Friday puzzle -- mystery gift

not seeing it?

Steven Antonucci

I looked at it for a minute, but I don't get what you mean. Your comment about "no particular order" suggests that they are not a coded message...

I'm stumped.

WAG

Don Orr

Since there are 12 symbols my guess is some kind of calendar.

No idea what any of it means

Re: Friday puzzle -- mystery gift

Dan Donaldson

With the 12 geek symbols, I am going to guess a 12 sided die with numbers from 1 to 12 represented.

Re: Friday puzzle -- mystery gift

Alex Y

Don and Dan are on the right track in observing that there are twelve symbols, but their guess of the gift is wrong (Nothing wrong with the reasoning, just doesn't happen to be it.)

Anyone take a stab at decoding some of the symbols? I was able to get 8 of them (with an advantage you don't have, of seeing the actual gift), and two of those I missed led to a dope slap because I should have known them.

Here are some ...

Larry Barrett

I can't create the symbols, so you need to use a little imagination to figure which ones are which

21 base 4 = 1

(5 over 2) = 10

infinite series that starts 1+1/2+ ... = 2

3! = 6

cube root 1728 = 12

good start, but...

Alex Y

21 base 4 = 1?

I agree with your others

Re: good start, but...

Dan Donaldson

21 base 4 would be 9 in decimal.

another: 0x0B is 11 in decimal.

cube root of 1728 is 12

Re: Friday puzzle -- mystery gift

Dan Donaldson

I won't answer any more because while looking for one I didn't know, I found your gift. That is a really interesting way to do it.

I suspect I found it too, ...time will tell

Larry Barrett

but I can not translate all the symbols yet (and of course 21 base 4 is 9, not 1).

0x0B

Alex Y

is one I did not get (even knowing the answer), then kicked myself when reading what it was. I don't work with hex very often!

Hint: Picture of mystery gift

Alex Y

Google-masters Dan and Larry have found the gift I received, so to put everyone on equal footing for decoding, here is a picture of the gift:

So far, answers have been given for 2, 6, 9, 10, 11, & 12

Now that you know what the others evaluate to, can you explain them?

BTW, 5 is even somewhat related to woodworking.

Re: Hint: Picture of mystery gift

Dan Donaldson

That is the Golden section. 1.61828... X2, then subtract 1 and square it will give 5.

8 is

Dan Donaldson

That is a hexadecimal or binary (depending on your point of view ) representation of 8 if you assume they are lights or something.

I don't get 1

Dan Donaldson

This will probably be a head slapper, but I do not get that one.

Re: I don't get 1

Alex Y

Not a head-slapper. That one was totally foreign to me. I'll post any unsolved ones late tomorrow.

Alex Y

Yes. I said it was only weakly related to woodworking!

phi is the accepted symbol for the golden mean, which is defined as (sqrt(5)+1)/2, and this formula just takes the inverse, expressing 5 in terms of phi.

Alex Y

Yes. The cheat sheet that came with the clock described it as a graphical representation of the binary expression of 8.

Wouldn't the hexadecimal representation of 8 just be "8"?

Re: Hint: Picture of mystery gift

Larry Barrett

6.9 with the bar over the 9 means 6.99999...., which is 7.

Alex Y

Yes, and that leaves us only 1, 3, and 4

Is this it? *LINK*

Dan Donaldson

If it is, I never would have gotten it. I read it and still don't really understand what I read.


Mesons

No

Alex Y

but it is only marginally less confusing.

The missing numbers -- 1 *LINK*

Alex Y

This one was completely foreign to me. It is Legendre's constant.

Late in the 18th century, Legendre speculated a formula for estimating the number of primes less than any given very large number. This formula included a constant B or B'subL that he speculated to be about 1.086. In the middle of the 20th century, his formula was proven to be right, with the constant being exactly 1.


Brief Wikipedia article on Legendre constant

The missing numbers -- 3

Alex Y

According to the cheat sheet I got, this is unicode XML reference for the character 3.

If you want to claim that is wrong, you will get no defense of this answer from me!

The missing numbers -- 4

Alex Y

Modulo arithmetic is, roughly speaking, dealing with the remainders when dividing by the modulus. 2^(-1)(mod 7) is the multiplicative inverse of 2 in mod 7, i.e., the number that when multiplied by 2 yields a number that is 1 greater than a multiple of 7.