BONUS PUZZLE #1 7000 HOPR Increasing Jackpot! (HOPR Hunt Puzzle #8)

Ah amazing! :partying_face:

I was beginning to think it was never going to be unravelled.

Congratulations to tyche for solving the bonus puzzle!

Message 1: Long live Ariadne and her privacy resistance machine
Message 2: Look for Daedalus but beware the night and the minotaurs laire
Password: labyrinthine

Amazing! No clue how to get these messages in the first place :slightly_frowning_face: Any hint?

Message 1: Long live Ariadne and her privacy resistance machine
Message 2: Look for Daedalus but beware the night and the minotaurs laire
Password: labyrinthine

I’m not sure what the protocol is about hints in this community. We could discuss posting the program we used to puzzle through the options that led to the solution. Or maybe it’s the policy here to let folks enjoy the struggle for some months or years and let the puzzle author do ‘the reveal’ at a time of their choosing. Wandering editor, what say you?

Message 1: Long live Ariadne and her privacy resistance machine
Message 2: Look for Daedalus but beware the night and the minotaurs laire
Password: labyrinthine

Please give the prize to tyche, he’s the one who brought all this to our attention and has the HOPR connections. It was a ‘three man team’ effort, lots of ideas tried and learned from, mine happened to be the one that led to a solution.

Folks can read all about the solution and the process here:

Thank you for sharing it! Truly amazing :clap: Though, I still don’t get why J has to become T :thinking:

I didn’t create the puzzle, but I suspect putting J where T was supposed to be was done mostly so throwing strings of letters against a dictionary of English words would fail. As T is a common letter and because J was a letter not used in the phrase. That and adding the last ‘e’ on lair as misspellings were in the text of the clue but the e was indicated in the pattern of the maze.

I actually think the “e” at the last shouldn’t be there as this “e” will break the beauty of the path to find the password “labyrinthine”. The position of this “e” is conflicting with “y” in the password ;) Furthermore, like you say, “laire” is misspelled.
Anyway big thanks for sharing the solution. It’s been sticking back of my head for a long time :upside_down_face:

I can see your reasons as ‘the reasonable case against the e’.

There are two cases for the ‘e’ of different character.

The first has to do with the maze walk which includes it if one is to follow the same rules that produce the other letters in the phrase, and the hint of the several obviously purposely allowed misspellings in the puzzle narrative. Add that to the directive that deducing the phrases ought to come first, then the password. Meaning whatever aspects to do with the password, they ought not influence the phrase choice. Had there been a blocking line below the ‘e’ in the maze, or no misspellings in the puzzle narrative I think leaving the e off might have been better.

The second reason for the e, is more ‘meta’: Given the purposeful misspellings in the narrative my guess is that any answer that has up to one misspelling would be ok as well.

We had a good time with it, that’s for sure!