Lemmings Forums

Our puzzle team The Suicidal Rodents takes part in regular puzzle competitions.

Team board thesuicidalrodents.proboards.com

Puzzle hunt websites (these redirect automatically to the latest contest):
CiSRA puzzle.cisra.com.au
ΣUMS www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/sums/puzzlehunt
MUMS www.ms.unimelb.edu.au/~mums/puzzlehunt

We are going to participate in the Cisra Puzzle Contest 2012. This discussion originated in Logic Puzzles, but we should make a separate thread for this.

The team is Insane Steve, geoo, Proxima, and me. However, unofficial helpers are fine, and we aren't eligible for winning a physical prize anyway. If you're into solving amazingly hard puzzles without instructions, but with a lot of lateral thinking, feel free to participate.

Our private discussion forum for solution ideas
Our team's page (The Suicidal Rodents)
Example puzzles from the 2011 round
The site's RSS feed

-- Simon

Steve will register the team shortly, and we need a team name. I suggest "Lemmings Forums" or "lemmingsforums.com", but the former looks less spammy. ;-)

Any chance you guys may go for something less bland? "The spinning hamsters", "The Capybaras", even "asdfasdf" seem more fun and interesting by comparison.   C'mon, show us some lateral thinking there!

How 'bout The Suicidal Rodents? Sounds like a good name for a rock band

Yeah, I was thinking it should be something involving rodents (and not just Lemmings Forum) as well.
The Spinning Hamsters and The Suicidal Rodents are both very good suggestions.

You can sign me up as Carl P. Bara, with my usual e-mail address.
(And Simon should sign up as Paul Q. Pine )

I like "The Suicidal Rodents" hahaha, goes rather well with us being on the Lemmings boards.

I'll be registering shortly, I'll need a name you'll go by and an e-mail for you (if you don't want it in public just PM it to me). Your name should probably look at least semi-believable (So something like Carl P. Bara is excellent, but @ Simon you're probably going to need to give some kind of last name).

Also looking at the rules a bit better teams are limited to 4, but teams can have "unofficial helpers" or something, so if anyone else wants to offer advice on a puzzle it looks like they definitely still can.

EDIT: Actually just need a last name of some sort for Simon and confirmation on The Suicidal Rodents as a team name and we're good for registration, I got everything else

I'm all for Spinning Hamsters as the name, but Suicidal Rodents is good too. I always deem that too cliché, but for non-Lemmings people it's probably a good funny name.

-- Simon

I'm fine with Spinning Hamsters also, actually, and it may not be the greatest idea to reference suicide in a puzzle team name, I don't know.

Well, I'm against that, because I find the Hamster very annoying

In that case it seems Suicidal Rodents is the most agreed upon name, so unless there's any real objections I'll go with that. I'll probably set up the team either later today or tomorrow.

Ok, registered the team "The Suicidal Rodents". If you had your name with a middle initial I left it out for the purpose of the competition.

Since it'd probably be a bad idea to leave our though processes searchable by Google or whatever, it might not be a bad idea to set up a free message board of some kind for this.

Bumping this because the date of the first puzzle set's release is next Monday, September 24th, at 2 pm GMT. This gives us about a week to work the first 4 puzzles, but after we'd only have a day for each set the following week for full marks on a problem.

I'll be setting up a board for us soon.

Puzzles are out now: http://puzzle.cisra.com.au/puzzles.php

I'll probably be too busy to look at them until Wednesday though.

Puzzles are out now: http://puzzle.cisra.com.au/puzzles.php

I'll probably be too busy to look at them until Wednesday though.

It's fine, I will too actually. We have a week for the first set, at least. I'll be setting up the board for discussion now. If anyone else wants to join and offer suggestions I don't see why not, I mean they have rules for "unofficial helpers" and such on the rules so there's not really strict "only 4 people EVER" rule.

EDIT: http://thesuicidalrodents.proboards.com/index.cgi is the discussion board. You'll need to register to view threads and stuff.

Good luck!

Just from a glance I'm having a harder time with 1a than I think I should, 1b looks like the sort of thing I'm usually pretty good at but I'm too tired to give it a serious look, and 1c and 1d look more like other people's fortes 

Hey, just a heads up, if you make an account on the team forums, can you send me a message here so I know who you are, especially if you're using a different name there than you are here? I need to know this so I can assign the appropriate permissions for you to see the boards with the puzzle discussion. Thanks.

