How I cracked an impossible DEF CON challenge

[@germantoenglish898]

"The Adventure of the Dancing Men" was a Sherlock Holmes story featuring this code is stickman form.

[@alexandrepereira6522]

CTF are super cool, I've done a 24h one at work, slept 3h and finished 2nd. The feeling of solving a puzzle is incredible.

[@andrewf8366]

I wonder if you guys would have fun with the MIT Mystery Hunt. It's a 3 day puzzle event that's free to participate in at MIT. And the winning teams usually have on the order of 100 team members so it might be a good way to get your communities involved remotely too.

[@ExplicableCashew]

What really grinds my gears with puzzles like these is that there's no constraint or question at the end of the puzzle. So there can theoretically be multiple technically valid solutions that don't contradict the puzzle because no constraints were given. In this case, at least you were eventually given a constraint that it's a 13-letter word. I bet I could use some very involved logic to coax a different word/phrase out of this. "That's not what the author meant" wouldn't be an objective, rule based reason to reject such a solution

[@ShaharHarshuv]

You can submit the solution in the competition and see if it's correct. This style of puzzles is not like a math question with a very defined "constraints". It's a "guess the correct password" thing. There is only one correct answer, and yes, you need to understand what the author meant.

[@HoxTop]

I don't like these kind of puzzles because they tend to require knowledge people don't generally have. The music box requires to be able to read musical notation (though this is not as bad because you can just google how to read it). The charades puzzle requires you to know The Adventure of the Dancing Men. I have no idea how you would figure the puzzle out if you have never heard of it. It's essentially just random whether someone on your team knows some obscure reference or not. Thankfully they give hints so this isn't a complete deal breaker but it doesn't feel good to struggle with a puzzle just because you don't know a reference.

[@fabienso5889]

​@@HoxTop Not knowing something is normal This is a competition for fun its aim is not to be fair Also remember they got internet and plenty of time I am sure they didn't know about the dancing men

[@randomshotz13]

​@@HoxTop you're surprised that a secret code might have some niche references intended for the author and desired recipient to know... That's cryptography bro! Also many of these are somewhat on the nose, if you type dancing men cryptography into Google you'll get a breakdown of the Sherlock Holmes dancing men alphabet straight away

[@astralmatrix]

love this! your excitement is infectious. i'm not a "puzzle person" but i paused this video and am going to try some from the list.

[@topchagamaster]

Thors face at beginning staring into my soul while fading in 0:08

[@filipturczynowicz-suszycki7728]

Love this video! Thanks for sharing this!

[@ShaharHarshuv]

*Showing the "easy" puzzle* Me: I would have never figured any of it out.

[@xendo2d987]

please make more videos about these challenges, they are super interesting!

[@anonymouscommentator]

this was really intersting to follow, thank you very much!

[@RandomGeometryDashStuff]

06:49 you can place G5 note by clicking on bottom border and it will play you can also place notes before beginning and after end of song but they don't play

[@hi12167pies]

that's awesome, i don't know how anyone comes up with this - let alone solve it.

[@TheUnclepecos]

Given the effort required to tackle the Music Box challenge, I must say the title at the top of the music sheet is pretty fitting

[@karimkh9]

Good job bro

[@msclrhd]

Is the competition name "The Gold Bug" a reference to the Edgar Allan Poe short story of the same name? -- The short story is about solving a substitution cypher, which would be fitting for the competition.

[@ego-lay_atman-bay]

Probably

[@MeghanDenny]

and its a perfect puzzle because seeing the answer makes it seem easy

[@baseballjustin5]

I love doing this stuff for Call of Duty reveals (like PawnTakesPawn, or even Cod Zombies itself) Im not smart enough to do them, but im happy to throw something out there that may narrow it down... as long as I'm caught up and not 20 steps behind, just left in the dust... confused how they got past step 10. While their on step 45.

[@skswldms]

I'm happy solving this puzzle gave you so much excitement, but you're the only one to solve it because ... you a) continued playing after the deadline and b) got to asked the designer questions.

[@vigneshwaran9209]

Was looking for such comments. Defcon ctf is challenging to be completed within the proposed time limit.

[@mrcavas]

also it really helped being able to understand the music notation XD

[@zackkirako8574]

I'm confused why this matters are you saying his statement is false? Or others did solve it. Did he cheat by asking the designer questions? Can you explain?

[@skswldms]

@@zackkirako8574 It matters because starting the video with, and repeatedly saying the phrase "I was the only one to solve this" gives the false impression that he won out against all other competitors. But this is not the case.

[@zackkirako8574]

Still confused he was on the team that did win. It doesn't seem he had an unfair advantage and instead used resources available to others. He said at the start of video which puzzles they figured out for the challenge. So still please help me understand what I'm missing.

[@borinbrikmalet]

If these are the kinds of puzzles you're into, you should really get into puzzlehunts!

[@mddildarmandal9241]

Mind boggling

[@rlstrength]

Personally from the outside view not a fan of puzzles like this where there is so much open to interpretation and you just solve it thanks to the hints because the puzzle UX is so bad and buggy. I'm gonna say it I feel like it was extremely badly designed and thought through Congrats for getting it done though, I would also be unable to sleep or think about anything else in that situation

[@TheEvinB]

Looking at the overlay Theo used at the end to solve it, I feel like the puzzle creator didn't intend it to be solved graphically. Take the music box grid as an array of 0's and 1's and append them into one long list, then copy the text directly in as a string (without newlines) and XOR them together, and I think you will get the same answer. But then getting the grid right in the first place seemed very unclear.

[@3pleFly]

this is very cool!

[@aljazbrilj1698]

Very fun

[@fakedevdutt]

How one can even think of solving this!!!

[@asailijhijr]

Yeah, it's really annoying when you make a puzzle and then discover that you've made an error that will keep people from finding the intended solution. And then it's really hard to correct the error with a hint without giving it all away.

[@Bence-z5w]

nice

[@RuiPalmeira]

if you "play" the first 4 notes (that are on the bass part), but use the wrong notation (treble), it roughly sounds like a dumbed down version of carmina burana.

[@TheD3adlysin]

that was cool.

[@boscorner]

7 minutes in and the puzzle makers made like three mistakes. Hahah. That's pretty frustrating. But im sure its a confusing job

[@sidalisaadi1961]

Honestly I don't like this type of puzzles where there's too many nonsense to take into account, I much prefer CTFs and something like advent of code

[@EasyViber]

Who's that with glasses at 0:08?

[@chrissametrinequartz9389]

That's Thor/PirateSoftware

[@Poni5]

Pirate Software

[@Waine2000]

Donald Trump

[@Kane0123]

The real “streamer with the good hair” despite Theo’s opinion of himself

[@AnderSixxin]

The KZbin short guy

[@modellking]

Hm... This looks fun

[@DelkorYT]

Sherlock Holmes mentioned

[@aditya.khapre]

Occams razor

[@boscorner]

I don't think Occam's razor applies on defcon puzzle challenges haha There's some pretty wild solutions

[@JohnKhalil]

You could have just posted it on Fiver or any alternative for a few dollars, and in half an hour, some random Indian teenager would have solved it for you 😂

[@JedHurricane]

You mean, you (and roommate) solved the puzzle (:

[@AdonisCodes]

Second