I have not slept for 72hrs – Please Help Me!

[anonymous_chicken]

I have a few questions to clarify as there is no feedback and I could be close. If you can help me answer this is would be helpful and I can get some sleep as I am starting to see fairies in my room…

A few clarifying questions:

1. Does the NCC checker expect:

Raw plaintext with NO spaces?
Plaintext WITH word spacing?
All UPPERCASE or mixed case?

2. Is it possible that:
The scoring is cumulative (partial credit for parts)?
The checker rejects entire submissions if formatting is slightly off?
There are multiple valid plaintexts and only one specific version scores?

3. How do solvers typically verify accuracy before final submission?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated before I waste time on format variations.

Format makes no difference. We remove all non-alphabetic characters from your submission and from our master solution. They are both converted to ALLCAPS and then they are compared letter by letter using the Damerau Levenshtein distance. That computes how many changes of the following sort are needed to convert your submission to be identical to ours after the processing described above. If the score is high enough (very close match) you get told your number and the first character of your submission that is different from ours gets marked for feedback. If feedback is live and instant you will see both immediately, if it is delayed you will get given your score immediately but the feedback will appear after then start of the next timeband. If feedback is switched off you will only be given your score and any messages we have set the system to deliver.

If the score is not high enough, i.e., the text is too different from the solution your score will be set to zero and no feedback will be given. This is to prevent competitors from using the marking system as a part of their attack on the cipher.

I hope this helps. The key message is that NONE of the formatting you talked about would make a difference to your score. Keep dancing… Harry

[bridges]

I find it’s one percentage point off for each missing letter (in 10A at least)

[Gen_ruikt]

Not this qgain pls eat bro

[anonymous_chicken]

Harry & Jodie – it’s been painful but worth it right at the very end.
Many times I wanted to give up but there was a reason to open up the laptop this winter holidays.

Now I am playing TENET in my head on how I could solve it without the hints – or anyone that solved in within the first few days.

For anyone reading this – manual is the way to go –

[Author]

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