Christmas math
December 19, 2015 7:04 PM Subscribe
Oh hai. This was me. Awesome responses. Now I need some help with cryptograms.
I decided to get my husband a cryptogram puzzle box and put the info for the game in that. The box has a five-letter solve (so you have to put the five letters in the right combo to open the box). I'd like to do a scavenger hunt where each clue gives him a letter and leads to the next one. I'd like one clue to be a math puzzle whose answer is a letter and another that's a coding puzzle whose answer is a letter.
Specifics:
-- His math and programming levels are extremely high and he knows most programming languages, but specifically Ruby.
-- I don't care what the letters are that he solves for.
-- Answers to these puzzles shouldn't be easily googable.
-- Assume my level of math and programming is rudimentary at best.
Any ideas? I think this could elevate this gift to pretty sweet levels!
I decided to get my husband a cryptogram puzzle box and put the info for the game in that. The box has a five-letter solve (so you have to put the five letters in the right combo to open the box). I'd like to do a scavenger hunt where each clue gives him a letter and leads to the next one. I'd like one clue to be a math puzzle whose answer is a letter and another that's a coding puzzle whose answer is a letter.
Specifics:
-- His math and programming levels are extremely high and he knows most programming languages, but specifically Ruby.
-- I don't care what the letters are that he solves for.
-- Answers to these puzzles shouldn't be easily googable.
-- Assume my level of math and programming is rudimentary at best.
Any ideas? I think this could elevate this gift to pretty sweet levels!
Best answer: I think you should restrict him to not using Google if his math levels are extremely high. That said, my initial puzzle was "What is the square root of -1?" The square root of -1 or (-1)^(1/2) = i.
I came up with (using Google-assisted memory) of some terms I remember from school that are letters before I more thoroughly read your question. Maybe they'll still be useful to you.
Square root of -1 or (-1)^(1/2) = i.
The limit of n as n approaches infinity for the sequence (1+1/n)^n = e.
The speed of light in a vacuum is denoted as c.
The spring constant is commonly k. (Hooke's Law is F=kx)
Young's modulus is E.
The frequency of a harmonic oscillator is f (f=[1/(2*pi)](k/m)^(1/2).
The local acceration due to gravity is g. (Not to be confused with G, which is the universal gravitational constant.)
Mass is m. Weight W = mg.
The Moment of Inertia is I.
A unit vector directed along positive x-axis is i.
A unit vector directed along the positive y-axis is j. (Engineering joke: Someones says "What's up?" to me. I say "j!" YukYukYuk)
A unit vector directed along positive z-axis is k.
Enthalpy is H.
The heat added to a system is Q.
The work done by a system is W.
posted by Rob Rockets at 10:16 PM on December 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
I came up with (using Google-assisted memory) of some terms I remember from school that are letters before I more thoroughly read your question. Maybe they'll still be useful to you.
Square root of -1 or (-1)^(1/2) = i.
The limit of n as n approaches infinity for the sequence (1+1/n)^n = e.
The speed of light in a vacuum is denoted as c.
The spring constant is commonly k. (Hooke's Law is F=kx)
Young's modulus is E.
The frequency of a harmonic oscillator is f (f=[1/(2*pi)](k/m)^(1/2).
The local acceration due to gravity is g. (Not to be confused with G, which is the universal gravitational constant.)
Mass is m. Weight W = mg.
The Moment of Inertia is I.
A unit vector directed along positive x-axis is i.
A unit vector directed along the positive y-axis is j. (Engineering joke: Someones says "What's up?" to me. I say "j!" YukYukYuk)
A unit vector directed along positive z-axis is k.
Enthalpy is H.
The heat added to a system is Q.
The work done by a system is W.
posted by Rob Rockets at 10:16 PM on December 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
Best answer: You could take a Sudoku puzzle made of letters and highlight one empty box as the answer he needs. The best way to do this would be to solve the puzzle first yourself and try to find a box that you solve for late in the puzzle, so that he has to solve most/all of the puzzle before finding the answer. Difficulty can range from very easy to super difficult.
posted by ktkt at 10:41 PM on December 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by ktkt at 10:41 PM on December 19, 2015 [1 favorite]
Best answer: An interesting, and non googleable clue would be to base a letter on some part of your geolocation (check here for example) - or the location of somewhere else. For example, if I add the 3rd decimal position of my latitude to the third of my longitude then I get 8 + 3 which would map to letter #11 or "k".
posted by rongorongo at 2:26 AM on December 20, 2015
posted by rongorongo at 2:26 AM on December 20, 2015
Best answer: Here is an actual cryptogram generator, if you want to encrypt some text. With a substitution cipher like this, a few paragraphs will be easier to decrypt than a sentence or two. (It's probably easier to break this by hand than to type in the encrypted message and make a computer do it.)
