Bug Reporting

[GREENcar]

Just a note – I was investigating the website on the 16th September and, as this is my first time doing NCC, I was slightly annoyed that I would have to wait a whole month to start. However, as I reclicked on the Challenges page later in the day, I noticed that the Challenge 2 release date had shifted forwards from 16/10 to 16/9. I thought this must be a bug, but solved the challenge anyway (I had some experience doing Codewords in the papers). When the actual Challenge 2 came out, it was completely different. I looked on Github and found that the challenge I had done was actually last year’s challenge 2B so I just wanted to make this bug aware in case it matters in the future.

Thanks for this. We don’t post the current challenges until the last minute in the interests of security. Normally we populate the database with dummy text or old challenges while testing the site to make sure everything is working. In this case we forgot to mark the challenge as closed in the run up to formally opening the site so you saw the test text. Harry

[bridges]

The list of threads shows the wrong date for “last post”. For example, “Daily Cipher Started by: Puzzling_Pelican 2 3 1 week, 4 days ago upsidedown” even though there was a post yesterday morning.

Who can fathom the arcane ways of the Forum? Harry

[AES_of_spades]

OMG! I was thinking along the lines of turning grille cuz the title said something about a wheel turning… Still a good idea for a future challenge @harry – you could hide the cipher IN THE TIP and torture everyone!

Well Jodie did hide the key to Challenge 5B in the tip last week! 😉 Harry

[upsidedown]

@bridges

As Harry says, the ways of the forum are arcane.

There are no links to it on the site, but the forum has an RSS feed which can be read with an RSS reader, which obviates the need to forage for new posts.

[Puzzling_Pelican]

Hi Harry,

The post order in ‘Daily Cipher’ appears to be causing problems.
See post #113970 (awaiting moderation on page 2 of ‘Daily Cipher’)

In short, Missions 1A-7A have been published and 7B-10A are awaiting moderation.
It appears that missions 6A-7A are visible on page 2 after some posts that are awaiting moderation which may be confusing the moderation system.

Thanks

Thank you, that is really helpful, will restart releasing the remaining challenges. Harry

[upsidedown]

Possibly because post #114016 contains an <li> outside of a <ul>, the end of that post (#114016) and the next post (#114105), and various elements after that (reply box, pagination, post count, etc.) appear in the wrong place in the HTML tree which has messed up the styling.

Thanks for this as always! We have deleted the offending styled elements and are hoping that the original poster will submit a revised edition. We are always very grateful for the sharp eyes of the BOSS bug hunters! Harry

[T]

Looking at case file 8.3 it suggests that the plain text may start “Dearest Grenville” and therefore the first two letters DG->EG and then LE->DG.
Shouldn’t that say DE->EG and then LE->DG.

Thank you, you are right! Jodie was up late writing the hint! Will mention it at the appraisal and correct the case file. Harry

[F6EXB_the_frenchy]

@upsidedown
#114107

Thanks for the tip, I didn’t know about that. It’s really useful. The reader is available as an extension for Firefox.

[Attempt_5]

I thought the case file for Challenge 9 won’t be updated until the next time band was passed? Just checking if case file 9.1 was meant to be out today or not

Jodie thought this one added a bit of context. Not sure it is much help, but it is a lovely drawing. Enjoy, Harry

[floppers3]

Case file 10.1 doesn’t seem to have been posted

It has now, and we hope it is helpful, but we think it might not be until you have broken the cipher. Would love to hear your views! (But not about the delay, we are already feeling pretty bad about it and we are really really sorry!) Harry

[Author]

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