It's all over... but, just as that's finished, another near-identical contest is due to start in a week's time. I probably got more into this than I ought to as an "unofficial" helper, so I could join the team proper this time (teams of 5 allowed this time, one more than before). More fun times ahead

Yea, definitely. And once again, if you're interested in helping out, make an account on the puzzle boards (if you haven't already), PM me with the account here and I'll give you access to the boards for everything. 

Oh, and this should go without saying (and already has since the CISRA comp opened) but Lemmings/Lix stuff (eg. the Reloaded project) is basically on hold until this is over with

MUMS puzzle hunt starts on May 13th, so in about a month: http://www.ms.unimelb.edu.au/~mums/puzzlehunt/


On an unrelated note, every two weeks during the term there's a trivia quiz taking place here, and this term they included a puzzle each time. Here's the one from two weeks ago, which only one team solved. (And and this one doesn't involve much typing for me. )

Title: National Pride

A drawback prize (5)
Excessively wild Macedonia screwed without love (
Straight fifty in sound receiver  (6)
Stick around marine (6)
Avoidance of stupid visa in a long period of time (7)

I'll still be in Japan then, so I'm out

A drawback prize -- AWARD
Excessively wild Macedonia screwed without love -- MAENADIC
Straight fifty in sound receiver -- LINEAR
Stick around marine -- REMAIN
Avoidance of stupid visa in a long period of time -- EVASION

All right, I was wondering when this one would happen. Count me in

This contest allows teams of 10, so pretty much everyone can join "officially" (for what it's worth). Anyone who wants to join in, go to our team forum: thesuicidalrodents.proboards.com. See what crazy random discussion we can stoke up before the thing starts

I'd sort of like to join but I don't know how much help I'd be considering I really don't understand this:

A drawback prize -- AWARD
Excessively wild Macedonia screwed without love -- MAENADIC
Straight fifty in sound receiver -- LINEAR
Stick around marine -- REMAIN
Avoidance of stupid visa in a long period of time -- EVASION

the numbers match how many letters but beyond that I don't get it. 
well, wait, all the letters of the words can be found in the sentences except for L in Linear...

They're all standard cryptic clues. One word in the clue is a definition of the answer; the rest points to it cryptically using various conventions. Here are explanations for each clue:

A drawback prize -- DRAW backwards is WARD, combined with A = AWARD
Excessively wild Macedonia screwed without love -- anagram of Macedonia ("screwed" is a typical anagram indicator) without the O (which looks like a zero, hence "love")
Straight fifty in sound receiver -- fifty is L, in EAR
Stick around marine -- anagram of "marine" ("around" is another anagram indicator)
Avoidance of stupid visa in a long period of time -- anagram of "visa" ("stupid" is yet another anagram indicator) surrounded by the letters of EON (valid American spelling of "aeon")

Now you just have to piece these clues together to get the solution.


MUMS puzzle hunt starts soon. Steve: can you set up a category in the forum for this?
Forum is: http://thesuicidalrodents.proboards.com/
If you haven't registered on the forum yet, drop Steve a note so he can give you access to the restricted areas.

So yeah, we can have up to 10 team members. Tell me your (possibly fake) name and e-mail address that I can sign you up with.
I suppose we're "The Suicidal Rodents" again? We can also add a team description this time. Any suggestions?


On an unrelated note, the game Fez has been released for PC a week ago (was released for Xbox a year earlier): http://polytroncorporation.com/
Apart from being a platformer with a somewhat unique 2D/3D mechanic, whose beautiful pixel-art and soundtrack gives it a really strong (most of the time serene) atmosphere, it also involves finding secret and solving puzzles not unlike those at the puzzle hunt (though mostly easier). Things is, for one of the puzzles the solution has been brute-forced, but no-one has figure why the solution is what it is. But more notably, with some spectrum analysis tools, hidden images have been found in the soundtrack http://disasterpeace.com/album/fez, and no-one has figured out their meaning yet either: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/961239-fez/62594884
Apparently 16 of the 26 tracks contain hidden images: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/85a9hmfaiezis28/bSmFn3aZjs#/ and http://aquapunk.tumblr.com/search/FEZ
The third post here lists what they are/might be: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/961239-fez/65725274
Either way, it's a really fun game and you should try it.

