Manifold is too good at solving puzzles. This one should be more of a challenge. This puzzle is cool, and will add value to your life. To incentivize collaboration and camaraderie, if the puzzle is solved, there is a 5000 Mana prize fund which I will allocate proportionally to the users responsible for solving it or contributing to the social infrastructure required to solve it.
The solution to the puzzle is a sequence of 9 letters (from the standard 26 letters of the English alphabet, capitalization doesn't matter).
Each user gets one guess per calendar day. Let's say you're submitting an answer on January 30th, and you wanted to submit "XABDUGLFM" as your solution, you would write a comment: "1/30/26: XABDUGLFM". Please do not abuse this system; one guess per day, and try not to edit your answers!
Every day, for 21 days (between Jan 13th and Feb 2nd), you will get a hint. You will get 21 hints total, one per day. These 21 hints have already been written. However, depending on the market % when I check each day, I will do something to the hint.
0-24%: I will add a single word to the end of the hint which is a meta-hint about the puzzle.
25-35%: The hint is given as originally written.
36-49%: I will introduce one error into the hint.
50-59%: I will introduce two errors into the hint.
60-75%: I will introduce three errors into the hint.
76-100%: I will introduce four errors into the hint.
These errors will make the puzzle harder to solve. I'll let you know how many errors were introduced for each hint by adding to the end of the hint something like "(X errors)".
After the 21st day, if you still have not solved the puzzle, you will get three more days to think (Feb 3rd-5th). On each of these days, if the market % when I check is between 0-24%, you will get a single word meta-hint. The market closes at 11:59pm ET on Feb 5th.
If you guess correctly, I'll immediately resolve the market to YES. If you guess incorrectly, I'll try to like your comment to indicate it is wrong, although I probably won't bother to do this until people have at least some grasp on the puzzle, so if you submit "BENBENBEN" on Day 1 and I don't like it, assume it's probably still not correct.
There will be no AI clarifications added to this market's description.
Hints:
Day 1: Charl: Aslal-->Amod_, Amod_-->Samni**, Borsa-->Delad*, Umrac-->Vanz_ (1 error)
Day 2: Marse: Bhatg-->Ankle, Ankle-->Umrac, Matar-->Navsa, Samni**-->Derol (1 error)
Day 3: Canne: Ahmed-->Nadia, Ahmed-->Navag, Ankhi-->Samni*, Delad**-->Vanz_, Nadia-->Matwa (1 error)
Day 4: LesSa: Ahmed-->Navag, Navag-->Nadia, Samni*-->Ankhi, Ankhi-->Delad**, Delad**-->Vanz_, Vanz_-->Matwa (2 errors)
Day 5: Henda: Anand*-->Umrac, Borsa-->Umrac, Nadia-->Matwa (2 errors)
Day 6: Dinan: Ahmed-->Ankhi, Karel*-->Samni*, Samni*-->Ankhi, Ankhi-->Delad**, Delad**-->Vanz_, Nadia-->Matwa (2 errors)
Day 7: Metz_: Aslal-->Samni*, Samni*-->Surat, Surat-->Ankhi, Ankhi-->Delad*, Matar(right)-->Navsa(right), Nadia-->Matwa, Samni**(left)-->Samni**(right) (1 error)
Day 8: Vanne: Ankhi-->Navag, Navag-->Derol, Derol-->Matwa (1 error)
Day 9: Perpi: Aslal-->Samni*, Samni*-->Matar, Surat-->Ankhi, Ankhi-->Aslal, Matar(right)-->Navsa(right), Nadia-->Matwa, Samni**(left)-->Samni**(right) (1 error)
Day 10: Lucho: Ankhi-->Delad**, Matwa-->Derol, Delad**-->Matwa (2 errors)
Day 11: Caen_: Aslal-->Anand**(bottom), Anand**(bottom)-->Karel*(bottom), Karel*(bottom)-->Matar, Anand**(top)-->Karel*(top), Nadia-->Derol(top), Amod_(bottom)-->Samni**(bottom), Samni**(bottom)-->Bhatg, Bhatg-->Mangr, Mangr-->Surat, Surat-->Delad** (2 errors)
Day 12: Paris: Ahmed-->Nadia, Ankhi-->Derol, Aslal-->Amod_, Matar-->Samni**, Ankle-->Delad*, Delad**-->Matwa (2 errors)
Day 13:
Day 14:
Day 15:
Day 16:
Day 17:
