Level 28

I think I've discovered the many pairs (153600 of 'em), and I see that the order changes (big/little or little/big), but there's always a 42 involved.

I tried redrawing the picture with a special color, every time the big was on the left, or the big was on the right, but those weren't informative.

I've tried collecting all the bigger/smaller items in each pair, and running them together to make a message, but it looks like garbage.

I've tried treating the pairs as a binary string, where 1's mean left is bigger, and 0's mean right is bigger (and vice versa), but that didn't yield anythng recognizable. either.

I've tried looking at the 42nd row and 42nd column...nothing unusual there.

Can anyone (in public or PM, I don't care) help me get unstuck?

[mjpieters]

I think I've discovered the many pairs (153600 of 'em), and I see that the order changes (big/little or little/big), but there's always a 42 involved.

I wouldn't be so sure about the word always..

I think I've discovered the many pairs (153600 of 'em), and I see that the order changes (big/little or little/big), but there's always a 42 involved.

I wouldn't be so sure about the word always..

Aha...thanks, indeed. I'm beating a 180-degree retreat from my earlier statement.

Now I understand why people have been putting asserts in their solutions on the wiki for earlier levels.

On to 29.

I've got 24 pairs that don't intersect with the meaning of life, but what can I do wth them? Could someone tell me if I'm on the right road.

I'm trying to find some travel/vacation catalogs... did any of you come across one?

I'm trying to find some travel/vacation catalogs... did any of you come across one?

I'm trying to find some travel/vacation catalogs... did any of you come across one?

Thanks for the signpost -- I looked again, and the clue was there. Now I need to know whom to blame.

...Of course! It had to be...

I came late to the Python Challenge. I hope someone else still reads this and can get me unstuck. (I got all the way to level 28 on just the hints from this board and two hints from thesamet.)

The color was easy because I knew the joke about the English as a Second Language student. (" ... and so I pink it up ...") It was easy to see as well.

Also, with help from the hints I found an artifact which (now that I know where it is) is easy to see in the picture. I think this is the "24 pairs" someone mentioned. It resists analysis.

But other things I found don't quite go along with the hints. I see lots of 4's and 2's but not many 42's as such. Or I should say I see "03 01" and "01 03" and "02 00" and "00 02" all over the place. (Do I need a 2400-baud modem at this point? All I can think of is Quadrature Amplitude Modulation. There are 16 ways to map {"0301","0103","0200","0002"} to {0,1,2,3}.)

I see no reference in the hints to the visible vertical stripes. "x & 3" seems to be significant based on the hints, but "x & 8" seems to have too much information, "x & 2" too little information, and "x & 1" the wrong information. I can think of 40,320 ways of rearranging the bits.

In short I see millions of places to go next and not a single travel/vacation brochure (whatever that is supposed to mean) to narrow them down.

The hints here weren't quite enough for me, but finally I got it. D'oh! It's not that hard. For the benefit of those who are stuck as I was:

I was too reductionistic in my approach. I wasn't considering all the bits in the band. Does it make a difference? Absolutely.

If you use a hex editor, as I do, you might say this is a two-way puzzle.

Hi everyone,

can someone give me a clue on this one? I'm pretty lost, i have not found anything pointing to Douglas Adams at all and i can't find any "pairs". I have only understood the ring-ring-ring and i see strange peaks in the histogram, but it doesn't help.

Where should i go from here? I'm lost and have no clue what to try next.

Please PM so no spoilers for more successfull searchers.

Edit: Never mind. I found the pairs and solved this. Thanks for helping, tomk!!!

SirVer

I am stuck on this one, I have been bashing my head for two days now. I have noticed the weird histogram, the peaks in it and the distance between the peaks that are there... but thats where I am unstuck.

I am actually a PHP programmer with very little python knowledge, does this require some python understanding I do not have? Can someone please PM me a clue as to getting on the right track?