Descent of the Durtle into eGoooott - NOW AT B8!

[hachiken]

And for the record, capitalising the G in eGoooott makes no difference either.

[AlaskanDSM]

I missed that. Glad I posted all the variations for someone to replace and try.

[matthieuesnault]

You finally open the B3 door. It’s B4. The hint text says that there’s only “96 more levels”.

• (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
• (ﾉಥ益ಥ）ﾉ ┻━┻
• ┻━┻ ︵ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ︵ ┻━┻
• (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻

[AlaskanDSM]

@koichi

Thanks for the info everybody! I used your keywords and got in myself, now. I’ll see if I can get ahead of everyone in solving the next riddle, but if you have any questions you can push them through the keyhole and I’ll look at them when you hit 5,500.

Why does this stand out to me?

The post before it was

@rfindley

For a while, I’ve been pondering doubling up one of the 5s.
19 1 6 55 5 10 9
19 1 6 5 55 10 9

(But I’m not actively working on this right now. Just have it open as a side tab).

There was 10 minutes between rfindley’s post and Koichi’s.

Did anyone run down the 55 idea?

[AlaskanDSM]

eGeott?
or
eGoett?

Seems like maybe nothing to me… just seemed odd that included the ‘, now.’ to the sentence.

[hachiken]

table flipping intensifies…

[AlaskanDSM]

I know… Just something is weird about the 555 deal. Since the other three books have been letter for letter, it seems that this should also be the case.

Speaking of case, since the password field is case sensitive, it also begs the question if we should enter the text as we found it (I would think so) or in all lowercase.

[Belthazar]

@Safarigirl

Have we had any clear indication at all that the book cipher actually works for B3? Because I’m still not convinced.

Only the fact that the code words yielded four book titles which all have book ciphers on the beginner-japanese-textbook page. How else would we turn the book titles into keywords?

@Safarigirl

no place for Disciples of the Crabigator

That’s possibly because all the clues are on Tofugu rather than WaniKani.

@Safarigirl

we’re just a different type from you

Probably typing on the kana-entry keyboard (i.e. different from the romaji-entry keyboard)

@Safarigirl

Like, what are the odds?

That we’ve said the right word at some point in hundreds of posts? Fairly good.

[AlaskanDSM]

I also tried it with no spaces, I tried with all lower case and with no spaces.

Nothing seems to work.

If I was going to ask @koichi something, even though it’s direct, I would ask, are we doing something wrong with keyword 4 (eGoooott). No details, simple yes/no question.

I’ll probably never get that answer, but one can dream!

[Belthazar]

@AlaskanDSM

I’ll probably never get that answer, but one can dream!

Probably because he’s been eaten by a grue.

It was dangerous to go alone.

[Tyger]

Concerning the solution from B3 to B4: the passwords so far were in increasing order of strength
-password (probably the weakest password you can find out there)
-crabigators eat butts (still all lower case, but at least something non-guessable and several words)
-Mrs. Chou (uppercase, lowercase and punctuation - we‘re getting serious here)
-uppercase, lowercase, more punctuation, some numbers?
-meaningless jumble of letters and numbers?

My point is, it is not necessarily a simple word we‘re looking for. Maybe it has a hyphen, and the password is most certainly case-sensitive. Not that this post is helping much.（メ＿メ）

Tyger out. Back to business, see you tomorrow!

[magiconic]

B100. It’s a goo.gl link.
You click it.
Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you dooown…

[Merus]

I think the frustration people are expressing here is pretty understandable, which is why I backed off after a bit of analysis earlier - I simply don’t think these puzzles are very well constructed, and as they get ‘harder’, they’re going to get worse. They’re mostly depending on reading the designer’s mind, and a lot of B3 has been sifting through a ton of irrelevant information without a way to confirm the approach until several leaps of faith have been made.

A well-constructed puzzle usually has two clues for each part - one that’s broad but straightforward, and one that’s hard to understand but specific. That way, when you crack the puzzle, you can check both clues and know you’ve got the right answer, or at least on the right track. You see this with cryptic crosswords, with the end-of-year quizzes the Guardian post (broad questions, with a very specific theme all the answers match to), and with the MIT Puzzle Hunts (even though the MIT Puzzle Hunts incorporate lots of unexpected ciphers, they are very clear upfront about what ciphers are expected knowledge and thus which ones they have to clue in the puzzle).

I don’t see that here - there’s nothing that clues that Shift-JIS is a more valid use of the hex codes than anything else, and nothing suggesting that the readings were important. The kanji at the start of B3 could have been any kanji with the same stroke order, most of the keyboard keys were interchangeable (because we threw nearly half of that content away) and the Tofugu leap isn’t clued at all.

Stick to teaching kanji, guys.

[Belthazar]

While I agree with a fair bit of what you’re saying, I think you’re being a little too harsh. It’s meant to be trickier than your average Guardian quiz - the process of kanji stroke counts to a date to the date of a Tofugu article is obscure, I’ll admit, but it’s not completely out of the blue. I’ve heard of more difficult internet puzzles. And hey, there’s internet puzzles that still remain unsolved.

But yeah, I’m a little bit over the “look, it’s sooo obvious” clues coming from people who know the answer already because they literally wrote the thing. And I really don’t think they ran it past anyone who didn’t write the thing first, either.

[Okanekure]

[Leifytwig]

Whether or not you guys are right, I’m not sure negativity is really going to make anything better. I get that it’s kind of frustrating now, but the experience won’t get any better with us grumbling about it.

I think we may just be at the point where any kind of clue would just be giving us the answer. I don’t think they’re laughing at our incompetence or anything.

I have a bit more time before I need to sleep, and I’m scanning through a lot of old posts to try and find an overlooked keyword or something. It’s… very strange that the fourth book seems to just not fit the same pattern at all and there’s no mistake in the process that I can find, but I’m hoping it all makes sense once we get it.

[Airdramon]

[Ethan]

Well I’ve been trying hit Koichi where it hurts by implying he’s lost his towel, but he hasn’t bitten yet… and now I’ve just revealed my hand. Damn!

[Merus]

@Belthazar

t’s meant to be trickier than your average Guardian quiz - the process of kanji stroke counts to a date to the date of a Tofugu article is obscure, I’ll admit, but it’s not completely out of the blue.

Sorry, this is a reference I should have explained - the Guardian run a quiz every year compiled by King William’s College that’s supposed to last until the students come back next term. It’s a stiff challenge. Here’s this year’s as an example.

Which is, I think, my point - it’s easy to make something “hard” by making it obscure, but it takes quite a bit of talent to make a puzzle that’s both hard and fair. This is, in my opinion, just obscure. I don’t intend to be negative for the sake of it, but I think the Japanophilic puzzle-lovers in this thread would be better served by loading up Nikoli’s website.

[Ethan]

I swear, if anyone here tries a @koichi or @a-regular-durtle and figures it out without telling anyone else, imma bust their head clean open!