Day 18:
Day 19:
Day 20:
Day 21:
1,000🏅 Top traders
| # | Trader | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ1,088 | |
| 2 | Ṁ1,084 | |
| 3 | Ṁ930 | |
| 4 | Ṁ840 | |
| 5 | Ṁ446 |
People are also trading
Okay, so explanation:
1) I took the full name of the Roman Emperor Gallienus: "Publius Licinius Egnatius Gallienus" and transliterated it into Hangul:
2) Then, I drew the characters on a 5x5 grid. For syllable blocks that couldn't quite fit, I divided some of the squares into "top" and "bottom" or "left" and "right". This was mostly just introduced to make the puzzle slightly more disorienting. I thought about using a larger grid but thought this was funnier.
3) I assigned each of the 25 segments to the 25 cities that Gandhi began his day in on the 1930 Salt March.
I shortened all the names to five characters, using underscores to designate shorter names and asterisks to designate the first or second days for cities where Gandhi spent a rest day.
4) Then I assigned each of the 21 clues to the starting cities of the 21 stages of the 1930 Tour de France. And shuffled them randomly.
5) The errors were all simple replacements of one Salt March city with another, with some amount of adversarial selection rather than truly random.
I honestly expected this puzzle to be more of a challenge. I thought maybe 50-60% that Manifold would solve it, even with the meta-hints. The meta-hints would have been things like "Salt" or "Square", depending on what stage the solvers appeared to be at, and then on the final hint, something that indicated Hangul indirectly, like "Buton" or "Seventeen" (lol). So I'm very impressed, mostly by @Eliza who is a completely cracked puzzle solver.
I'm motivated to give Eliza the vast majority of the prize fund, with some amount going to @jatloe for organizing the top comment. Any other ppl who feel they made meaningful contributions to the solution of the puzzle?
and will add value to your life
Kudos to Ben, I had not been familiar with the hangul script before and I thought it was really fun to puzzle out how it worked. I'm now an expert in about 1/3 of the possible consonants and 4 vowels. As soon as I realized it was using this script I had a big smile because I knew it would add value to my life.
Okay, so explanation:
1) I took the full name of the Roman Emperor Gallienus: "Publius Licinius Egnatius Gallienus" and transliterated it into Hangul:
2) Then, I drew the characters on a 5x5 grid. For syllable blocks that couldn't quite fit, I divided some of the squares into "top" and "bottom" or "left" and "right". This was mostly just introduced to make the puzzle slightly more disorienting. I thought about using a larger grid but thought this was funnier.
3) I assigned each of the 25 segments to the 25 cities that Gandhi began his day in on the 1930 Salt March.
I shortened all the names to five characters, using underscores to designate shorter names and asterisks to designate the first or second days for cities where Gandhi spent a rest day.
4) Then I assigned each of the 21 clues to the starting cities of the 21 stages of the 1930 Tour de France. And shuffled them randomly.
5) The errors were all simple replacements of one Salt March city with another, with some amount of adversarial selection rather than truly random.
I honestly expected this puzzle to be more of a challenge. I thought maybe 50-60% that Manifold would solve it, even with the meta-hints. The meta-hints would have been things like "Salt" or "Square", depending on what stage the solvers appeared to be at, and then on the final hint, something that indicated Hangul indirectly, like "Buton" or "Seventeen" (lol). So I'm very impressed, mostly by @Eliza who is a completely cracked puzzle solver.
