Arweave Puzzle Series: Puzzle 02— Solved

4 min readJun 9, 2020

Hi! This is a write-up on the Arweave Puzzle 02. The puzzle has already been solved and all credit goes to the solver!

SUMMARY

Announcement Date: May 24, 2019
Link: https://www.twitter.com/arweavep
Prize: 1250 AR

Solution: 11 11:51 Nfg3 68+96938=97006
                                      ~Solved by pogo (May 24, 2019)

START

To solve the puzzle, we have to input the correct answers on the specified place to put the solution.

There are 4 mini-puzzles to solve in Puzzle 02 and no hints were given by the admin.

Here is the link to the puzzle: https://yvmqerqbjzui3g2lnze7qwkaocl3ikhavhuvl2vvcek4u7f3e2la.arweave.net/xVkCRgFOaI2bS25J-FlAcJe0KOCp6VXqtREVyny7JpY

Inside The Puzzle

Points of Interests
Upon first glance on the puzzle image, the most noticeable thing were the numbers on some pieces of paper and the words.
1. It is clear that the mini-puzzles are on the pieces of papers with numbers in it and there are 4 of them.
2. There are 4 words without a number in them (except for the ‘squares’ where the last ‘s’ looked like ‘5’). There words will help in solving the mini-puzzles.

Piece #1

Word clue: squares
Answer: 11

It was clear that the only word that can relate to the piece #1 is the word ‘square’ because of the dots forming squares. We counted the squares easily by going to https://www.puzzlesandriddles.com/perceptualpuzzle16.html

Piece #2

Word clue: mirror
Answer: 11:51

Of all the pieces of paper, the only thing that can be ‘mirrored’ was piece #2. Mirroring 12:11 became 11:51.

Piece #3

Word clue: optimal
Answer: Nfg3

This one was tricky. Piece #3 was a FEN Notation Chess games puzzle. This was hard to decipher if you do not have knowledge about it but fortunately, there are online tools for that.

We used the link https://lichess.org/editor/8/8/8/8/8/7K/4N3/5N1k and got the answer — Nfg3.

Piece #4

Word clue: max
Answer: 68+96938=97006

This one was also tricky. Like there’s no way that AR+PAPER=PIZZA, right? There has to be a number on each letter where the equation will also be correct. This type of puzzle is called ‘Cryptarithm’ and there is also an online tools for this.

We used the link https://www.dcode.fr/cryptarithm-solver , input AR+PAPER=PIZZA and got the answer, 68+96938=97006.