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xkcd #2869: Puzzles (imgs.xkcd.com)

https://xkcd.com/2869

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Why couldn't the amulet have been hidden by Aunt Alice, who understands modern key exchange algorithms?

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[-] yemmly@lemmy.world 143 points 6 months ago

QAnon: “Looks like sound reasoning to us.”

[-] lugal@sopuli.xyz 30 points 6 months ago

Now you know what kind of books these people read as kids

[-] ech@lemm.ee 22 points 6 months ago

You think these people read as kids?

[-] Duranie@literature.cafe 10 points 6 months ago

They self banned books

[-] AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 17 points 6 months ago

People who know how to read don't end up in Qanon

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[-] lurch@sh.itjust.works 10 points 6 months ago

but other people read them too and didn't go absolutely nuts

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[-] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 82 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Now, I don't want to be the asshole that shits on a nearly 40 year old classic movie... but why would the Goonies' map, written in Spanish, rhyme when translated to English? And why would it translate into "Olde English" with a bunch of "ye" this and "ye" that?

[-] Glyphord@lemmy.world 56 points 6 months ago

My head cannon is that it’s being interpreted by Mouth who is adding his own artistic flair to the text. So the “ye” this and that are just him playing around with the words.

[-] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 29 points 6 months ago

Him playing around makes sense the first time he's translating the Spanish in the attic. It makes less sense when he keeps doing it after they're running for their lives from the Fratelli's, dodging booby traps and are facing yet another trap that is a full pipe organ made of human bones. And he's clearly scared when he translates it. But, maybe he just has weird defense mechanisms, I don't know.

[-] kakes@sh.itjust.works 37 points 6 months ago

Maybe he was just committed to the bit by that point.

[-] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 22 points 6 months ago

We've all been guilty of carrying the bit too long before

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[-] Dumbkid@lemmy.dbzer0.com 37 points 6 months ago

Also "ye" in olde English is just pronounced the. It's wasn't a y it was used for the letter thorn which made the th sound. They never said ye. So there's no way the Spanish would translate to fake old english

[-] Pipoca@lemmy.world 14 points 6 months ago

Ish.

There's ye as in "hear ye, hear ye". That's a y. It's an inflected form of you, much as they had both thee and thou.

Then there's writing þe as ye.

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[-] palordrolap@kbin.social 14 points 6 months ago

The dead pirate captain's name is literally a penis joke. I don't think anything in that movie is supposed to be legit.

[-] Kage520@lemmy.world 75 points 6 months ago

Batman forever: Something like "It was left by a Mr E.... Mystery! And another word for mystery? Enigma!.... Mr E. Nigma...Edward Nigma!"

[-] zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 34 points 6 months ago
[-] hakunawazo@lemmy.world 26 points 6 months ago

Goteem? You mean Gotham.

[-] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 21 points 6 months ago

The clues were a series of riddles that had 13, 1, 8, and 5 somewhere in their text. Try letters of the alphabet, you wind up with MAHE. What if 1 and 8 was 18? 13, 18, 5 is MRE. "Mister E." "Mystery!" "And what's another word for mystery?" "Enigma!" Mister E. Nygma. Edward Nygma."

Which manages to be extremely basic yet such a stretch at the same time.

[-] vox@sopuli.xyz 18 points 6 months ago

nigma balls

[-] GraniteM@lemmy.world 12 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

It helped me understand what the hell was going on with Batman Forever when I realized that the whole thing was riddled with tributes to the Adam West Batman.

Once Jim Carrey gets up a head of steam, he is doing a full on impersonation of Frank Gorshin as the Riddler. Look at Gorshin in this scene. Carrey is doing an incredible Gorshin act.

Now I don't want that and I don't appreciate it, but once I understood where all of the camp in Forever came from it didn't make me quite so angry.

[-] hakunawazo@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)
[-] Smokeless7048@lemmy.world 9 points 6 months ago

“It was left by a Mr E… Mystery!

Yea, but im pretty sure this is intentionally bad, instead of bad writing

[-] Thteven@lemmy.world 16 points 6 months ago

It was a callback to Batman from 1966, that's how they solved all the crimes lmao. The Schumacher Batman movies were supposed to be "90s camp", which I can totally see now through my nostalgia goggles.

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[-] Ghyste@sh.itjust.works 68 points 6 months ago

Futurama did a great take on this with their Da Vinci Code parody episode.

