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Welcome, cryptanalyst (146.148.62.204)
66 points by vnagpal on Nov 25, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 64 comments


Last time I visited, it had a message like "You can only log in if you have logged in before." Is this part new, or is it just a different way to enter?


This is completely different—the last site was targeting python devs.


No, it's the same. This is just a test that lets you access foobar.


Seems to be a gateway to access /foobar


If anyone involved is reading this -- please make the timer a bit more obvious. I opened the link, went back here, then made a quick wikipedia safari and when i got back to it timed out with no indication that i can restart it. :(

edit: The console could use a little error checking, if the request dies (i had referrer disabled), it prints "requesting xxxx..." and then nothing. Tsk, tsk :)


Delete the cookies from ig-game.appspot.com.


clear cache and cookies and refresh


I completed a few of these foobar challenges, and I'd love to keep working on them, but it seems to have stopped working for me. I can no longer save files in the editor, and I get a "Not Found" error when I run the verify command. Anyone else run into this bug (and maybe figure out a fix)?


FYI: I tried deleting cookies again this morning, and everything is working again. The challenge I had finished (but was unable to save or submit) was showing as completed. Not sure if someone at Google took action on my bug report, or if everything just worked itself out.


This game is not working correctly on my browser (FF33). I tried several times and waited until the end because nothing was happening... then tried with chromium and it did work :-/ (btw noscript is turned off)


FF33.1.1 (on Archlinux) is working fine here. In addition to NoScript, you probably need to disable any extension that forbids cross-domain cookies as the relevant cookies are registered for https://ig-game.appspot.com/ and not a raw IP.


Same here. FF 33.0 on Ubuntu 14.04.

I wish they had the courtesy to put up a "Sorry, your browser is not supported" instead of having me answering everything and then finding out it doesn't work.


Works fine for me on FF32 / Fedora 20


This is entrance to foobar. It is pretty easy to figure out crossword using either a calculator to convert bases or (wolfram alpha for the lazy) and [0] for regex. I have not used regex in years, but got in easy.

[0] http://www.regexr.com/ . Hint mouse over regex after you type it for explanation of what will match, try it out in the text editor below. Fairly trivial.


Semi-related, Google does base conversions too. You can type "8660 in hexadecimal" in Google and get the answer. Seems strangely appropriate since this is a Google game.


all is trivial but regex, what data to use for those hints ?


It does not really matter. Either characters to use would be included in regex itself, such as [j-g] or you could use any.

For example "\D{2}\S{3}" means match 2 non-digit characters followed by 3 nonspace characters. Some things that match "aaaaa", "bbbbb", "ALUSD", "AA123"...

Site I linked really explains things quite well on mouseover. Once you complete first challenge (make sure you open this in chrome, I've had exciting quest of delete elements in firefox until I could save my solution) you can register and come back anytime later.


Kinda surprised to be challenged like that suddenly, but managed to pull through with my (t)rusty regex-foo.

Foobar is fun and well made! Passed the first challenge in a few minutes and will continue tomorrow. Try to start challenges on foobar only when you want the timer to start (e.g., not when you need to go to bed like me..). Thou shan't worry much on the first challenge though, it allows for 48 hours.


FYI, the time alloted to each challenge seem to increase with the difficulty (the first couple of problems are 48 hours, then 72, then 96, etc.).


What does something like \D{2}\S{3} mean? Out of context it seems a bit... cryptic ;)


It's a regular expression, probably Perl syntax:

http://perldoc.perl.org/perlrebackslash.html


Thank you. I thought it could be a regex, but I had never seen perl syntax before.


It's a regex... but my first thought was that it was a clue about group theory.


Two non-digits followed by three non-whitespace characters


I completed this puzzle. It then takes you to the foobar puzzle which was posted a while ago. It has a series of challenges. After completing the first challenge, it says "Max active challenge count reached"


I passed the crossword! If you fill in the blanks with, say, "a" you can check your answers as you go.

I'm now facing a small coding challenge: 48 hours to come up with code with Python or Java (my choice).


So level 1 has only one problem, 48 hours. Level 2 has two problems, 72 hours apiece.

Edit: Level 3: 3 puzzles, 96 hours apiece. How deep does this go?


Doesn't work.

