting - kind of reminds me of the text based adventure for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Spoiler: After looking at everything that you can possibly look at, the answer is obvious: the door probably isn't locked so I tried pushing it.

URL: http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/TextBasedAdventure.aspx

12: A collection of the hints so far

Spoiler: If you've been collecting the clues so far, you'll find out that it reads "THIS IS TOUGH"

URL: http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/Clue.aspx

13: On to 13!

I can see that the paragraph on the page has a span element for each character. There's also an extra CSS stylesheet for this page called "style.css". Inside it looks like each span element has {display:none;} set as the property. Still trying to piece together everything. There's a hint out on the internet that says to look closer at the stylesheets but I'm not sure what to do with that knowledge quite yet.

Spoiler: I decided that instead of digging through everything, I would put the css and the paragraph with all the spans into a separate html file. Doing this reveals "Open Sesame" as the password

URL: http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/TheGreatCascade.aspx

14: Now on 14. Not too sure what to make of all the singles and bands quite yet.


The source has all these different clues including anagrams of the band names, how hit singles are often #2 in the album. I'm looking up some of the singles now to see where they are in the albums but I'm not sure what to do with that information once I have it.

Spoiler: I have figured it out! When you look up the albums that each of the singles are in and look at where they are in the album (ie. are they track 1 or 2 or 6), you find out that all the songs are in different places. Take the number and then find the corresponding letter on the band name. I did this for the band name, the song name and the album name but only one column actually spelled out a word. The word is "musician"

URL: http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/music.aspx

15: On first look, it seems like the cycle links movie actors together (kind of like Kevin Bacon's six degrees of separation) except that there is a common actor from movie to movie (for instance, johnny depp is in both edward scissorhands and public enemies; christian bale is in both public enemies and the dark knight). The last movie then is a link between an actor / actress in the Dark Knight and an actor / actress in Footloose.



Looking at the source, there's a hint that says that John Lithgow is the best actor. Since he's in the movie footloose, he must be the common link in the missing movie with another actor.

Spoiler: After doing multiple google searches on the actors in The Dark Knight and John Lithgow, I finally came upon a combination that works: Morgan Freeman and John Lithgow was in the movie "Resting Place"

URL: http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/PerhapsAShadyTree.aspx

16: On first look, there are images on the bottom with X or Y underneath it - I'm guessing there's something here with X, Y coordinates related to the images but I'll uncover more information as I find the coordinates on the bigger picture.

Update: I first attempted to get the X and Y coordinates of the images and then translate them into the array found in one of the JS files. Please don't make the same mistake I did, take the Y coordinates from the top and you'll have better luck than I did.

Spoiler: In any case, I found out it spells out SHIRTSLASHPWND. There's a shirt named PWND at Woot. I'm now trying to figure out the next step with the clues in the woot description

Spoiler: The answer was simpler than I thought - it just involves looking for the puzzle piece and then clicking on it to move on.

URL: http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/Reckoning.aspx


17: Pretty straightforward - just have to put in the name of the movie from Level 15.

Spoiler: Resting Place

URL: http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/wootsong.aspx


18: Looks more difficult - a bunch of phone numbers it seems?


Spoiler: This one is interesting. I first used phonespell.org to put in all the numbers. I found that each number spells out another number. Then, similar to the level with the music bands and songs, I found the number it referenced to in the row.

For instance, the numbers I found from the phone numbers was: 6314341. I then found the 6th number in the first row, 3rd number in the second row, etc. This got me another phone number which spelled out "THORIUM".


URL: http://jeffblankenburg.com/tdpe2/Wow.aspx


19:  This one is interesting. Its similar to those puzzles where you have to stare at these really long and narrow letters closely to figure out what it says.

 Spoiler: The symmetry is important here: if you cut the image in half (right down where it mirrors itself, you'll see JULY

URL: http://jeffblankenburg.com/tdpe2/WeirdSymbols.aspx

20: Looks pretty simple since I've done this puzzle before in a different manner. Hint: it's related to the previous puzzle's answer.

Spoiler: Aug, Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb , ? March.

URL: http://jeffblankenburg.com/tdpe2/Sequence.aspx

21:

URL: http://jeffblankenburg.com/tdpe2/editcodefaster.aspx