Wingsrising wrote:Nice of TNT to post this in the Neoboards (which many people don't read and under-13's CAN'T read instead of putting it on the puzzle page itself. (Unless they have -- I can't see the puzzle page anymore -- in which case I withdraw my complaint.)
They have now put it on the puzzle page in big red letters:
Please note that using any kind of external helper program or cheat program to solve this puzzle is against the rules and will likely get you FROZEN! So do the right thing and solve the puzzle yourself! (Discussions with friends and the use of reference charts is perfectly okay.)
-- The Neopets Team
I don't really understand why this is considered cheating whilst Altador constellations weren't. I mean, it was possible to find them without a huuuuge amount of agonising (I prided myself on doing it manually and managed to) so it really was a not *strictly* necessary shortcut. But unless Neopia is collectively missing some toenails here, this is almost impossible to do manually. There are 25,000 possible combinations of the 30 codes at level 3. Times the ten messages. Nothing, nothing can be worth that level of work. Even Anubis Toxicology Reports, tedious as it was, was still relatively straightforward (and I say that as someone who *didn't* get awesome prizes for that plot despite the hours trudging around).
What I don't understand is that when I went to bed last night I had expected there to be a solver program online by morning, and based on comments here I think I am not alone in this.
So if everyone else was expecting it, why did it come as such a surprise to TNT? Surely they must have known this would happen -- everyone else did. Why didn't they post the anti-solver message LAST NIGHT before the solver appeared and the problem developed at all? This was totally forseeable and totally preventable.
This is fucking ridiculous. I don't have the time or the patience to do this by manual brute-forcing... and since no plot prizes since the LDP have been even halfway good, I have no motivation. Thanks a lot, TNT. I'm officially sick of your stupid puzzles.
Edit: I just confirmed with one of the programmers that we need to do this step to progress in the plot. If we don't solve this puzzle, we're done. So... do I manually input every combo, or give up? I'm really leaning towards the latter at this point.
Last edited by Cranberry on 07 Feb 2008 12:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
According to this petpage the 7-symbol numbers work as follows.
v = 1
8 = 2
z = 3
x = 4
c = 5
t (mushroom) = 6
0 = 7
To be perfectly honest, I suspect that for anyone with coding skills it would still be a lot faster to write a program yourself to brute-force the solution than to do it manually... take all the possible codes and loop through all combinations of three of then until you get the answer. Even if you have to input the codes manually (although now that the id page has been found I can't see how TNT could possibly claim it's against the rules to use it) it would still be faster than the try-and-guess technique.
Or is TNT going to claim that writing your own code is a "cheat" next? Perhaps they'll rule out pencil and paper next?
Heh, it would probably even be faster for someone without coding skills to go learn a programming language, write their own program and input the codes manually than to try to brute-force all of those solutions by hand.
Me and my hubby are doing it with modular arithmetic, so there is a better way than just quitting or brute-forcing it. Each character corresponds to a number 1-6. We're not sure about the data incomplete ones. I say they are on crack.
Last edited by invsagoth on 07 Feb 2008 03:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
The "incomplete data" ones will be complete once you've finished the first and second level codes. They use a mod 7 math system -- I posted the chart above but can't verify the accuracy.
Unless you have a cool new way of using modular arithmatic to solve this, though... I did one last night by hand using just modular arithmetic and it took me bleeping forever. I ended up using a large amount of trial and error (though less so than doing it at random, of course) since the number of possible combinations that could lead from the result to the target is so large. This is why if I were to write code to solve it I would suggest brute-forcing based on the available codes. The number of possible combinations of the available codes is a lot smaller than the number of possible codes combinations that could take you from result to target.
If you DO have a cool new way of using modular arithmetic, please share!
Last edited by Wingsrising on 07 Feb 2008 01:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
I feel really bad for all of the young kids who are trying to struggle through this puzzle. I feel bad for the older users, too, but honestly.... Isn't the 13-and-under crowd the new Neo target demographic? How is someone without any background in programming supposed to solve this thing in a reasonable amount of time?
Forget about the programming aspect of it. I learned about modular arithmetic for the first time in a 300-level college math course. That's a little advanced to expect kids to know, don't you think?
::screams:: What the fuck?! I was so excited when I saw they finally decided to go through with this plot and THIS is what they give us? I've looked at all these posts and petpages and I STILL have no idea how to do this!
I can't believe you have to finish this step though before you can move onwards. It could /maybe/ be justified if it was one of the last steps in the plot and the points were significant for decoding the messages, but seriously. Its the second freaking step and already a vast majority of the players won't be able to complete or do anything else with this? What the hell is Neopets taking, I mean seriously. What is the point of spending a huge amount of time coming up with plots and drawing all the comics when very few people can make it past the second step.
I'm trying to help my sister figure out her remaining puzzles (she's only done one of the 3 coders, and that was sheer dumb luck) but I'm getting no where. There are just so many fucking combinations and the symbols I use never add up to the right one, even though I'm pretty sure I was doing the math right. I used the calculator this morning on my own messages before it was known that doing so could get you frozen so I'll be able to continue but I have half a mind not to on sheer principle.
The incomplete ones fill in once you get all the level 1 and 2 ones? I thought I got all of those, I must have missed one. So they aren't on crack! Well, not completely.
invsagoth wrote:The incomplete ones fill in once you get all the level 1 and 2 ones? I thought I got all of those, I must have missed one. So they aren't on crack! Well, not completely.
It did for me, anyway. Or maybe they filled in once I did the first level 3 one. At any rate, they shouldn't be incomplete by the time you've solved everything else.
Very VERY helpful.
So they aren't on crack! Well, not completely. 