The Hashword Puzzle

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To begin solving this puzzle, we gathered the information that was presented in the picture. The rules 1. All lowercase 2. PageKeyword, a 8x8 grid with letters on the left Y-axis, and contained within the grid 1–8 diagonally, as well as 8 hex characters in 20 of the squares.

Not only will you find the specifications to the NEM’s primary contribution to the crypto currency landscape with it’s new consensus mechanism called Proof of Importance within NEM’s whitepaper, but we will also find the Page, and Keywords needed to solve the puzzle.

Reading the Whitepaper we are able to find the letters from the left Y-axis in the puzzle, in the Chapter Titles. Accounts and Addresses, Cryptography, Transactions, Blocks and the block chain, A reputation system for nodes, Proof-of-Importance, Time synchronization, Network. ACTBAPTN. This information allowed us to narrow the search for our keywords to one in each of these chapters.

Now it was time to determine what the keywords would be in each chapter, starting with the first paragraph. Accounts and Addresses first paragraph was focused on “keypair”, Cryptography’s focused on “Curve”, Transactions “state”, Blocks and the block chain “permanent”, A reputation system for nodes “P2P”, Proof-of-Importance “PoI”, Time synchronization “synchronized”, and Network “authenticate”. This gave us the list of Keywords we would need to hash.

We still needed to make sure to fulfill both rules 1. All lowercase and 2. PageKeyword. So we made sure to make all of our keywords lowercase, and we also needed to add “Page”, before them. Page came from the Page Number of the Whitepaper that the keyword was found on. So for the first keyword “keypair”, we added the page number “2”, before it to make “2keypair”. Determining which hashing function also was reveal by reading the Whitepaper. There are several times where the 256 bit Sha3 method is used, so this was the most logical choice. Hashing first PageKeyword “2keypair” left us with “d0dc7094723a2a145f5042edd753ef9064e514c6758f902e90ba72a3ff3d8308”. This hex string could then be compared with the 1st row in the 8x8 grid’s hex characters in the same position “5f5042edd” and “64e514c6” and 90ba72a3". This confirmed that we had the correct method for solving. Repeating the former steps, we were left with 8 64 hex character strings that we could use to fill the 8x8 grid.

Using the grid pattern of filling each square with 8 hex characters left us with an 8x8 grid that was filled with 64 squares each containing 8 hex characters. Using the 1–8 Diagonally through the grid showed which hex characters we would need to create the 64 hex character NEM privatekey that could create the wallet that contained the 5000 XEM prize.

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