Descent of the Durtle into eGoooott - NOW AT B8!

I think we might end up having to work on it from both directions anyway. I’m not entirely sure you weren’t meant to find that.

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Yes! Maybe each step is producing a keyword and a mean to reach the next.
For example, the keyword of the first could be “stroke” since we solved it using the stroke count of the kanjis.

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What if there are 60 levels of descent? Just like WaniKani.

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We’ll go mad for sure :wink:

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Agreed. After finding the other comment in the HTML code it was a logical step to look at other articles for comments in the code.

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Sure, but there’s a lot of articles to check. I honestly feel the solution to this puzzle is intended to point us in the right direction.

I don’t think writing a program to go through them instead of going through them manually is cheating. How many of you actually did the Caesar cypher by hand or did you plug it into a converter?

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That’s not really analogous. This is more like writing a program to calculate every possible letter substitution cipher, and return the ones that contain only dictionary words.

I think it’s a question of scope.
The Caesar cipher is speeding up a conversion that would take less than 10 minutes to do by hand.
The verification for comments in these articles would take a long time to do manually, enough to discourage anybody from doing it that way. The automated way still takes 5 minutes to run on my machine since there are so many articles.

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I think it is. Small data set vs larger data set.

Same idea though. Plus your basically saying it’s ok to do the easier one by computer but the much more time consuming and difficult one needs to be done manually.

I’m saying that if it’s taking super long to do it manually, it’s not the intended thing to do.

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Couldn’t it be argued that the hint about “no place for disciples of the crabigator” kind of makes it seem like checking the articles about other learning resources makes sense? I even think I saw someone mention that article earlier in this topic, just without actually finding the comments. It feels like an easier connection to make than the previous “changing things around” → shiftjs for me.

Either way, we’ll find out for sure how it was intended to be done if we actually manage to solve all the parts.

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Oh dear Durt. Our descendants will still be working on it decades hence.

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I would totally do that and not feel a bit bad about it.

The only things I would consider “off-limits” or spoiling the fun would be like, completely ignoring the puzzle and attacking the website. So things like an automated dictionary attack on the password box, hacking squarespace, or social engineering attacks like asking an admin friend at squarespace to cheat for us.

I don’t think using technology on the clues and given information is cheating.

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I searched Tofugu for articles related to death, and there was one about finding distressed properties by @mamimumason. Other than being an interesting read unrelated to the puzzle, she mentioned towards the end of it a previous article and personal experience, and I can’t find what she’s referring to. I’d be interested in reading that one too, if anyone knows where it is.

Would you give a link to the distressed properties article?

When I searched Tofugu for death I don’t remember getting anything like that.
I did get and read this one:

Apparently, after death you get burned.

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As a cicada solver, if anyone has any questions about cryptography, feel free to ask.

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Just like turtles.

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I think I got this idea from the following video:

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