SOLUTION:
- Pick up on at least one of the gratuitous genetic engineering
references in the flavortext
- Notice the string is in base 17. Convert it to base 4.
- Try the following steps for all base 4 ⇒ ATGC encodings,
constrained by what you know about protein structure (e.g. start and
stop codons) to avoid having to search all of them:
- Notice the proteins have the form:
FLRSCNT
[XXXX][a1][a2][...] ← X is A C G T, a_is are roman numerals. There are
4 lines of this type, with same number of proteins.
- Realise FLRSCNT clues flourescent sequencing. Then the numerals
could code value lists for varying strand lengths.
- Convert the numbers to decimal. Find the max values for each
position. Using this, put the sequence back together.
- Notice this sequence has the form of 3 proteins. Write them out
using IUPAC.
- De interleave them to get FLAPPERSDECADESFLAPPERSDECADESFLAPPERSDECADES
- FLAPPERSDECADES clues the puzzle answer: TWENTIES
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This code may be useful for solving)