Terminal

by Alejandro Espinosa, Bryan Lee, and Edgar Chen

Answer:
A STRANGE GAME.
THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS
NOT TO PLAY.

We are presented with a crossword, but instead of clues, we have a prompt to enter text. Inputting a word into the textbox gives a score from -100 to 100 for each clue. We may be familiar with the game Semantle, in which you are trying to guess the target word by entering words that are semantically similar. Semantle uses Word2Vec to compute a semantic similarity score -100 to 100 between the target and input word.

However, we should notice two things: 1. It’s hard to obtain a score greater than 50 or 60 no matter which word is input, and 2. The textbox accepts arbitrary strings, including numbers and spaces, as input. Eventually, we will realize that the system is not calculating similarity to words, but crossword clues. The only way to obtain a perfect similarity score of 100.00 is to match the hidden target clue exactly. However, getting close enough to the clue should be enough to answer. For example, “Goodbye Reptile” gives a score of 83.03 on 1 Across, so we don’t need to know that the hidden clue is “Reptile in a common farewell message” from “See you later, Alligator!” to know that the answer is ALLIGATOR.

1
A
L
L
I
2
G
A
3
T
O
4
R
5
A
D
6
D
E
7
R
8
O
P
I
N
9
E
G
R
E
E
T
I
N
G
S
10
I
N
D
I
A
N
A
11
C
H
E
E
S
E
B
U
R
G
E
R
S
L
N
E
S
E
E
12
I
M
P
E
D
I
13
M
E
N
T
14
S
O
15
B
A
S
S
16
O
O
N
T
E
O
T
17
H
O
N
O
R
M
C
Y
18
S
Q
U
A
R
E
R
A
19
O
B
20
S
C
E
N
E
W
R
M
21
M
E
N
T
H
G
22
S
C
A
M
23
O
V
E
R
W
A
T
C
H
24
A
M
A
S
25
S
O
R
26
O
N
A
D
G
A
27
L
U
M
I
N
O
S
I
T
Y
28
S
29
U
P
30
E
R
G
I
31
A
N
T
V
W
32
E
N
P
Y
W
Y
33
E
P
34
O
N
A
35
D
I
36
A
B
L
O
I
I
I
37
H
A
I
R
P
R
O
F
E
S
S
38
O
R
39
C
I
T
A
D
E
L
T
K
40
P
O
O
P
E
D
41
E
O
I
42
T
R
E
V
I
43
U
D
U
N
44
M
I
C
K
45
E
Y
S
R
46
D
A
N
C
E
F
L
O
O
R
S
F
A
L
K
E
N
47
O
R
A
N
G
E
48
C
H
I
C
49
K
E
N
50
S
A
N
T
A
N
A
R
L
O
F
E
O
U
C
R
51
T
H
R
E
E
52
B
E
E
F
Y
53
T
E
M
P
E
R
A
T
E

Across

  1. Reptile in a common farewell message
  2. Reptile which shares its name with an electronic circuit
  3. Express one's thoughts
  4. US State that's the largest producer of steel
  5. Fast food items found in paradise, say
  6. Hindrances in doing something
  7. Instrument known as the clown of the orchestra
  8. Something lost when breaking omertà
  9. Shape with identical side lengths and right angles
  10. Offensive or disgusting
  11. A common one involves a Nigerian prince
  12. Video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment
  13. Accumulate over a period of time
  14. Intrinsic brightness of a celestial object
  15. Video game studio that developed Bastion
  16. Hero of Time's horse
  17. Video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment
  18. Musical about hippies
  19. A fortress, usually on high ground
  20. Excreted or exhausted
  21. Famous Roman fountain
  22. They're hidden in certain theme parks
  23. Musical blood locales?
  24. Signature dish of Panda Express
  25. Smooth guitarist
  26. It's a crowd
  27. Like a bodybuilder or burrito
  28. Showing moderation

Down

  1. Skill displayed by acrobats or runners
  2. Impressiveness that one might have delusions of
  3. Hot drink or gossip
  4. Having happened not too long ago
  5. What the author did to the two longest answers
  6. Lacking harmony
  7. Soulful music genre
  8. Fairy tale baddies
  9. Intrinsic nature of something
  10. Group famous for their Tabernacle Choir
  11. Having sharp powers of judgment
  12. Savory liquid often used as a base for other foods
  13. End of a sequence
  14. Group of insects or Zerg
  15. Detective with a talking dog
  16. Potatoes' partner
  17. What you should do to this puzzle
  18. Nature spirit serving the god of wine
  19. Animated film about elf brothers
  20. Lower ranked cops
  21. Dre and Snoop are on the next one
  22. It's given at a ceremony
  23. Generation II baby Pokemon
  24. Relating to vision
  25. Clods, fools
  26. Postmortem place
  27. Great wealth
  28. State of physical ease
  29. Catch in a trap
  30. Release a fastening in a rope or string
  31. Two under par
  32. Corn locale
  33. Island that opens doors?
  34. Addition result

Once the grid is filled, solvers can read the highlighted rows of the crossword to get the cluephrase GREETINGS PROFESSOR FALKEN, which precedes the answer with word enumeration 3 5 3 in a famous scene in the movie Wargames:

A STRANGE GAME.
THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS
NOT TO PLAY.

Authors' Notes

This puzzle being solvable at all was honestly a huge surprise to me (Edgar). My idea was to create “Sentence Semantle” since we all had a blast playing original Semantle early on in the year. Even with a detailed description of the answer, it took around 20-30 minutes to solve a single clue in my initial test. Based on this information, we constructed an initial “final” version that was around 25 clues long. Once the testsolvers figured out how the system worked, they started accelerating faster and faster, and blasted through that version in around an hour. So we scaled the puzzle up, and Alejandro was daring enough to change a lot of the clues to be more creative, less direct clues that you would actually see in a crossword, which increased the coolness of solving those clues by a lot. Somehow, our testsolvers were able to adapt to that too, and showed us how much better you can get at playing a game over the course of a few hours, from struggling to get that first clue with much uncertainty to powering through by the end.