Just a word of warning, TNT has been locking a bunch of the boards which talk about using the calculator, one of which had this extra bit added to the standard message:
Quote:*** THIS TOPIC HAS BEEN LOCKED! ***
Cheating is not allowed. Do not use, ask for, post, trade, or sell cheats anywhere on Neopets. Using the \"calculator\" or any other program to solve the plot IS considering cheating and WILL get you frozen!
Here's a link to the board with that warning (although I don't know how long the board will stay in the system):
http://www.neopets.com/neoboards/topic.p...=118069482
Not quite sure how this is any different to the star mapping site that was regularly mentioned on the boards for the Altador plot and never created any drama...
It's not any different from the star mapping. And this is completely bull: it would take me about an hour to remember how to write a script in PHP to do the same thing, which I could use on my laptop by entering the number manually rather than grabbing that link. TNT would never know I had.
Not to mention this is virtually impossible without a program. Doing it by hand would take hours, even with the knowledge we have. Unless there's some incredible mathematical shortcut that no one's bothered to share?
Edit: It's officially on the plot page:
http://www.neopets.com/space/ros/hq.phtml
TNT Wrote:Please note that using any kind of external helper program or cheat program to solve this puzzle is against the rules and will likely get you FROZEN! So do the right thing and solve the puzzle yourself! (Discussions with friends and the use of reference charts is perfectly okay.)
The message decoder link in the first page was missing an "l" in the ".phtml". I fixed it for you.
I just confirmed with a programmer that we need to finish this step of the plot or we can't do further sections... if we don't decode these things, we're out. If there's any battling after this (I don't know and I won't ask; he wouldn't tell me, anyway), then this really sucks.
Cranberry Wrote:I just confirmed with a programmer that we need to finish this step of the plot or we can't do further sections... if we don't decode these things, we're out. If there's any battling after this (I don't know and I won't ask; he wouldn't tell me, anyway), then this really sucks.
Ohh what the heck this is so bad... but i have a though so guys if you decode this please say me wich message had the secret message of garoo some people that did it found the message in the no.5 message... so say me please
I've thrown my scratch notes away but pretty sure it was 5 (or 6) - the last one I did. The odd part was that it first showed a completely new set of characters in the result line when I thought I had the answer (I run a Japanese OS so maybe the double-byte set got confused). I refreshed a couple of times and then the page changed to the completed next step. Glitch? I was just happy it was over and went to bed. I used brute force elimination working from right column to left. I also felt that there wasn't consistency across the puzzle for characters equalling others but it was so late my brain was zapped so that might not be true.
yukiotoko Wrote:I've thrown my scratch notes away but pretty sure it was 5 (or 6) - the last one I did. The odd part was that it first showed a completely new set of characters in the result line when I thought I had the answer (I run a Japanese OS so maybe the double-byte set got confused). I refreshed a couple of times and then the page changed to the completed next step. Glitch? I was just happy it was over and went to bed. I used brute force elimination working from right column to left. I also felt that there wasn't consistency across the puzzle for characters equalling others but it was so late my brain was zapped so that might not be true.
I'm seriously considering doing that too. I'm getting dizzy staring at my excel chart of this+this+this=this. 2-Mod was hard enough with that chart, just staring at the size of the 3-Mod one was just
Quote:Please note that using any kind of external helper program or cheat program to solve this puzzle is against the rules and will likely get you FROZEN! So do the right thing and solve the puzzle yourself! (Discussions with friends and the use of reference charts is perfectly okay.)
-- The Neopets Team
So I guess it's freezeable if you make your own program to guess and check...even if I knew how to make my own program (a fun challenge), I wouldn't be allowed to use it
well excel isnt your own program is it?
ive got this pretty close to figured out.
this is a stronger area for me though. if i werent mathematically inclined it would be infuriating
I guess I got lucky. I didn't wanna get the chance of getting frozen, so I guessed. Most of mine were low numbers, so it didn't take all that long, LOL.
For some reason, when I solved the 5 1-mod and the 5 2-mod puzzles, I still had one puzzle with *INCOMPLETE DATA* on it. I just skipped it and solved another 3-mod one. Then the *INCOMPLETE DATA* disappeared from the first one. It turned out that the one with the *INCOMPLETE DATA* on it was Garoo's message. The 3-mod I solved had the circle thing on it, so maybe that unlocked garoo's message for solving? Would be a better shot than going through all 10 3-mod puzzles, considering the brute force way I did took up to an hour or two per message.