Help Us Design a CS + English Puzzle

April 17, 2011 10:49 PM

My friends, a software engineer and a novelist, are getting married. I want to give them a puzzle to solve as a wedding gift that requires the use of both their skills.

Here's one example along the lines I was thinking: a crossword puzzle where the clues are based on famous works of literature (but you'd have to have read the book to get it, and we'd pick books that she's read). The clues would be encrypted with a substituion cyper. After solving the puzzle, a message from us would be spelled out.

posted by jewzilla to Writing & Language (10 answers total)

If you've got some coding chops yourself you could take some ideas from http://www.deathball.net/notpron and create a layered website with clues in literature but that would also take some looking at code and lateral thinking to get through - the final page could be the code for a gift card for iTunes?
posted by caliban at 11:48 PM on April 17, 2011

Keep in mind that weddings are exhausting and stressful for the bride and groom, and they might more appreciate a less intellectually taxing gift.
posted by orthogonality at 3:12 AM on April 18, 2011

What about placing your gift inside a box, complete with a combination lock? Take certain words, make them into an MD5 hash, then have part of that hash be the digits for the lock.
posted by chrisinseoul at 3:54 AM on April 18, 2011

This is a lovely idea and perhaps this apartment, renovated to include an 18-step hidden mystery, will inspire you (if it hasn't already).
posted by acidic at 4:43 AM on April 18, 2011

Seconding caliban, but also wanted to remind you that like natural languages, there are many computer languages and writing software code in a language that your friend does not know may make it difficult. I know python would kill me!

The other thing would be to solve software puzzles, which gives literature based puzzles. For example, a web page shows an innocent "Hello" message, but looking at the source code gives a URL that is UUencoded using Javascript. Going to that URL would give a literature based puzzle.

Of course, as the difficulty increases, your ability to write code comes into play.

You can find good examples of software puzzles by taking the "Hacker Test" at hackertest.net
posted by theobserver at 6:26 AM on April 18, 2011

Use the novelist's own book as a key to a book cipher?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:46 AM on April 18, 2011

You could make a piece of interactive fiction. I think there is some software out there that can make it easy for you.
posted by Not Supplied at 8:51 AM on April 18, 2011

Inform 7 is designed so that even non-computer programmers can write interactive fiction. But it seems like their skillsets would be more apropos of WRITING interactive fiction, rather than playing it.
posted by rikschell at 1:07 PM on April 18, 2011

What about something involving obfuscated code that prints a message, hint or clue?

Transforming a simple printf("Hello World\n"); to gibberish that still compiles, runs, and outputs the intended string would be fun to see!
posted by joydivasian at 4:17 PM on April 18, 2011

Response by poster: Just to clarify, they have the rest of their lives to solve the puzzle. I assume they'll have better things to do on their wedding day.
posted by jewzilla at 4:58 PM on April 18, 2011