How I cracked an impossible DEF CON challenge

The Music Box puzzle for Goldbug was insane. Huge shoutout to crypto village for the work on these puzzles. My brain is still melted.

SOURCES

S/O Ph4se0n3 for the awesome edit 🙏

[germantoenglish]

"The Adventure of the Dancing Men" was a Sherlock Holmes story featuring this code is stickman form.

[alexandrepereira]

CTF are super cool, I've done a 24h one at work, slept 3h and finished 2nd. The feeling of solving a puzzle is incredible.

[andrewf]

I wonder if you guys would have fun with the MIT Mystery Hunt. It's a 3 day puzzle event that's free to participate in at MIT. And the winning teams usually have on the order of 100 team members so it might be a good way to get your communities involved remotely too.

[ExplicableCashew]

What really grinds my gears with puzzles like these is that there's no constraint or question at the end of the puzzle. So there can theoretically be multiple technically valid solutions that don't contradict the puzzle because no constraints were given. In this case, at least you were eventually given a constraint that it's a 13-letter word. I bet I could use some very involved logic to coax a different word/phrase out of this. "That's not what the author meant" wouldn't be an objective, rule based reason to reject such a solution

[topchagamaster]

Thors face at beginning staring into my soul while fading in 0:08

[filipturczynowicz-suszycki]

Love this video! Thanks for sharing this!

[astralmatrix]

love this! your excitement is infectious. i'm not a "puzzle person" but i paused this video and am going to try some from the list.

[anonymouscommentator]

this was really intersting to follow, thank you very much!

[ShaharHarshuv]

*Showing the "easy" puzzle*
Me: I would have never figured any of it out.

[xendod]

please make more videos about these challenges, they are super interesting!

[liamkehoe]

Whoever made this puzzle is on a entirely different cerebral level. I feel like a chimp trying to solve this

[RandomGeometryDashStuff]

06:49 you can place G5 note by clicking on bottom border and it will play

you can also place notes before beginning and after end of song but they don't play

[msclrhd]

Is the competition name "The Gold Bug" a reference to the Edgar Allan Poe short story of the same name? -- The short story is about solving a substitution cypher, which would be fitting for the competition.

[TheUnclepecos]

Given the effort required to tackle the Music Box challenge, I must say the title at the top of the music sheet is pretty fitting

[hipies]

that's awesome, i don't know how anyone comes up with this - let alone solve it.

[skswldms]

I'm happy solving this puzzle gave you so much excitement, but you're the only one to solve it because ... you a) continued playing after the deadline and b) got to asked the designer questions.

[MeghanDenny]

and its a perfect puzzle because seeing the answer makes it seem easy

[baseballjustin]

I love doing this stuff for Call of Duty reveals (like PawnTakesPawn, or even Cod Zombies itself)

Im not smart enough to do them, but im happy to throw something out there that may narrow it down... as long as I'm caught up and not 20 steps behind, just left in the dust... confused how they got past step 10. While their on step 45.

[asailijhijr]

Yeah, it's really annoying when you make a puzzle and then discover that you've made an error that will keep people from finding the intended solution. And then it's really hard to correct the error with a hint without giving it all away.

[RuiPalmeira]

if you "play" the first 4 notes (that are on the bass part), but use the wrong notation (treble), it roughly sounds like a dumbed down version of carmina burana.