Who's There

Alejandro Sedeno, David McIlroy

HINTS:

• Squirrelfoot likes moving around. He's really talking about encryption.
• Doesn't the layout look a little weird to you? That's gotta be on purpose.
• Programs don't have to be visible to work.

SOLUTION:

This puzzle is in two parts, both of which are necessary.

The text that you see is a perl program after applying the vignere key "BENOISYREDHERRING" to all the letters.

Decrypt the perl program and it prints out WRONGWORD

The spacing is also important, because this puzzle is also written in whitespace.

Use the whitespace interpreter, and the program will appear to hang while waiting for input.

Type in WRONGWORD, and the interpreter will print out ILLUSION!, which is the correct answer.

Answer: ILLUSION

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2004 MIT Mystery Hunt