A simple puzzle I thought of during a work-from-home-session today.
Enjoy :)
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$\begingroup$ Well, it seems obvious enough what the answer is, but I'm having trouble figuring out why. $\endgroup$– Gareth McCaughan ♦Commented Jan 29, 2021 at 3:02
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1 Answer
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Super-partial answer because it's 3:20am where I am:
I think we are being
rick-rolled
because the answer to "who?" is
RICK ASTLEY.
The column of words under "foo"
contains one word starting with each letter of the alphabet, which so far as I can tell is just for fun and has nothing to do with the puzzle. But its last six words are the opposites of "never", "going", "to", "give", "you", and "up".
I wondered
whether reversing the other words would lead to other song titles, but it doesn't look like it, although hello/queen -> bye/king is amusing. My current guess is that the first 20 words are irrelevant, because
the so-called "clue"
indicates that we should throw away 20 items from "foo" (
foo-20). I'd love it to somehow mean that the elements of "bar" are the opposites of the elements of "foo" but I don't see how it can mean that. (It also seems like "bar" should also have 20 redundant elements, presumably also at the start; not sure what to do with that. There seems to be no particular connection between the earlier words in "foo" and anything else in the Astley song, unsurprisingly if I'm right that we're being told to ignore them.)
answered Jan 29, 2021 at 3:23
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$\begingroup$ I was thinking of another song from the last three words. Think rot13(Thaf a Ebfrf)... $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 29, 2021 at 13:38
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$\begingroup$ Well, I was also guided by the numbers of question-marks. $\endgroup$– Gareth McCaughan ♦Commented Jan 29, 2021 at 16:16
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1$\begingroup$ But it's very possible that everything I've found so far is pure red herring. $\endgroup$– Gareth McCaughan ♦Commented Jan 29, 2021 at 16:17