Et Tu, Neopets

[mousapelli]

I just wanna say that this neopet's plot freaking sucks. The first puzzle is way too hard for even me?

Come on now. I have a graduate degree, I should be able to solve the children's website puzzles.

*cold and tired and grumpy*

eta I'm quitting for now, I don't have this kind of time to accomplish nothing. if you are puzzle/cryptogram nuts and want to take a shot at it, here's a screenshot of the first puzzle:



it works by having a set column of modifiers to achieve a result. for instance, x+x+x+x=8. it doesn't matter what order they are in, x+v+c is the same as v+c+x.

the key that shows you what you add to which other thing to get the result you want is here, but honestly there's so many possible combinations even then it's just insanity.

Comments

[coriolis]

The maze? I'm stuck on decoding the e-mails >.< and the calculator that's been doing the rounds to help is apparently BAD.

[mousapelli.livejournal.com]

right, it's the emails. I guess that's the second puzzle really, but i did the first one so quick i forgot about it.

it's like impossible unless you have hours and hours. I mean, I understand how it works even, but there's so many combinations of things that can produce a single result that it might as well be random. i'm stuck on the first 3-mod one, and I must have tried three hundred combinations by now.

out of 27,000 possibilities. Great.

[coriolis]

I'm stuck on the 2-mod ones >.

[mousapelli.livejournal.com]

i didn't think they were bad at all. I only had to write down about 15 combinations of things to have a pretty comprehensive list. And there weren't as many things to pick from!

this fucking sucks.

[zombiecide.livejournal.com]

Lol
There's the next step?
I'm so lazy I usually wait for a guide on how to solve the plots
I mean, for the more complicated steps xD

[mousapelli.livejournal.com]

i know HOW to do it, it just still is ridiculously time-consuming. Since everybody's puzzles are different, I won't ever move on to the next step if I don't solve it myself.

and my goal this week is honestly not to spend 20+ hours solving some stupid neopet's puzzle.

[therhoda.livejournal.com]

You know I am now doing the first mazes! thanks fort he heads up on a new plot. LONG live the PLOT guide!

[mousapelli.livejournal.com]

how'd it work out with your husband in the end? did a children's website make him cry?

[therhoda.livejournal.com]

nope, he says if he could find a place with no rampaging two year olds he could do it! Now all we have to do is find such a place.

[sbbo.livejournal.com]

I have it narrowed down to 67 possibilities. I think. If I'm not completely crazy. I'll let you know how that goes for me.

[sbbo.livejournal.com]

Nevermind that. I narrowed it into three sub-groups, and that sub-group had 67 possibilities. And it was the wrong sub-group.

[winters-queen.livejournal.com]

Twitch Wish I could help but I utterly despise Cryptograms. Too much for my limited brain power. :-/

I like puzzles.

[sbbo.livejournal.com]

Right, so, I really like puzzles, and I hate sleep, so I stayed up. But I realize, now that it is morning, that the more I worked on it at night, the stupider my thoughts/decisions became. So the only helpful things I have for you is that your 2,3,4 positions are 'Z to C', 'C to Z', and 'Z to C' again. And that the codes to do that are inversive. But, since there are 9 letter combinations that can be used, it doesn't mean your answer will be inversive. If that makes sense. Also, modifier number one isn't used at all in your puzzle. Nor is the first transition of 'V to C' made with the 'CCX' set.

I, uh, gave all of the symbols a similarly shaped letter for ease of writing. So the one that looks a bit like a mushroom was P, and the one that looks like an 8 is B. So forth.

Re: I like puzzles.

[mousapelli.livejournal.com]

wow, i didn't think anybody would actually DO it ♥♥♥ i'll give it another try in a bit with the new information and see how it all works out.

Re: I like puzzles.

[sbbo.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I realized that since the order doesn't matter for the transformation, then each column only has nine ways to change. So I figured that if I set up a matrix, then I could eliminate combinations that wouldn't support the 'VtoC' in the first column. Anywho, like I said, I was getting super tired and I went through and tried every combination possible that could use line 1. And none of them worked. So you can cross that one off. I also tried every combination that would change 'VtoC' using 'CCX' (and its variants) so that's another test series you can skip over. But it turns out that I'm really, really, bad at math things. So, even though I like puzzles, the only way I'll be able to solve it is brute force. Sorry!

Re: I like puzzles.

[therhoda.livejournal.com]

hubby says your proof is wrong and he has the math from my puzzle to prove it. Now if i understood any more than that i would share. But he started using words like order and character sets and well my brain ti went BOOM!

Re: I like puzzles.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't even know what my 'proof' means. I do know that you use the same three codes to make those three changes and since it doesn't matter what order they go in to make it change then, theoretically, you can use the same three for all of them. I doubt that its the case. But it would work.