Smart enough to solve this puzzle? Practised in the art of counting in multiple ways?
VACANCIES OPEN!
PM me to learn more about fantastic employment opportunities for talented puzzlers such as yourself. Don't pass up this chance for an amazing career with advantages including the following.
- Inclusion.
- Extremely reasonable salaries.
- Internship availabilities included.
Terms and conditions apply; offer ends 1st of May.
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asked Apr 2, 2018 at 22:56
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16$\begingroup$ Since you've done it on my posts so many times, flagged as spam :P $\endgroup$– QuintecCommented Apr 2, 2018 at 23:41
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10$\begingroup$ Please do not flag as spam unless you truly mean it. This hurts our community as a whole and we do not tolerate toxic users. $\endgroup$– PraneetmekCommented Apr 3, 2018 at 1:13
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9$\begingroup$ I came here from HNQ just only to flag it as a spam ;) $\endgroup$– Andrew T.Commented Apr 3, 2018 at 7:33
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3$\begingroup$ Ceci n'est pas une spam post $\endgroup$– Engineer ToastCommented Apr 3, 2018 at 14:45
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4$\begingroup$ @Joshua The number, sadly, is not zero. I'm not giving a count, out of concern that silly people will then try to be silly with it. $\endgroup$– Rubio ♦Commented Apr 4, 2018 at 6:08
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4 Answers
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The answer is SPAMPOSTS or SPAM POSTS. Based on Mithrandir's Fibonacci, I made a fibonacci sequence i.e.
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34
Now I extracted the corresponding letter from each sentence like S from Smart and P from the second sentence to make the message SPAM POSTS
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3$\begingroup$ Correct! You solved it :-D (I'm surprised this took so long, actually, after Mithrandir had found the first part of the solution.) $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 3, 2018 at 11:06
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Counting the
number of words in each sentence and applying 1=A, 2=B, etc
reveals the word
FIBONACCI
I'm unsure if there's any deeper answer - I expect there to be, but I don't know what they may be at the moment.
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3$\begingroup$ Good job finding this so fast! But you're right that there's more to the puzzle than this. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 2, 2018 at 23:08
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$\begingroup$ Can you please elaborate a bit more on your first part. $\endgroup$– WelzCommented Apr 2, 2018 at 23:11
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$\begingroup$ @WELZ Gurer ner 6 jbeqf va gur svefg fragrapr, 9 va gur frpbaq, 2 va gur 3eq, rgp rgp. Gur 6gu yrggre va gur nycunorg vf S, 9gu vf V, 2aq vf O, rgp rgp (rot13) $\endgroup$– QuintecCommented Apr 2, 2018 at 23:53
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Too long for a comment; might help others solve the riddle:
Based on Mithrandir's answer,
the solution might have something to do with the fibonacci series. Counting the letters of each word gives
5, 6, 2, 5, 4, 6, 9, 2, 3, 3, 2, 8, 2, 8, 4,
9, 4
2, 2, 2, 5, 4, 5, 9, 10, 13, 3, 8, 8, 4, 2, 8,
4, 4, 2, 4, 5, 3, 2, 7, 6, 4, 10, 9, 3, 9,
9,
9, 10, 8,
10, 14, 8,
5, 3, 10, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 3
If I didn't do any mistakes while counting. We can map each of those $n$ to the value of its step in the fibonacci sequence $F_n$. This gives:
5, 8, 1, 5, 3, 8, 34, 1, 2, 2, 1, 21, 1, 21, 3,
34, 3,
1, 1, 1, 5, 3, 5, 34, 55, 233, 2, 21, 21, 3, 1, 34,
3, 3, 1, 3, 5, 2, 1, 13, 8, 3, 55, 34, 2, 34,
34,
34, 55, 21,
55, 377, 21,
5, 2, 55, 5, 5, 3, 2, 1, 2
While the numbers we get this way do not map to characters meaningfully,
using mod 26 and a rotation cipher (for example rot13) might result in more usable text. Maybe the words' rank by position $m$ or their respective $F_m$ has to be included in the calculation.
It's also possible that the larger numbers such as 233 and 377 encode multiple letters.
This does not really feel like the right track, but maybe someone else can get closer to the solution from here.
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2$\begingroup$ kudos for thinking in this way, but since words usually are much shorter than 26 characters, it seems very difficult to come up with any sort of substitution with the low amount of possibilities $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 3, 2018 at 2:49
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$\begingroup$ perhaps we should take into consideration "the art of counting in multiple ways". I have been fiddling around taking characters from both ends of the string. So far I have found nothing. Perhaps you, or some other person can have a breakthrough in this regard? $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 3, 2018 at 2:57
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$\begingroup$ @micsthepick It is possible that the puzzle has more than two steps, and a further hint is encoded in the text. Maybe the sequence F has something else to do with the solution. I'm stumped though. $\endgroup$– OrphevsCommented Apr 3, 2018 at 8:08
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I don't know whether I am on right track or not but using clue:
"FIBONACCI" found by @Mithrandir and counting the letters in "VACANCIES OPEN!" as 9 and 4/5(with or without !).
I created a script that creates a Fibonacci series and matches each number of that series with the letters in the sentence "PM me to learn...." at those numbers
I got two outputs based on starting numbers of Fibonacci as
1. rtromiyi by starting numbers 9 and 4
2. roetofDi by starting numbers 9 and 5 When I googled them I found some articles matching them
For rtromiyi - go here, find rtromiyi and click on it
And For roetofDi - two newspaper articles - this and this
All of them has some dates in them and our NOT SPAM POST also has a date at end 1st of may. Maybe there is some connection but I can't find
And also I can't find any clues in the list of advantages in the NOT SPAM POST relating to my discoveries.
