9 to the power of 16 [SOLVED]

Oh yeah, there was another question I had:

Is this puzzle solvable in a reasonable amount of time without access to a calculator?

Iā€™d say it is, yes.

Want me to time myself doing it right now?

Nah, I basically wanted to rule out any necessities to calculate any sines, cosines, or tangents.


So now to tell you guys the problem I see here. First, the numbers donā€™t have a direct equivalent, otherwise picto would have said no to my question about wether a different number might produce different two-digit elements. Second, I personally see any directional/angle approach impossible for multiple reasons.

  1. Assuming borders, you would need in total 17 different numbers plus something to notify you to skip numbers. You need 16 for all 16 possible directions (N, NNE, NE, NEE, E, SEE, SE, SSE, S, SSW, SW, SWW, W, NWW, NW, NNW) and an additional one to notify you to stay in place.
  2. If we assume that the pad wraps onto itself, then this makes the inclusion of an s kinda pointless if itā€™s skipping, as there is no longer a need to skip. And if it refers to stay, then thereā€™s the question why thereā€™s a number.
  3. Regardless of which were true, the fact that there are multiple different conventions as to where 0Ā° would ā€œpointā€ to and wether you go clockwise or counterclockwise when you increase the angle would mean that such a path to the solution were ambiguous, and I doubt our curious sorcerer would have designed such a bad puzzle.

Well one thing I considered is that the angle is cumulatively added up to the prior number with s being a stationary one.

But that kinda ends up being pretty random into the why a number is there or not.

In the end it all revolves on wether or not the sequence couldā€™ve been written differently with the same result or notā€¦

Rather I see three possible scenarios there.

a) The thing I just mentioned about cumulative angles and s being stationary
b) 00 refers to something stationary, in which case 360 would be expressed by 16 I guessā€¦
c) The angle idea is entirely off to begin with.

The other matter is wether or not there is anything includes that hints us toward a potential CW vs CCW direction of rotation and a basic starting point.

In the lack of such a thing, even if we have the right ā€œcodeā€, we may end up with 16 different possibilities (at worst) of ways to decode it.
How fitting to end up with 16 possibilities once again

Still I guess assuming borders/barriers would make the puzzle more elegantā€¦
I guess this may be the right path : 00 = stationary (so a repeated number) and s means a jump, making my above theory more flawed than wrong.

It may be at least possible to figure out wether ā€¦ letā€™s say 16, refers to (from 5) leading to a side or a corner.
As I pointed out earlier, the fact that all S numbers are even would probably rule out it leading to a diagonal, and anyway with the basic number of 10, that would break the barrier already from the starting point of 5ā€¦

The combination on the wall exclusively corresponds to the code on the keypad and vice versa.

meh, assuming 0 is stationary, s skips, we go counterclockwise and 0Ā°/360Ā° is Eastā€¦

5762273315433194

So that actually does get you to a valid result without ever breaking the boundary. Now, since picto said something about some other convention where 0Ā°/360Ā° is North and you go clockwise, letā€™s write that one down tooā€¦

5726673395833918

So is one of those two correct? @pictoshark

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Iā€™m going to add that if we just have the wrong starting point and direction, well.
I mean, itā€™s kinda lame if all we have to do by this point to reach the answer is calculating the 6 other possibilities for the same thing.

Maybe just to ascertain this could be the case but weā€™re still on the right directionā€¦

No matter what the second digit is, the first carved out number follow 5 cannot be anything other than 00, 02, 04, 06, 08, 10, 12, 14, 16

After a long delay due to technical issuesā€¦

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Seeing this cooperative way of solving puzzles, Iā€™m thinking of reviving my old puzzle thread but letting puzzles be solved similarly to how this one was solved.

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Oh, I was close, but not close enough. I think itā€™d have been a bit fairer if 00 was replaced with some non-number operator because it feels weird for numbers to mean fundamentally different operations depending on whether they are some particular number or not, but this is just a loserā€™s grumbling.

Iā€™m curious, was the extra hint you could have given something you already said in this thread? If not, what would it have been?

Great Vyse stole the glory of solving it after I established the final formula XD grats Vyse, and grats to akafa, midsummer and vyse, we made a pretty good teamwork solving this.

A picture of a circle with 16 lines extending from its center to its edge.