Upon completing the crossword the page auto-submits the solution and gets "403 Forbidden" in response. Something got broken somewhere or someone has pulled the plug.


Well, would be understandable if this is something that should be exclusive. Those who made their entry should be thankful then...


tried it out, still works. Try clearing cache and cookies and restart. Also use a mainstream browser


  <<
  POST / HTTP/1.1
  Host: ig-game.appspot.com
  ...

  >>
  HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
  Alternate-Protocol: 443:quic,p=0.02
  Cache-Control: no-cache
  Content-Length: 0
  Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
  Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 21:32:12 GMT
  Server: Google Frontend
  Set-Cookie: session=(snip); Path=/; HttpOnly
  X-Firefox-Spdy: 3.1
Nope. Might be geo-locked or something.


Look at the response body, the 403 i got had a nice html error message attached.


  Content-Length: 0
:-|


Okay, that was an exercise in frustration. By the third timeout i was pretty confident i had the answers right, but nothing happened. :(


same. claimed i had errors, checked multiple times, did not work.

if this is a recruiting tool, they should make sure they code it properly. unless part of the game is to debug it ... but i do enough of that already at work, so screw it.


Neat puzzle. There are coding challenges if you manage to pass the crossword. Guessing it's some kind of broad net recruiting?


I tried 3 times on Firefox and it was always saying 4/5 correct. Then I tried on Chrome and I passed to the foobar terminal.


Odd what's FF version? It worked fine for me on v32.0.2.

edit: It might be this suggested by Kripke:

"kripke 0 minutes ago | link

FF33.1.1 (on Archlinux) is working fine here. In addition to NoScript, you probably need to disable any extension that forbids cross-domain cookies as the relevant cookies are registered for https://ig-game.appspot.com/ and not a raw IP."


Hmm, "This cipher machine is jammed. Come back and try to crank it up later."

I suppose that is some sort of HN effect.


I managed to get 2/5 correct. I guess I'm still far too much of a noob for these things :P


Was it the hex/oct -> dec conversions?

...yeah, that's all that I got too.


4/5.... will any correct regex match count as accurate or are they hints at a specific answer?


Looks like any matching regex is accepted.


Odd. That wasn't working for me. Might be because I'm using Safari.

Edit: Yep, works on chrome. Lame. I wasted some time on that.


What happens if you make an incorrect submission for the coding challenges?


Nothing. At least at level 1, I made an incorrect submission multiple times without apparent reprisal.


Looks pretty easy, I wonder if google recruits like this?


This isn't for google, it's some marketing thing for upcoming movie "The Imitation Game" (based on Alan Turing).


You sure? It redirects into the foobar game, which seems more like fizz buzz type challenges.


The footer has links to Google. Unless Google is now doing movie marketing.

This is also part of another game that was submitted a couple weeks ago which was a recruiting game for GOogle.


I got to that site through this movie trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=sX... if you look at the paper at 3 second mark you can see the address "146.148.62.204". But now i wonder if its somehow connected with google


Haha right as Turing says "Are you paying attention too." Pretty clever. I don't think this is purely a movie advert though. The Imitation Game relation explains how they expected people to get the non number base/regex clue.


It is also on the blackboard at the end (around 0:57), and possibly on some other places. Google "sponsoring" them in exchange of putting an IP address in their trailer is something I would absolutely see them do.


also at blackboard at 0:10 and 0:26, and at a paper sheet at 0:12


Wow! You clearly pay attention... I wonder if I would have noticed this. Thanks for sharing!

Somehow, google must have to do with this, either google paying weinstein for displaying this or weinstein paying google for making this a social media booster.


Well Benedict asked to pay close attention :D


6 lines of pythoncode for 1. puzzle. anyone less?


I believe we get puzzles randomly selected from a pool. Mine was about date parsing. Yours?


comparing two datafiles with suffled numbers to find matching pairs. all pairs have the same quotient. task was to find the quotient and return it as "improvement-ratio"


Can confirm they're both different from mine. I got a palindrome problem.


Yep mine was summing the digits of a number until you reach a single digit number (eg 455 -> 5).


It restarts with new answers if you time out.


I will sell the answers for $15. Contact me at zo.har.j@gmail.com


There's only one constant answer and that's not that hard to get from the references just on the page itself. Shoo.




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