I spotted it, but I'm hopeless at this sort of puzzle (and have far too many GOGs already). I'll leave it for someone else.

That's a point I can understand ;)
Kudos for leaving the game up for others to grab (should you be curious, it's Tex Murphy 1&2)!
If you want to, I'd spoil the solution in PM, since I know you wouldn't hand it on to others *winks*

My list of games is really tiny :) I don't get just any game I can, but only the ones I enjoyed in the past and I know I want to play again. Collecting games is not one of my hobbies :)


Noticed :) Actually spotting it was not too hard as you indicated it quite clearly. Haven't tried to crack it yet though, busy with other project and had not a clue where to start at first glance. The only hint (if it's even a hint) did not tell me much so I'll just wait for some extra info. I don't enjoy guessing games but rather to follow logical clues if you know what I mean.

Also, your disappearance was the best thing that could happen as you were not able to spoil your own riddle by giving out hints and clues so everyone had to work on their own a bit on it to get to solution.

Hand me a list! :p


I know what you mean and I much feel the same way, so I can fully understand you.
I'll give you a justification and a hint with the same sentence though!
'That one is both easy and tricky, as dumb as that might sound!
I can not exactly tell you why it is easy, because that'd give it away, kind of, but it is tricky because there is some strategy and even guess work involved. If you wouldn't know that the code HAS to be 16 characters, you couldn't solve it.'


I dare to disagree, at least for my part *grins*


I'm not sure when (or if) to actually provide hints. I tend to try and wait ~36 hours at the least before providing more than a very vague pointer.
Any advice on this?

My thoughts on this number and the hints:
1) It is simple because it uses a Polybius square (or rectangle, as may be the case) or it uses the phone number -> letter scheme, which is really very similar in practice.
2) It is tricky because there are only 14 groups of same numbers and there needs to be 16. So you need to know where the breaks are. If it uses a 9x4 Polybius "rectangle", then the group of five 6's is too big.

But anyway, those are my thoughts, whether right or wrong.
Ha! I know what nagytow meant, but this is still funny.

some of the numbers need to be numbers too
(I'm guessing the gog-codes all follow a similar pattern to the last one I got: letter, letter, letter, number break number, letter ...-> LLLN-NLLL-LNLN-LLNL)
There's still some guesswork as to where the letters are on the 'grid'. Thought I had an idea with the placement of the 9 but I ran out of numbers lol

Something you mentioned is actually a good trail, while the rest isn't too close ;)

Btw. both games (TEX MURPHY 1+2/DUKE NUKEM 3D: ATOMIC EDITION) aren't redeemed even after all this time ;p

Edit: Sneaky posting while I was still writing up mine :p
I can assure you that this is not the case from just the few gift codes I got myself.
The point about including numbers is smart though ;)

Yes, which is why I mentioned 9x4, which gives 36 positions, 26 letters and 10 digits.
Ha, well, I'm guessing the second part is true while the first part is false, but with my luck, I'm backwards! :D

Well, if we check this analytically, assuming a Polybius cipher of any shape, you'd get an even amount of numbers as result. The number in question has 37 (odd amount) digits though, so there'd be a bit of a problem and I'd have missed something (which isn't the case, last time I checked ;))

Not if you were considering 7-7-7 to mean 7th column, 3rd row. I know that Polybius cyphers usually have column/row pairs, but I assumed you were being sneaky.

Well, sneaky in that way. You ARE being sneaky, just in a different way! :D

SNEAKY sneaky! *chuckles*
If the game isn't going to be redeemed in a few days, I'm going to add a very decent hint, since SirPrimalform just got me to realise that I was very evil sneaky, even more than I had intended myself! *grins evil*

Uh... you're welcome guys!

Actually I've got 16 characters, the problem is they're incorrect because the code doesn't work. Maybe I'll try later again, although I think the game is safe, I'm not a big fan of Tex Murphy :)

Each group of 4 can contain either letters or numbers in any position. A group does not have to contain a number. Generally there are 2-5 numbers out of 16, but that's not a rule. I, O, 1 and 0 are either not popular or not used. I found two old codes that had the letter O, but that's it.