Hint for first TEC REDSHIFT puzzle?

[Anthony]

I've been thinking about it almost nonstop for the last two days and all my solutions are way too long, and also pretty complicated.

I feel like with the low cycle count there's a more elegant solution right in front of me, but I could use a hint. Or, if the answer is so spectacularly satisfying and obvious that I shouldn't need a hint, then I wanna be told that I should stop being a wuss and just try harder.

[cannedpeas]

Sorry, looking for a *good* solution, or any solution? My solution is inelegant and appears to be median (I tend to optimize after finishing the game). Sounds like that is of little use to you?

[Anthony]

Any, at this point. I can open the lock but it usually takes something like 40 lines to do so, which leaves me nothing for copying the correct combo and id number.

[Enyss]

For the low cycle count, an obvious trick is to use multiple exa in parallel to write code: you need 3 cycle to write a code, so if you manage to write a code every 3 cycle, it will greatly increase your cycle count. . With this approach, I managed to get under 3000 cycles (but still not top 1%)

For the size, an easy and efficient approach is just to have a bot write the password, duplicate (from the start with a new password to write), and try to get in the room. If it gets in the room, kill the other bot and gather the data . With this approach, I managed to craft a solution in 19 lines

[cannedpeas]

my one word hint would be to examine swiz . I'm not winning any medals with it, but it'll get the job done.

[Zednaught]

Originally posted by cannedpeas:

my one word hint would be to examine swiz . I'm not winning any medals with it, but it'll get the job done.

I'll second that this is great advice. I struggled with this puzzle a lot until I followed that advice, and suddenly it made it much easier.

[Ra-Ra-Rasputin]

My first attempt was running 6 EXAs in synced loops to input numbers. It worked, but it was quite a pain to sync them up (nothing compared to some nerve fix syncing later on)

Then i remembered that SWIZ exists. 2 loops running SWIZ, one from 999 down and one from 000 up so that every single cycle is used to input a number. All you need is a replication mechanism to test that door.

[Anthony]

Hmmm...maybe the problem is that I just fundamentally don't understand what swizzling is. Googling it has only confused me, and the trash world explanation is similarly opaque. (Especially since I'm inputting one digit at a time, not three at once.)

[Enyss]

Swizz is a way to combine the digits of the input to form a new number.

If you do SWIZ X abcd T, the first digit of T is the digit number a of X, the 2nd digit of T is the digit number b of X, etc.

For exemple,
SWIZZ 6789 4321 T => T = 9876
SWIZZ 6789 4444 T => T = 9999
SWIZZ 6789 1212 T => T = 6767

But you can also use less than 4 digits in the mask :
SWIZZ 6789 14 T => T = 69
SWIZZ 6789 3 T => T = 8

[Anthony]

Thanks for the help, everybody, but I think I'm throwing in the towel. I understand swizzling now, but I'm just fundamentally not smart enough to understand how swizzling would be applied to this puzzle.

I think I'm going to escape back into the simple world of Yakuza, where the only math that matters is how many times I punch a man.


EDIT:

Oh.

Nevermind.

I think I get it.

EDIT 2:

I got it.

This game is great.

Thanks, everybody.

[Gargish🐸]

The most useful application of swizzle is to mask out digits and copy them to the 1's position, like extract the hundreds of a number:

8756 IN
0003 MASK
0007 OUT

0 means don't copy any digit but just 0.

[rotopenguin]

If SWIZ could be used on letters, then it would look like this

SWIZ ABCD 4321 -> ABCD
SWIZ ABCD 1234 -> DCBA
SWIZ ABCD 3333 -> BBBB
SWIZ ABCD 0004 -> A
SWIZ ABCD 4004 -> A00A

Swiz cuts up the 1st argument as if it were an array[4], and each digit of the 2nd argument lays down that first, second, third, or fourth digit. Or a zero, if you like.

[Steel Angel]

So, not to drag up a latent post, but for the brick in the group (read: me) how does the swiz help? The code does not exclude 3 of the same digit, correct? I'm lost on this...

[Sui Generic]

I was stuck on this puzzle for 6 hours until I realised that a SWIZ mask did not need to account for every digit of the input e.g. a 3 digit input could have a 1 digit mask. This means that you can separate the hundreds, tens and units of a single number into three separate numbers by applying the SWIZ masks 3, 2 and 1. In this way SWIZ excludes all digits not occupied by that position in the input. Did this help?

[DupLawyer]

I saw this puzzle and thought "Chance to use swiz" and then failed to get it to work. Looking at the comments above I see now that it can handle short masks and output short results, I didn't think of or test that.

Since I didn't use it I'm not sure of the final solution using swz but I was trying to loop 1-999 and then pull the digits out for the pwd.

I end up looping though the numbers the same way but pulling digits out with DIVI & MODI

code was 26, cycles < 8000 (not so great)

Seeing this thread I might go and try swiz.

Lost a lot of cycles on REPL'ing an exa to test the door to see if the code was correct. Did anyone have a better way to do that?

[Steel Angel]

Thanks for the help all. Not sure if i used it as intended, but I brute forced the thing open not-so-poetically. But, i got the job done.