and no, I’m not talking about the Utah Summer Games Arm Wrestling competition.
I’m talking about Python, the programming language. And to encourage adoption of that language some clever people created a little Python programming game (back in 2005.) You’re presented with a riddle of sorts and you’re supposed to code up a python script to solve it. Only, I don’t like people telling me what to do, so I intentionally did NOT code up python to solve them. I used PHP mostly. Here are my notes:
QUESTION 1: what’s 2^38?
ANSWER: I asked google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=2%5E38&btnG=Google+Search
and then I used the answer to get to the next step: 274877906944.html
QUESTION 2: given: K->M, O->Q, E->G, decode: g fmnc wms bgblr rpylqjyrc gr zw fylb. rfyrq ufyr amknsrcpq ypc dmp. bmgle gr gl zw fylb gq glcddgagclr ylb rfyr’q ufw rfgq rcvr gq qm jmle. sqgle qrpgle.kyicrpylq() gq pcamkkclbcb. lmu ynnjw ml rfc spj.
ANSWER: I used an online cryptogram solver (though i could have written a simple script to shift up two letters…)
“map” then, shifts to “ocr”, which leads to http://www.pythonchallenge.com/pc/def/ocr.html
QUESTION 3: Find rare characters in the mess below (mess omitted)
ANSWER: php:
$challenge=file_get_contents('phychall2.txt');
echo(ereg_replace("[^a-z]","",$challenge));
which produces: http://www.pythonchallenge.com/pc/def/equality.html
QUESTION 4: “One small letter, surrounded by EXACTLY three big bodyguards on each of its sides.”
ANSWER: I used textpad’s regex ([a-z][A-Z][A-Z][A-Z][a-z][A-Z][A-Z][A-Z][a-z]) and found “linkedlist”, which means: http://www.pythonchallenge.com/pc/def/linkedlist.html
QUESTION 5: “urllib may help. DON’T TRY ALL NOTHINGS, since it will never end. 400 times is more than enough”
ANSWER:
$linked="12345";
for($x=0;$x<400;$x++)
{
$page=file_get_contents("http://www.pythonchallenge.com/pc/def/linkedlist.php?nothing=$linked");
echo($page."\n");
$previouslinked=$linked;
$linked='';
list($blank,$linked)=@split('and the next nothing is ',$page);
$pos = strpos($page, "Divide");
if ($pos === false)
{
if ($linked=='') die();
}
else
{
$linked=$previouslinked/2;
echo("divide found!!");
}
echo($linked."\n");
}
which produces: http://www.pythonchallenge.com/pc/def/peak.html
QUESTION 6: peak hell
ANSWER:
arghh. have to use python…need to load the pickle dump:
import pickle
unpicklefile = open('banner.p', 'r')
unpickledlist = pickle.load(unpicklefile)
unpicklefile.close()
for item in unpickledlist:
print item
python unpickle.py > nextstep.txt
lines look like: [(’ ‘, 14), (’#', 5), (’ ‘, 70), (’#', 5), (’ ‘, 1)]
parse them with:
$problem=file("nextstep.txt");
$parseout=array('(',']',')','[',"'");
function printit($value,$times)
{
for($loop=0;$loop<$times;$loop++)
echo($value);
}
foreach($problem as $line)
{
$tuples=split('),',$line);
foreach($tuples as $tuple)
{
list($first,$second)=split(',',$tuple);
$first=trim(str_replace($parseout,'',$first));
if ($first=='') $first=' ';
$second=trim(str_replace($parseout,'',$second));
printit($first, $second);
}
echo("\n");
}
which produces a nifty ascii art version of: http://www.pythonchallenge.com/pc/def/channel.html
QUESTION 7: : now there are pairs (in http://www.pythonchallenge.com/pc/def/channel.zip)