I'm motivated to give Eliza the vast majority of the prize fund, with some amount going to @jatloe for organizing the top comment. Any other ppl who feel they made meaningful contributions to the solution of the puzzle?
@bens I will have to really think about how I'm going to raise the bar for the next puzzle. I have a few ideas. I also don't want it to be a situation where only 1-2 puzzle solvers are able to contribute because the puzzle is so complex; I want there to be ways for everyone to contribute in small ways. But clearly these puzzles are all a bit too easy for Manifold (or Manifold + ClaudeCode?).
@bens great puzzle! I’m new to these but it’s been cool learning how these are constructed and solved.
I identified that they were locations from the Salt March, and that the headers were stages from the Tour du France of the same year.
@bens I think this one was your best one yet and a really good fit for the format.
It seemed like the group solving was going really good early on but then it is harder to get everyone up to speed as things get more complicated unless there is an up to date list of everything.
@bens IMO yeeta's contributions should be at least 25%. If you're feeling generous I did confirm the 5x5 grid idea out of Eliza's brainstorm and proposed an interpretation of the underscores, but that's at most a 5-10% contribution.
@bens okay so I'm thinking:
3k to @Eliza
1k to @yeeta
500 to @jatloe
250 each to @phenomist and @marvingardens
Here are my ideas about how to raise the bar for the next puzzle! https://manifold.markets/DannyqnOht/will-manifold-solve-my-puzzle-borin
@Eliza do you want to explain how you figured out the final answer from just 12 syllable blocks? lol, I kind of thought you’d be able to get it by ~day 15-16 but day 12 was kind of shocking! Also you were modulus 1 off for a second which can’t have helped?
@bens Well, I was looking at the wrong guy named Publius the day before around the same time as I had correctly re-interpreted the Caen clue as 블 rather than 빌. There was an extra connection where Publius Vergilius Maro ("Virgil") was born in 70 BC and fans had celebrated a bimillennial of his birth in the year 1930. I thought that was kinda crazy and tied really nicely to the puzzle, but then I was stuck because it was just the wrong "Publius" and then I didn't pursue it more until the next day's clue was a match.
I did actually think it was just as likely TDF starting cities as finishing ones (because it used starters for Salt March) even though I probably only posted about them as finishing names. I was trying to write things in the discussion thread like "Don't trust anything here" (at first as a joke because I was holding No shares, but later in seriousness to show that you can't just assume the first thing someone comes up with is correct).
I think this particular puzzle state was easier to catch the final reading on than most random ones would have been because we had two 스 which were super strong as word breaks since from what I could decipher, they're usually going to be a word-ending S in this situation. And 나 티 ("na" "ti") had me looking for "Ignatius". Never had any progress on the 2nd name or 4th name though.
@bens An idea I had to make the errors in one of these more annoying would be instead of "x errors in this clue", have "x% chance this clue is completely bogus"
@Eliza next month should be “resolves YES if Eliza solves the puzzle, resolves NO if anyone else solves the puzzle”
@bens I blew thousands of mana betting No! I Not even just the "Yes, sure I will let you buy low and sell high" fun stuff, but by making side markets and etc. 🤣 I thought for sure the gremlins would be a lot more insistent upon buying Yes at any price, yet they just let it sit between 35 and 50 for many days.
@archvenison I saw the Hangul as well after Eliza had drawn out the letters, though she already had noted the Hangul thingy in a later comment
I certainly would've waited for at least 14 or so days to try solving though
@archvenison I kinda ran into those accidentally. I wasn't really planning on looking at the substance of the clues at all until it was past halfway since I thought it would be a waste of time. So I was just betting No and paying people off in the main market. But then when I saw there were repeated patterns in them I couldn't resist posting about it thinking it wouldn't amount to much. But suddenly it was making actual shapes instead.