The relevant lines of the puzzle were:
puzzle:
to win an amazon gift card,
say of zambia in the comments.
The added fourth line indicated that two people could win, and the fifth that Chris was awesome for winning.
Given that the clue was "Capitals, no. Capitols, yes," one would have to mention the capitol of Zambia, Lusaka int he comments of the blog to successfully answer the puzzle.
I got the inspiration from a puzzle in Kingdom of Loathing in which there are six symbols, rather than three. In that puzzle (you can find it down the page here), the six symbols encode 25 of the 26 letters of the alphabet when one lays them out in a five by five grid marked with the symbols on both axes. So, if the symbols were 1,2,3,4,5 and 6, the letter 'a' would be 11, 'b' would be 12, 'z' would be 55, and so on. In that specific case, the one remaining letter would be singlely encoded by the final symbol 6. In the KOL puzzle, it was the letter t.
For my puzzle, I took this idea to the next dimension with a three-dimensional grid of 27 spaces, 3x3x3. I had hoped that the specific symbols I chose (alpha, beta and cube) would clue you in to this fact, as would the fact that I was encoding spaces (27 is a cubic number). The first symbol in a set of three symbols indicated the x axis, the second the y axis, and the third the z axis. So, as you can see below, in the upper left corner of the top level is the letter 'a.' For 'a,' The first row is alpha, the first column is alpha, and the first level is alpha, so, 'a' is alpha-alpha-alpha.
Congrats, again, guys.
2 comments:
Holy crap, I have no idea how that cube thing works at all, even with that explanation. Maybe you can tell me sometime. Because I really don't get it. I figured it out a completely different way (although very much related, I'm sure). But I didn't figure out how you ordered it. I just assumed it was alpha alpha alpha for 'a', then alpha alpha beta for 'b', and so forth (so, 000, 001, 002, 010, 011, 012, 020, 021, 022, etc.), which also came out to 27...obviously. Then I figured it out as a sort of cryptoquip. So, that was my solution. Haven't the foggiest on how to solve it using your notion of puzzle-making.
Looking at it again, I do understand a bit more of your method, but I think mine was significantly simpler...or at least easier to figure out.
Post a Comment