Quote from: RealOnTheMF on January 25, 2018, 08:40:25 PM

Quote from: crax0r on January 25, 2018, 06:54:02 PM

Let's face it, the authors underestimated difficulty of making a hard & solvable puzzle. Like OnTheMF said once, it's hard to make a puzzle that is complicated&solvable, but easy to make a complicated&unsolvable one. This is the latter case I'm afraid.

Yes, I really think that's the case. It's actually very difficult to design a puzzle that is challenging yet solvable. One has to take great care to ensure the solution is achievable without the benefit of having the solution to begin with. Wink

With mistakes being made in previous puzzles, I think it's clear that the author is not very rigorous in their design. Further, at the time this puzzle was made it was worth a lot less, so there was much less incentive to do it properly. The fact that the prize money was once worth $100K USD is also a good indication that this may be unsolvable. Look at all the crazy solutions to other ARG's that are worth only a couple hundred bucks. You could imagine those solvers, as well as many more would be attracted to the larger prize of this puzzle. Lots of very brilliant people have worked on this and still nobody has even a confirmed first step.

From the authors perspective I'm sure it seems simple, but to those without the benefit of knowing the solution, it might not be solvable. This is basically the definition of hindsight bias.

Sorry, have to disagree here. Just because you guys are salty youve spent loads of time on the flames and found nothing doesnt give you the right to diss the authors here. It will go to the person who is able to solve it, due to their way of thinking.