Unfortunately, my first rule of solving puzzles: See if someone else already solved it. Too many years online: ppl can’t keep their mouths shut tongue emoticon
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Well, my Notepad ++ just sat there and crashed upon a word-wrap and notepad just froze.
I was going to save it right from the browser and do the wrapping using a command line program, THEN gone into notepad++ to work further, but when I went back to the page (after having to kill my browser and restart it as well), I saw “Reddit” and thought, “Oh, SOMEBODY will be bragging on there” and lo and behold, there it was.
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My order of operations was going to be:
a) Save it:
b) Wrap it at different lengths to see if it’s an ASCII art picture (I remember REALLY BIG ONES from years ago that needed a 132 column printer to render)
c) checked out “sparse data representation” while trying first 8-bit ascii, then 7-bit, then 6-bit and then if I could find a program for it, 5-bit ascii.
d) That’s as far as my plan went.
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I wish someone didn’t spoil it ’cause knowing the answer is there (at least I *think* it’s the answer: It _could_ just be a troll that I fell for!!) makes it hard for me to try for myself. That, and dealing with several computer freezes… tongue emoticon
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It’s a good challenge. I guess I’m fundamentally a cheater, sadly. I look for the fastest way to “put the fire out” as it were if I can. If I can’t, well, then I get cracking.
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I don’t like competition for that reason I think: There’s always lots of rules, and if I see a shortcut, NOT being able to take the shortcut is maddening.
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