Thursday, 3 March 2016

cipher - He forgot his own password


Avid puzzling stackexchange lurker Mr. Mnemonic (first name NOT Johnny, I promise) is having trouble remembering his login credentials. Knowing that he can be incredibly forgetful, he created a password clue device for himself that allows him to regenerate his forgotten password simply by looking at a series of characters/pictures and running them through an algorithm known only to him. However, he did not anticipate being quite so forgetful as to not remember his device! Luckily, he does have his notes from solving this the last time he forgot how to do it, which should help him figure out how he generated his passwords so he can login and post an answer to this puzzle.


Unfortunately, he did not leave a note about why his clues were so needlessly cryptic, so he'll just have to deal with that.



Notes:



[house].................. I should get a boat
[star] .............................alas, no pizza
[operation]..............order matters here
[color wheel] ...............frost me once...
[prince] ..............................a true artist
[goodnight moon]..........good Morning?
[puppy]......family friend, order matters
[rose]...........................don't look down

[flat]...............greatest common factor?
[123...]...........shift these around and the password doesn't change?



Previously valid passwords:


fixed


So, given the information above, and the clue below, what is Mr. Mnemonic's current password?


enter image description here



Answer



Putting it all together


Tumbler41's answer figured out the majority of this (make sure to upvote that one). Comments from kayzeroshort and M Oehm filled in some more.



Each image corresponds to a series of letters, or mnemonic, and the position of the image in the password indicates which of those letters to use. Here are the mnemonics for each symbol:




HOUSE house


Mnemonic: HOMES
Stands for: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior
Meaning: The five Great Lakes on the Canada/U.S. border.
Clue: "I should get a boat" hints that this is referring to lakes.




STAR star


Mnemonic: MVEMJSUN

Stands for: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
Meaning: The order of the planets in our solar system, starting from the sun.
Clue: "Alas, no pizza" refers to an earlier version of this mnemonic, which used "My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas" to include Pluto as well. Since Pluto was demoted to planetoid, the "pizza" is no longer there.




OPERATION operation


Mnemonic: PEMDAS
Stands for: Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction
Meaning: This is the order of operations for mathematics. It tells you what part of an equation to evaluate first (from left to right).
Clue: "Order matters here" refers to the order of operations.





COLOR WHEEL color wheel


Mnemonic: ROYGBIV
Stands for: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet
Meaning: These are the colours of the visible light spectrum, from longest to shortest wavelength. Clue: "Frost me once..." -- The response would be "Frost me twice", which is an oblique clue to Bifröst, a rainbow bridge in Norse mythology.




PRINCE prince


Mnemonic: N/A
Stands for: numbers/symbols, because it is itself a symbol
Meaning: This is the symbol that was used by the artist Prince to refer to himself for a while, instead of using a name.
Clue: "A true artist" points people to the fact that this is a symbol for an artist, in case they had not made that connection.





GOODNIGHT MOON goodnight moon


Mnemonic: GAMEN
Stands for: Good Afternoon/Morning/Evening/Night
Meaning: This is commonly used in The Sphinx's Lair as a greeting, because there are people there from so many different time zones.
Clue: "Good Morning?" gives the clue that this may be referring to different times of day.




PUPPY puppy


Mnemonic: KPCOFGS
Stands for: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species

Meaning: This is the taxonomic order, in which all living organisms are classified, from the most general (Kingdom) to the most specific (Species).
Clue: "Family friend" is a clue to the different groupings, which include Family. "Order matters" indicates that this is the taxonomic order.




ROSE rose


Mnemonic: NESW
Stands for: North, East, South, West
Meaning: These are the directions on a compass rose, indicating the four cardinal directions.
Clue: "Don't look down" indicates that you should be looking in other directions.




FLAT flat



Mnemonic: BEADGCF
Stands for: B, E, A, D, G, C, F
Meaning: This is the order in which flats appear in music. A piece with a single flat note will have B$\flat$, while a piece with two flats will have B$\flat$ and E$\flat$, etc.
Clue: "Greatest common factor" is often abbreviated GCF, which are the last three notes in the above mnemonic.




NUMBERS $123456789$


These are different from the others. As the clue indicates, moving them around doesn't matter. They are simply modifiers for the other components of the password. A digit indicates that the character in that position of the password should be uppercase.


So a password containing the digits $3$ and $5$ would have the 3rd and 5th characters in uppercase. (An "uppercase" digit is assumed to be the associated symbol on the keyboard.)




The final answer



Using this information, we can easily solve the final password:


It will be:



  1. house h (the first characters of HOMES)

  2. operation e (the second character of PEMDAS)

  3. color wheel y (the third character of ROYGBIV)

  4. prince 4 (because the PRINCE symbol is in the 4th position)

  5. goodnight moon n (the fifth character of GAMEN

  6. puppy g (the sixth character of KPCOFGS)

  7. prince 7 (because the PRINCE symbol is in the 7th position)


  8. prince 8 (because the PRINCE symbol is in the 8th position)

  9. prince 9 (because the PRINCE symbol is in the 9th position)


But because we have the digits $148$ included as well, we "uppercase" the 1st, 4th, and 8th characters, to give us the final solution of:


Hey$ng7*9


No comments:

Post a Comment

Understanding Stagnation point in pitot fluid

What is stagnation point in fluid mechanics. At the open end of the pitot tube the velocity of the fluid becomes zero.But that should result...