I was really excited when you updated the cards last year, hoping that now I could try an attack in depth, but it appears you did the right thing and did not reuse key/plaintext in any way that’d help me.

I’m glad that the “one stage leads to the next” format worked. I first really saw that with G. Mark’s TOORCON 12 puzzle, and I like the structure of it. Though I do think that there should be some looping / branching, just to make things a little more interesting. Maybe next year. Finally, I’m really glad that you’re learning from my mistakes as far as keeping things simple. Refocusing, stepping back, keeping an open mind, not getting bogged down on a single approach (whether that approach is reasonable or rabbit-hole-crazy) is a skill that I’m still developing.

Thanks again for your comments. Seeing what you went through, and your enjoyment and enthusiasm, makes it all worthwhile!

I thought that the puzzle was perfect because each stage led me to the next and presented a clue for the key. You should remember that I had read how it is important to keep it simple. Many of your puzzles showcase how easy the answer was after you know the solution and the importance to not over-complicate matters. At every stage and at every dead end I took a step back and said what I know, what is there left, and what was the clue. This allowed me to refocus on a simple approach after I made leaps in the wrong direction. I hope you are not disappointed now that you know all the wrong directions I went . It was challenging and set us for loops at times!

-Matthew

And I’m glad that my writeups here helped… don’t feel like that’s “cheating”. I try to document these puzzles for two reasons: 1, so that great puzzles aren’t lost to time (and that others may build upon past successes), and 2, so that people can learn more about solving them. So if my posts helped you in any way, that’s a big win in my book!

Friday night Mike and I had all the badge pictures but were stuck at how to order them. I went to sleep knowing that we needed to find an order to these badges to move on. At 6am Saturday morning I woke up having thought that representing the numbers xxxx as xx/xx would produce dates. I immediately thought that 7 badges = 7 days of the week however it worked out to not be unique days of the week, I was stumped again. At 9am I rode in to ShmooCon with Mike and we discussed my thought that they were dates. He then asked “Was ShmooCon always the last weekend in January?” I said I was not sure and we moved on. We were so close but did not make the connection. As it turned out we never did or did we need to. On 395 I saw the clue from GMark about reading down for directions. Under direction from Mike I just tried to make a word from the first letters of the boxed badge text (see the GMark method above in his comment). At the con Mike fixed up a simple error I made and we were off to “Turn the gears”. Two hours later and the puzzle was solved. I loved the literal use of key and the 80 char long key string, typing that on my phone was a challenge. I also loved when we asked Bruce directly and he looked at Heidi and asked if he could answer she said no and he told us he was leaving so he did not do anything stupid. The reason Mike and I looked through the program was that we thought one of the five car repair slips might have had the initials BP (Bruce Potter). I was really asked by Heidi “who do I ask for anything I don’t know” to which I replied “the internet”. The crowd loved that the closing ceremony.

I did find it odd that both you and GMark were tweeting hints so after it was done I sent some tweets GMark’s way. I told him I did not see any “gmarks” in the puzzle and he said that this puzzle was your show and was just a consultant. After I saw this it was quite obvious as to why you were not competing, and knew all the answers (you designed it).
Sorry for the long comment. I just wanted to give my side and the obstacles Mike and I faced. By the way after I found out that you had made the puzzle I almost felt like I had cheated, knowing that I read all of your crypto posts here. This was my second ShmooCon and I found your site after last year’s groans that you had won again, I needed to see who this guy was that had won.

Long and short Great puzzle, I had a wonderful time figuring it out! Perhaps you may get some joy knowing that you had an unintentional hand in training the winners.

-Matthew