Quote from: TheGamer506 on February 04, 2018, 01:42:41 AM

Quote from: itod on February 03, 2018, 07:19:34 PM

Quote

In the case of the puzzle, the input bits consisted of the six-bit cipher derived from the ribbons on the key paired with each of the 6-bit chunks from the 608-bit string encoded in the flames. After the XOR operation was applied to the entire string, the new string was then divided into 4-bit chunks, each of which represented a single flame in the photo.

Each bit in the 4-bit chunks represented a characteristic of the flame and each characteristic group could be represented as a bit: short (0) or tall (1) / red (0) or yellow (1) border /narrow (0) or wide (1) / purple (0) or green (1) interiorin that order. So, for example, a 4-bit chunk with the value 0110 would be a short (0), yellow border (1), wide (1), purple interior (0) flame in the painting.

Turned out we had absolutely all elements figured out ages ago. Amazing how no one stumbled on correct reading order.

Excuse me, why is it in that exact order? the beginning is because the rabbit looks at that side, right?
It would be great for someone to do a step by step with images haha PS: The best puzzle.

Hindsight is 20/20 but before the solution was posted, I had a feeling I had found "the primer" which was hidden in some of the leaves. Here is what I found, I shared some of it on this forum previously. The ampersand seems to say "small orange flames & leaves". There is a left pointing, up pointing and down pointing leaf attached to the ampersand. The left hand side border has those same three leaves with the small orange flames touching them. The left pointing leaf at the top has 1 orange flame touching it, the up pointing leaf has 2 white/orange flames touching it and the third downpointing leaf has 3 orange flames touching it, 1,2,3... If you look at what they are pointing at, it makes more sense when seeing that those three leaves are paired with the other three leaves which go off the border of the chess board.
1) The first leaf pair is pointing at height. The one on the left is pointing to "tall" the one on the top row is pointing to "short" (if it was pointing to a colored flame this might have been ambiguous).
2) The second leaf pair is pointing to outer color. The one on the left is pointing to a tall yellow purple (fat) flame, and the one on the top row is pointing to a short orange purple (fat) flame. Since height is already taken care of, the only difference is outer color
3) The third leaf pair is pointing to inner thickness. The one on the left is pointing to a tall orange green skinny flame and the one on the right is *touching a tall orange green (fat) flame. The difference is the inner thickness.

I had used this ordering a ton (1 height 2 outer color 3 thickness) but much to my chagrin, I was only looking at three channels at a time forgetting that obviously the ordering of the first three channels implies the fourth. I probably wouldn't have caught the true solution though because I foolishly was not checking multiple interpretations of channel values (red = 1 yellow =0 OR red=0 yellow=1). But there's my thoughts on it. I'd love to know if this was indeed intentional as I believed.