Here's a Vigenere cipher generator, which encrypts using a secret phrase. Think about whether you want to use that phrase or the message itself to answer your riddle.
And here's a simulator of the Enigma used in WWII. If I were using this in a scavenger hunt, I'd probably just give the settings and an encrypted message, without explaining what they were from, and let figuring out the context be the real riddle. (Guess you have to hope your spouse doesn't read Metafilter?)
posted by yarntheory at 7:54 AM on December 20, 2015
Here's a Vigenere cipher generator, which encrypts using a secret phrase. Think about whether you want to use that phrase or the message itself to answer your riddle.
And here's a simulator of the Enigma used in WWII. If I were using this in a scavenger hunt, I'd probably just give the settings and an encrypted message, without explaining what they were from, and let figuring out the context be the real riddle. (Guess you have to hope your spouse doesn't read Metafilter?)
posted by yarntheory at 7:54 AM on December 20, 2015
Best answer: A very ambitious little project.
A puzzle is different from a problem. Generally speaking, with a problem, the path to the solution is known. The object of a puzzle is to determine the path to solution.
You have some hints about math/science possibilities, so I'll talk about programming. I don't know Ruby at all. If C or C++ were acceptable, I'd look the Obfuscated C code contest for something I could adapt. But I think you want something easier (or perhaps he wouldn't get into his present until February).
If the clue is a list of numbers, it could translate into a message in any number of ways. The most obvious is ascii code, and that could be either base 10 or base 16 (i.e. hex). Or, with different numbers it could be Unicode, or UTF 8. It could be in EBCDIC, once used by IBM but pretty much obsolete. The message would be something like "e as in eagle." Or the numbers could relate to points on the x-y plane which would reveal the answer when plotted out. For a graphing method like this, each point would require a pair of numbers, and perhaps the way the numbers are presented could obscure the "pairness" in some way. Or the numbers could relate to the sequence of letters in some key word provided in a cryptic clue sort of way. Easy if the key word is Christmas.
Edit: idea on the pairs of numbers problem, if all the y values were in the three digit range, the x,y pairs could be presented like 747,255, so the pair would look like a six digit number.
Getting back to math, there are a few letters that are suggested by the graph of a fairly simple equation. O of course would be x^2 + y^2 = r. For a letter C, just add "where x < 0".
You could use perfect numbers, because who the hell remembers what perfect numbers are. For instance, make up a coy clue meant to suggest the second perfect number (14) and have the answer be the 14th letter of the alphabet.
posted by SemiSalt at 9:44 AM on December 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
A puzzle is different from a problem. Generally speaking, with a problem, the path to the solution is known. The object of a puzzle is to determine the path to solution.
You have some hints about math/science possibilities, so I'll talk about programming. I don't know Ruby at all. If C or C++ were acceptable, I'd look the Obfuscated C code contest for something I could adapt. But I think you want something easier (or perhaps he wouldn't get into his present until February).
If the clue is a list of numbers, it could translate into a message in any number of ways. The most obvious is ascii code, and that could be either base 10 or base 16 (i.e. hex). Or, with different numbers it could be Unicode, or UTF 8. It could be in EBCDIC, once used by IBM but pretty much obsolete. The message would be something like "e as in eagle." Or the numbers could relate to points on the x-y plane which would reveal the answer when plotted out. For a graphing method like this, each point would require a pair of numbers, and perhaps the way the numbers are presented could obscure the "pairness" in some way. Or the numbers could relate to the sequence of letters in some key word provided in a cryptic clue sort of way. Easy if the key word is Christmas.
Edit: idea on the pairs of numbers problem, if all the y values were in the three digit range, the x,y pairs could be presented like 747,255, so the pair would look like a six digit number.
Getting back to math, there are a few letters that are suggested by the graph of a fairly simple equation. O of course would be x^2 + y^2 = r. For a letter C, just add "where x < 0".
You could use perfect numbers, because who the hell remembers what perfect numbers are. For instance, make up a coy clue meant to suggest the second perfect number (14) and have the answer be the 14th letter of the alphabet.
posted by SemiSalt at 9:44 AM on December 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
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posted by cameradv at 9:02 PM on December 19, 2015