MUMS puzzlehunt is over, we didn't go quite as well as the previous two but still fine.

Now a heads-up for the next one: CISRA puzzle competition starts July 22(ish), about a month earlier than last year. Which is great because it means it won't run right in to the next competition like last time

Puzzles have returned 

Teamboards at http://thesuicidalrodents.proboards.com
Contest in Clam's last post

It's started already? Damn, I was hoping to enter this time

Hmm, looks like qwerty is around this time, and just now I checked and all 4 of round 1 puzzles have been solved.   Maybe just the two of them will be enough.

qwerty seems very interested in this contest, and pretty much obliterated set 1.

geoo also invited a few of his friends as helpers, and one of them is pretty talented herself.

I have great hopes once the puzzles come on a daily basis.

@Proxima: I set the team with the same group as before, so technically you're on the "official" team like last year. Gogogogogogogogo.

Bear in mind that I made a typointentionally ironically spelled our team name as The "Suidical" Rodents when entering answers. 

Hi all, new to Lemmings, but saw your chat on the Cisra Puzzles.

I've already got 3 of the 5 answers correct, and am still working on "Connecting Nodes" and "Animal Halves".

Anyone prepared to steer me in the right direction (or even give the answer) to either of those remaining two?

Am happy to trade notes on the three I've solved.

Fellow Lemming,

Palaeo.

Hi all, new to Lemmings, but saw your chat on the Cisra Puzzles.

I've already got 3 of the 5 answers correct, and am still working on "Connecting Nodes" and "Animal Halves".

Anyone prepared to steer me in the right direction (or even give the answer) to either of those remaining two?

Am happy to trade notes on the three I've solved.

Fellow Lemming,

Palaeo.

I'd love to have you on the team... seems you've already started on this, though, and we've actually gotten the Gold Rubix Cube on the day they were released. I'm mildly worried about the team getting DQed since you already signed up.

Now, if you want to join us and not use your current account, or join us for future contests, We'd love to have you. 

Hi again,

not sure what you meant by "Golden Rubix Cube".

Yeah, I'm already teamed up with a couple of others for the Cisra puzzles, but have never read the rules  ...  are we not allowed to share ideas and thoughts (or answers) ...  is that what you meant by disqualification ?

Kind regards,

Chris

ok, got all 5 now ....  strangely, the Connected Nodes puzzle (Category Easy) was the one that took the longest.

Probably looking too deeply for something more involved.

Good luck to you all,

Chris

I still don't know what you meant by the Golden Rubix Cube.

Chris

I still don't know what you meant by the Golden Rubix Cube.

Chris

The trophy for solving group 1
Our resident Rubik's Cube enthusiast

ok, got all 5 now ....  strangely, the Connected Nodes puzzle (Category Easy) was the one that took the longest.

Probably looking too deeply for something more involved.

Good luck to you all,

Chris

Ha, CiSRA is really good at misrating their puzzles. The one that ruins perfect scores every year (including last) is pretty much always rated "Medium."

Also, nice work getting them -- you should totally join us once SUMS or MUMS or any other puzzle hunts you or us find out about roll around 

Have solved puzzles 2B ( On the right track ) and 2C ( Sometime ) so far. How are others going ?

Have solved puzzles 2B ( On the right track ) and 2C ( Sometime ) so far. How are others going ?

We got all but D yesterday, today we've gotten A, B, and D (first thanks to geoo) so far, making headway on C, and pretty much doing what everyone else is at E 

We solved all the puzzles! The Typo'd Rodents rule!


wait wut ... we placed lower than last time? OH COME ON

SUMS ΣUMS starts today

I've updated the topic post to something more useful (thanks Simon for the idea)

On an unrelated note, every two weeks during the term there's a trivia quiz taking place here, and this term they included a puzzle each time. Here's the one from two weeks ago, which only one team solved. (And and this one doesn't involve much typing for me. )

Title: National Pride

A drawback prize (5)
Excessively wild Macedonia screwed without love (
Straight fifty in sound receiver  (6)
Stick around marine (6)
Avoidance of stupid visa in a long period of time (7)

I know this was posted almost a year ago, but I looked back at it now and solved it

Add one letter to each cryptic answer to form a country name:

AWARD + N = RWANDA
MAENADIC + O = MACEDONIA [slightly :\ that the country name is in the clue]
LINEAR + D = IRELAND
REMAIN + A = ARMENIA
EVASION + L = SLOVENIA

Added letters spell 'nodal' which is one letter off POLAND.

