larryboyko

Yes, there are a variety: logic problems, word puzzles, alphametics, various kinds of ciphers -- transposition, substitution, steganographic --, some coding challenges, and a whole slew of other puzzles that I don't quite know how to categorize.

And hopefully this one won't take 85 years to find its audience ...!

Perhaps I too should have offered a prize to the first to solve it!

Suitable for all ages, I think, though there are a couple of cuss words a few dozen chapters deep ...!

Some slight edits and revisions, yes, but the substance of the story hasn't changed.

Thanks for playing!

I believe I'd call it finished now; hopefully Christine would agree. :)

Thanks for the feedback!

The tricky part of this puzzle is how to handle spaces. Prose sentences have regular spacing rules that the ensuing ciphertext doesn't follow. For instance, what to do with several spaces in a row? Should they be rearranged along with the words (effectively be treated AS words), or should they stay put, the words moving around them?

Hint: There are some extra spaces in the waiver that will become indentations if you take the former approach. (It was hoped that the fact that there is no space between the period and "risk" would suggest this: Sentences [following a period] normally start with a space, and end without one; here that is reversed.)

I'm still looking for a better way to hint this, as too many readers are getting hung up on puzzle #2 than I'd like. :)

See also this discussion: https://github.com/larryboyko/dimityjones/discussions/2

Thank you.

Thank you.

Ah ha! That's an older version alright.

Latest at https://github.com/larryboyko/dimityjones/blob/main/DimityJo...

(I hope I've fixed the error ...!)

Hm. My 01.txt that yields the expected SHA256 sum of a2e617919bc0b981a4f9bb8470ed37d189958e4c5b167e58b417a84c29a66c29

is:

... 0x3e1175 bytes long

... starts with «Congratulations!»

... ends with «ZO?-m[FmGp-+;KM»

This is odd! We can visually troubleshoot this, and see that the first characters following 1.##### are «Cnrtltos » and the final characters at the end of the (original) file are «!niauago». Taking [SPOILER] alternately the first of the first and the last of the last gives us C, o, n, g, r, a, t, u, l, a, t, i, o, n, s, !. If there is an extraneous character inserted at the end, e.g. a newline, the transformation should be spoiled and illegible: C, newline, n, o, r, g, t, a, l, u, t, a, o, i, s, n, space, !.

>This may not have any other real purpose than to be a piece of art.

Christine would've loved this answer.

>I see that I removed one newline character at the end of the file

Hm, strange. I don't see, and there shouldn't be, an extraneous newline at the end of the (original) file.

The whole new text that has been transformed.

A little earlier, the editorial instructions read: "These hash values, or checksums [...], were generated by the SHA-256 algorithm -- implementations of which you should easily be able to find and run on your own plaintexts. (By "plaintext", I mean the entire rest of the file, correctly deciphered -- of which, however, only the next chapter will be legible ... until the subsequent decipherment, and so on.)"

Is that helpful?

Thanks! Hope you enjoy it.

Thanks. Hope you enjoy the novel.

Thanks for the suggestion.

I started a catch-all discussion on the github page.