The solution to the puzzle is a sequence of five letters.
Let's say you're submitting an answer on November 5th, and you wanted to submit "XABDU" as your solution, you would write a comment: "11/5/25: XABDU".
Please do not try to brute-force this. Each user gets one guess per calendar day, I'm not going to check every single time stamp diligently so don't abuse this rule or I will block you from the market and be sad.
I will check the market once per day (don't worry if I forget or skip a day, I'm human) at a random-ish time. If the value of the market is below 50%, I will give a single hint, which I will compile in the description over time. If the value of the market is above 50% (inclusive), I will not give a hint.
I think this puzzle will be hard. The more time that passes without hints, the less likely you will be to solve it. I anticipate that you will need at least ten hints to solve it, possibly far more. You might need to collaborate. You have until the end of the year!
11/3 Hint 1: Portugal
11/4 Hint 2: harbor
11/5 no hint today
11/6 no hint today
11/7 no hint today
11/8 no hint today
11/9 no hint today
11/10 no hint today
11/11 no hint today
11/12 Hint 3: Nazareth
11/13 no hint today
11/14 no hint today
11/15 Hint 4: [VPP]
11/16 Hint 5: 9gag
11/17 no hint today
11/18 Hint 6: [O-MBRV]
11/19 no hint today
11/20 no hint today
11/21 Hint 7: herring
11/22 Hint 8: [L-MBRV]
11/23 Hint 9: Setúbal
11/24 no hint today
11/25 no hint today
11/26 no hint today
11/27 no hint today
11/28 no hint today
11/29 no hint today
11/30 no hint today
12/1 no hint today (but it is my birthday 🥳, that's not a hint)
12/2 no hint today
12/3 no hint today
12/4 no hint today
12/5 no hint today
12/6 no hint today
12/7 no hint today
12/8 no hint today
12/9 no hint today
12/10 no hint today
12/11 no hint today
12/12 no hint today
12/13 no hint today
12/14 Hint 10: Presidente
12/15 Hint 11: Santos
12/16 Hint 12: 9lives
12/17 Hint 13: Somerton.
12/18 Hint 14: Peru
12/19 Hint 15: hamlet
12/EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE IS AI SUMMARY GIBBERISH
The creator will not reply to every guess. If there is no reply to a guess, assume it is not correct.
Incorrect guesses will be acknowledged with a like from the creator (rather than a written reply). If there is no response to a guess, assume it is incorrect.
If no one guesses the correct solution by the market close date (midnight on 2025-12-31), the market will resolve NO.
The market can resolve YES immediately upon a correct guess being seen by the creator, prior to the market close date.
The solution must consist of five letters from the English alphabet (the 26 standard letters A-Z). Non-English characters are not valid.
Guesses containing non-English alphabet characters (such as accented letters like Í, Ó, etc.) will be treated as their unaccented English equivalents (e.g., SÍTIO will be treated as SITIO).
The creator will not trade on this market.
All guesses must include a date in the submission. The format can be flexible as long as it's legible. This is to avoid ambiguity about which comment constitutes a user's daily guess.
Guesses will not be invalidated based on timezone differences between the guesser and the creator. Users may use their local timezone when dating their guesses.
If the creator misses announcing a hint/no-hint on a given day, they will apply that day's result (based on whether the market was below/above 50%) the morning after they next check the market, rather than skipping that day entirely.
1,000People are also trading
Surplus guesses for anyone’s taking in the pinned comment at:
https://manifold.markets/MachiNi/will-bens-puzzle-be-solved-in-the-l#208lwsui1i9j
Also links to all the derivative markets and general clearinghouse.
h/t @Eliza
@silva95gustavo not sure we have enough data to rule out coincidence but that doesnt mean its not worth looking into given we have many guesses
I ran a simulation with 1 million runs to see what the expected number of different first chars would be if we picked letters at random.
Let's ignore the "[" and "9". We end up with 4 different first chars in our puzzle ("P", "h", "N" and "S").
For this simulation I've considered the frequency that each letter appears as first letter of words in english text. Then I counted how many different first letters we get in each run.
Important to note that:
The simulation considers english first letters although not all hints are english words)
Case sensitive matters
These are the results:
{
'3': 5,
'4': 183, // -> Our case
'5': 2837,
'6': 25426,
'7': 119839,
'8': 300659,
'9': 372263,
'10': 178788
}
So there's about a 0.019% (188 in 1 million) chance of this happening at random. And if you include "9" and "[" then it's far less likely.
Script: https://gist.github.com/silva95gustavo/9436e84666da346df161983f55c3207a
@Eliza well that is true, but still, 3 words that start with "h" and all three are lower case. That might be intentional.
@silva95gustavo this is interesting. Since the clues are so scattered semantically, it does make sense that there's something in the syntax that we need to look for.
Maybe this is a way of grouping the clues together. So
{Portugal, Peru, Presidente} -> Spanish/Portuguese?
{harbor, herring, hamlet} -> fishing?
{9gag, 9lives} -> cats?
{[VPP], [O-MBRV], [L-MBRV]} -> phonology?
{Nazareth} -> ?
{Setubal, Santos, Somerton} -> coastal cities?
@Mactuary I think that was already guessed a couple weeks ago but you could try the Roman name for it as an island, Acala:
https://www.troiaresort.pt/en/troia-roman-ruins/
@Mactuary See this comment with information on how to get a basic comment search: https://manifold.markets/MachiNi/will-bens-puzzle-be-solved-in-the-l#wrziqu2pu2l