New MUMS puzzle hunt will be from May 5th to May 9th: http://puzzlehunt.mums.org.au/

Awwwwwww yea commence Operation Steal Ghost Chips from Ghost George 

"Legend tells of the mysterious Philosopher's Stone..."

Leeeeegend

New MUMS puzzle hunt will be from May 5th to May 9th: http://puzzlehunt.mums.org.au/

Is now underway! If the forum seems quiet for the next little while, this is why

sosolved mucheverything veryincludingthemeta. wow

Thanks to Sekti and Javra for joining in and munching some of the hardest puzzles.

There's a pretty entertaining article about the puzzle hunt organization here: http://www.ms.unimelb.edu.au/~mums/puzzlehunt/2014/Behind_the_Puzzles.pdf

Interesting to read about the original version of the doge puzzle...

The first puzzle hunt in 2004 was co­ordinated by (the now infamous) Julian Assange  of Wikileaks who was vice­president of MUMS at the time.

  Small world!

ΣUMS Puzzle Hunt starts Monday 27th.

Puzzle Hunt starts in 6 hours. Link to team forums[/url[

If you're new and want to join in, go ahead! You will have to PM me the name you registered on the forums with, since I have to manually grant permissions to view the forums.

MUMS 2015 (http://www.ms.unimelb.edu.au/~mums/puzzlehunt/) starts May 4th.

Hunt puzzles, you will...

*SNOP* puzzle time!

...in 15 hours.

Has anybody registered our team yet? You can probably find out here: thesuicidalrodents.proboards.com (http://thesuicidalrodents.proboards.com)

Could anyone tell me what this is? I see lots of posts and links I don't understand.

Quote from: geoo on May 03, 2015, 11:03:21 AM
*SNOP* puzzle time!

...in 15 hours.

I'll probably be asleep...

Quote from: 607 on May 03, 2015, 02:41:40 PM
Could anyone tell me what this is? I see lots of posts and links I don't understand.

It's a competition, LF enters a team every year. The puzzles come in sets of four or so, one set released each day for a week. The object is to find the answer to the puzzle (in the form of a word or short phrase, IIRC), and submit the answers before the day is over.

The puzzles are quite cryptic -- they typically don't give any obvious indication as to how to attain an answer from it. Last year, one of the puzzles was just a piece of sheet music -- guessing how the answer is encoded in the sheet music is part of the challenge.

Quote from: NaOH on May 04, 2015, 02:09:00 AM

Quote from: 607 on May 03, 2015, 02:41:40 PM
Could anyone tell me what this is? I see lots of posts and links I don't understand.

The puzzles are quite cryptic

that is a serious understatement. I would say the puzzles are of at least "savagely hard" difficulty. :P

ΣUMS Puzzle Hunt starts in like 4 days, there was some weird short notice from the "confirmation" e-mail to the start of the contest.

I see starfields and planets... not another Star Wars hunt I hope! :lix-gasp:

Has anyone signed us up already?
I've notified my non Lemmings forums friends.

Not sure if I'll have a lot of time or motivation to put in a lot of effort this time though.

I'll be around to take a look and offer any random insight I might have. I've seen the Star Wars movies but I doubt that will help any if it's about Star Wars anyway. On the other hand I like astronomy.

I'm posting this so I can access it easily from my phone while at work

forum: http://thesuicidalrodents.proboards.com/

puzzle site: http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/ub/sums/puzzlehunt/2015/main

MUMS puzzle hunt (http://www.ms.unimelb.edu.au/~mums/puzzlehunt/2016/) starts May 9th. I'm preparing* by doing lots of crosswords! :8():


*I'm really just doing these to kill time during my lunch break. But preparing for puzzlehunt sounds far more noble :]

Quote from: Clam on April 20, 2016, 08:28:46 AM
MUMS puzzle hunt (http://www.ms.unimelb.edu.au/~mums/puzzlehunt/2016/) starts May 9th. I'm preparing* by doing lots of crosswords! :8():


*I'm really just doing these to kill time during my lunch break. But preparing for puzzlehunt sounds far more noble :]

Board and team set up:

http://thesuicidalrodents.proboards.com/

See instructions for how to sign up as a team member on the board. Not required.
If you are new to LF and want to join in, let me know via PM here or on the SR board and I'll add you to the group of people who can view the individual hunts' boards.
EDIT: I just noticed I'm going to be on a business trip during most of the days puzzles are released. Man having a real job sucks, or it would, if the alternative wasn't far worse :lix-sick:

CISRA puzzle hunt is back...in a way: http://www.mezzacotta.net/puzzle/

Date: October 10th, 2016.

