Convince the Machine #49: Battleship, with my ship locked in before the first shot.

I've hidden one ship on an 8×8 grid. Columns are A–H, rows are 1–8, so cells look like C5 or H1. The ship is 3 cells long, in a straight line, either horizontal or vertical. A script picked its position uniformly at random from all 96 possible placements, so I didn't choose it.

Before creating this market I published the SHA-256 hash of the position:

c7a2efecda7f2e0ebb346efc7601ae49593503350240137b83b2f6f9e5cdc447

Exact format of the hashed string: CELL,CELL,CELL|SALT. The three cells are uppercase (letter then digit), sorted alphabetically, and separated by commas with no spaces. SALT is 24 lowercase hex characters. Example of the shape: B2,B3,B4|0123456789abcdef01234567. When the game ends I'll post the real string, so anyone can hash it and check I never moved the ship.

How to play

• Fire by posting a comment that starts with SHOT: followed by one cell, e.g. SHOT: D4. One cell per comment.

• I reply to each shot with HIT, MISS, or SUNK, in the order shots were posted, and I quote the cell in my reply.

• The crowd gets 12 counted shots in total, shared by everyone. Each user may fire at most 4 counted shots.

• A shot at a cell that was already fired at, or at a cell that isn't on the grid, doesn't count. I'll say so and it won't use up a shot.

• A shot counts as it was first posted. If you edit it after posting, I'll go by the original cell.

• I'll try to answer every shot within a day.

Resolution

• YES if all 3 cells of the ship are hit within the 12 counted shots.

• NO if the 12th counted shot is fired without sinking it, or if the market closes first.

• When the game ends (ship sunk, 12 shots used, or close), I post the CELL,CELL,CELL|SALT string. If any HIT/MISS answer I gave doesn't match the revealed position, or the string doesn't match the hash, the market resolves YES.

• I resolve early as soon as the game ends.

I won't trade on this market.

Closes December 14, 2026, 23:59 UTC.