[-] mattd@programming.dev 62 points 6 months ago

Animatronio mentioned a fountain. That's a statue of Neptune, god of water. The number of points on him trident is three, or trey. The "u" in his name is written like "v". Trey, "v". Trevi! It's the Trevi Fountain. There can be no question!

[-] Alue42@kbin.social 22 points 6 months ago

"but what about--?"
"There can be no question!!"

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[-] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 12 points 6 months ago

I watched all of Futurama, but I don't remember that episode. Which one was it?

[-] emax_gomax@lemmy.world 11 points 6 months ago

This reminds me of national treasure so much. Literally just random jumps until you fall into the obvious answer.

[-] roadrunner_ex@lemmy.ca 57 points 6 months ago

I remember a book I read in elementary school (in the Cam Jansen series, IIRC) where the main conflict was a mean older brother put a password on the new family computer (a huge deal in the early 90s), and the younger hires the kid detective to find the password. The password is “hot dog”, ultimately determined because the desktop BG was a picture of ketchup and mustard.

I recall being not super satisfied with that ending.

[-] KISSmyOS@lemmy.world 50 points 6 months ago

I can imagine you going *"Why didn't they just hit [Esc] to bypass the password prompt, open a DOS prompt and delete the password files in C:\Windows.pwl?"

(Yes, that was actually a thing you could do on early 90's Windows 3.0)

[-] tiramichu@lemm.ee 25 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Same with Windows 95 and Windows 98. Those operating systems were not really designed with a proper concept of 'user accounts'

The password box wasn't supposed to prevent system access, it was to capture user credentials for networking, like remote fileshare access.

Pressing escape is just choosing to continue anonymously.

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[-] Tippon@lemmy.world 15 points 6 months ago

You didn't even need to do that. You could hold down the shift key to bypass some passwords, and just click cancel on others.

Early Windows had awful security.

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[-] Evotech@lemmy.world 35 points 6 months ago

Password guessing is always like that in popular media too. Oh he loved houses so his pw is obviously "Stallion"

Uhm no, it was probably zkl+7+:$(89?

[-] Maggoty@lemmy.world 12 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Well. Cyber security professionals wish it were that way. Instead it's usually 1234 or their kid's birthday or some shit. Having a connection in your mind between houses and horses and then using that to remember something like Green4Stallion8 would actually be more secure than most people's passwords. It's even more better if you can remember a nonsense word that phonetically matches and change up the capital like, kreeN4stauLion8.

Of course most people don't need to worry about social hacking. Black hats aren't going through random social media profiles when they have millions of password and email combinations they ripped from a few websites. So unless you're the CEO of LifeLock or dealing with abusive family the above password would totally work even if everyone around you knew you loved Horse Cottages.

Just don't forget to change it in 30 days...

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[-] superduperenigma@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago

Even if the password was "stallion" they probably would have made it Stallion1, Stallion!, $tallion, etc. The password always ends up being a single word, all lowercase, no numbers, no special characters.

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[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 44 points 6 months ago

This is what it's like to watch Detective Conan in America. They will even have commercial segways where they say "hey, remember this important clue!" And then not even use that clue in the English dub's edit. They still present it as a mystery the viewer can solve, but then the solution is always some convoluted BS using clues the audience was never shown lol

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[-] RIP_Cheems@lemmy.world 34 points 6 months ago

"Alright kids. Who wants to dig up grandma?"

[-] Cowbee@lemm.ee 24 points 6 months ago
[-] RIP_Cheems@lemmy.world 12 points 6 months ago

NO, NO, we are not violating the dead.

[-] Cowbee@lemm.ee 10 points 6 months ago

You don't understand, she gave us the clue. It has to be this way.

[-] EmoDuck@sh.itjust.works 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

"G? As in Good God please don't!"

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[-] uis@lemmy.world 25 points 6 months ago

Why couldn't the amulet have been hidden by Aunt Alice, who understands modern key exchange algorithms?

Did she want for only to Biker Bob to find it, but Cop Charlie found it first?

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[-] Socsa@sh.itjust.works 18 points 6 months ago

I had one friend who was obsessed with these idiotic "lateral thinking" puzzle books, because she'd read them to us and then pretend like she had figured out the completely ridiculous scenarios from the start.

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[-] randomaccount43543@lemmy.world 17 points 6 months ago
[-] morriscox@lemmy.world 14 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)
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[-] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 9 points 6 months ago

Encyclopedia Brown had some decent ones, but a lot were pretty shit in retrospect

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this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
1006 points (99.1% liked)

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