Set up team - board is still at http://thesuicidalrodents.proboards.com/

If you are someone who has never played these and would like to try, set up an account on that board and PM me your name here - I will have to apply the appropriate permissions to let you see the boards here before you can start.

http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/ub/sums/puzzlehunt/2016/main - Puzzle tiiiiiiiiiiiim *snap*

Will set up board shortly. I am off work all this week so I will actually have time to puzzle for once

Interesting, so apparently they kept pushing back the date due to conflicts, until basically it can't be pushed back any further without still staying within year 2016. ;P  I was wondering about the somewhat unusual timing with the holidays and all (although I suppose it's not a bad thing since some people may also have more free time as well, for example I.S. evidently).

I haven't participated in these things much recently and not sure that will change this time around, but best of luck to those who will! :thumbsup:

The MIT puzzle hunt is remote this year for obvious reasons, happening Jan 15-18: https://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/nexthunt.html
It's quite large scale (wrt the amount of puzzles), see the quote from the FAQ:

QuoteYou may register teams of any size. Similar to recent Hunts, we believe teams with many more than 75 people may have less fun. Mystery Hunt has a very large scope, but we're working to make it an amazing experience for both small and large teams.

Anyone interested regardless?

I'd be up for a couple of the MIT 2021 puzzles (https://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/nexthunt.html).

I'd suggest IRC and Mumble to collaborate; I'll give details to all participants. There is also ye olde forume of our Suicidal Rodents (https://thesuicidalrodents.proboards.com/) that we haven't used since 2015 in case we get more participants.

The hunt runs from Friday Jan 15 through Monday Jan 18. My main problem is availability, I have a full-time job, a household, and other projects, I can't guarantee that I'll bring all 4 evenings to the table. But I should make ~2 at least.

On their registration page (https://yewlabs.mit.edu/register.html), I would disallow that we receive unattached hunters. 🐹 🐿️

-- Simon

I'd propose to use the Suicidal Rodents forum to keep things organized and allow collaboration across timezones, with IRC for quick pings and mumble for discussions whenever they come up.

I agree about not receiving unattached hunters.

What sort of 'puzzles' does this whole thing entail, and is it ok to join you even if there's no guarantee I can contribute to anything? :D

They're mystery puzzles without instructions. They solve to a word that isn't logically deducible, but once you have it, you feel that it is probably correct. A ton of lateral thinking is needed.

Example: The puzzle shows a maze on six squares. You had to realize that the squares would form a cube, and the maze's squares would thus connect in different ways than on paper.

Example: The entire puzzle consists of a sequence of single-suit mahjong hands that each were one tile away from winning. The solution was, for each hand { determine the waits, sum their numbers, convert the number into letter of the alphabet } and read the letters in sequence.

-- Simon

these puzzles are harrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd

I'd be willing to give it a try, but there's a decent chance I might not be of much help.

If you want to join in, even if you don't think you can commit much time or might not be of much help, create an account in our old puzzling forum and I'll give you access (PM me if your username is non-obvious): https://thesuicidalrodents.proboards.com/
Thanks Steve for giving me admin privileges!
I signed up a team and you can find the login credentials in the forum.

Intro (how to hunt): http://yewlabs.mit.edu/updates.html (scroll down a bit to see)
Summary of example puzzle and techniques: http://tinyurl.com/ExPuzNotes
Archive: www.mit.edu/~puzzle/

We can also hop onto mumble or similar for discussions on short notice.

The whole thing starts on Friday noon EST, though I'll probably only be free a few hours later.

There's a 24 hour puzzle hunt coming up this Saturday/Sunday: https://puzzlehunt.club.cc.cmu.edu/

From the page my guess is that there should be a decent amount of beginner-friendly puzzles too.

I set up a team, not competing seriously, just for fun (definitely not staying up for 24 hours straight). Let me know if you're interested and I can add you.