ANSWER:
$linked="90052";
for($x=0;$x<909;$x++)
{
$bigArray[]=system("zipinfo -v channel.zip {$linked}.txt|tail -3|head -1",$retval);
$page=file_get_contents("{$linked}.txt");
$previouslinked=$linked;
$linked='';
list($blank,$linked)=@split('Next nothing is ',$page);
$pos = strpos($page, "Collect");
if ($pos === false);
else
{
$x=10000;
}
}
$counter=2;
foreach($bigArray as $dot)
{
if ($dot=='') $dot=' ';
echo($dot);
if ($counter++%65==1) echo("\n");
}
Which produces more ASCII art and leads to: http://www.pythonchallenge.com/pc/def/oxygen.html
QUESTION 8: the next level is [105, 110, 116, 101, 103, 114, 105, 116, 121]
ANSWER:
$im = imagecreatefrompng("oxygen.png");
for($x=3;$x<629;$x+=7)
{
$rgb = imagecolorat($im, $x, 46);
$r = ($rgb >> 16) & 0xFF;
$g = ($rgb >> 
& 0xFF;
$b = $rgb & 0xFF;
echo(chr($r));
}
more code:
$thelist=array(105, 110, 116, 101, 103, 114, 105, 116, 121);
foreach($thelist as $entry)
{
echo(chr($entry));
}
http://www.pythonchallenge.com/pc/def/integrity.html
QUESTION 9:
un: ‘BZh91AY&SYA\xaf\x82\r\x00\x00\x01\x01\x80\x02\xc0\x02\x00 \x00!\x9ah3M\x07<]\xc9\x14\xe1BA\x06\xbe\x084'
pw: 'BZh91AY&SY\x94$|\x0e\x00\x00\x00\x81\x00\x03$ \x00!\x9ah3M\x13<]\xc9\x14\xe1BBP\x91\xf08'
ANSWER: missing link : bee
use commandline python, arghh…
s = "BZh91AY&SYA\xaf\x82\r\x00\x00\x01\x01\x80\x02\xc0\x02\x00 \x00!\x9ah3M\x07<]\xc9\x14\xe1BA\x06\xbe\x084"
import bz2
bz2.decompress(s)
'huge'
t = "BZh91AY&SY\x94$|\x0e\x00\x00\x00\x81\x00\x03$ \x00!\x9ah3M\x13<]\xc9\x14\xe1BBP\x91\xf08"
bz2.decompress(t)
'file'
QUESTION 10: first+second=?
ANSWER:
connect the dots
$image = imagecreatefromjpeg("good.jpg");
$col_poly = imagecolorallocate($image, 255, 0, 0);
$firstArray=array(146,399,163,...);
$secondArray=array(156,141,165,...);
imagepolygon($image, $firstArray,count($firstArray)/2, $col_poly);
imagepolygon($image,$secondArray,count($secondArray)/2,$colpoly);
header("Content-Type: image/jpeg");
imagejpeg($image);
http://www.pythonchallenge.com/pc/return/cow.html
http://www.pythonchallenge.com/pc/return/bull.html
QUESTION 10: a = [1, 11, 21, 1211, 111221, len(a[30]) = ?
ANSWER:
googled for code:
#!/usr/bin/perl
$str="1"; for (1 .. shift(@ARGV)) { print($str, ", "); @a = split(//, $str); $str=""; $nd=shift(@a); while (defined($nd)) { $d=$nd; $cnt=0; while (defined($nd) && ($nd eq $d)) { $cnt++; $nd = shift(@a); } $str .= $cnt.$d; } } print($str);
paste into textpad for character count
http://www.pythonchallenge.com/pc/return/5808.html
QUESTION 11: odd even
ANSWER:
PBM (Portable BitMap) file (PBM stores single bit pixel image as a series of ascii “0″ or “1″’s. The magic identifier for PBM is “P1″.)
32 0s and 1s (separated by spaces) on 20 rows makes 640
then switch to 1s and 0s and do this 240 times
print "P1\n", "640 480\n";
my $odd = ( "0 1 " x 16 . "\n" ) x 20;
my $even = ( "1 0 " x 16 . "\n" ) x 20;
for ( 1 .. 240 ) { print $odd, $even }
gimp:
load image
load mask.txt as a layer
select that layer
layer->color to alpha
white->alpha
produces: evil
Because tech companies seem to have a high rate of turnover, you’ll soon likely be in the position of leaving or interviewing an employee who is leaving. Either way, it’s important to find answers to some important questions such as:
You all remember 