[Waterluvian]

What makes a puzzle like this “unreasonable?” Like would it be a sort of “you had to know that you needed a bit of graffiti on a truck stop stall outside Anchorage” unfair scope issue or is there a different kind of unreasonable I cannot currently imagine?

[Arainach]

It's easy to make a puzzle that's hard. "Guess the number in my head" is hard. It's not fun for the solver or reasonable. "Unscramble this text which was XORed with the Windows 3.1 solitaire EXE" is likewise.

Good puzzles, even hard ones, should have some idea which way to approach them and should offer a method of attack other than brute force.

[elahieh]

Here's what's up for sale from RR Auction

https://www.rrauction.com/jim-sanborn-kryptos-k4-solution-au...

The Wired piece has Sanborn saying the reserve should be "around $300,000."

It sounds like Sanborn really doesn't think it'll be solved before the auction date of 20 November (his 80th is on 14 November). If it does get solved due to this publicity bump, that's huge earnings foregone.

Perhaps he knows it is still an "unreasonable" challenge even with the 24 known letters.

[lisper]

Here's an essay I wrote 15 years ago about another "unreasonable" puzzle:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2009/12/worst-puzzle-ever.html

[elahieh]

Also, another example of an "unreasonable" challenge - the "Decipher Puzzle" https://cisa.umbc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/468/2017/09/S... -- from 1983 to 1985.

You would think that one of the lessons of that is that someone could jump in right at the end and solve it after several clues were released. That hasn't worked with K4, which is increasing people's skepticism.

[derekp7]

A one time pad would be unreasonable.

Edit: Unless the one time pad is a well known relative document, such as the Declaration of Independence.

[8bitsrule]

There are SO many things he might have done, with no pre-determined rules. Like, algo-scramble.

Starting with the n-char plaintext, make it a loop. Now move the second letter two places to its right, the third three places, and so on ... until arriving at the original nth letter (painted red?) Or, starting with the digits of pi, move the second letter 3 to the right, the third 1, the fourth 4, und so weiter.

Doing a frequency on 97 weird letters wouldn't help much.

[Waterluvian]

Would that be akin to me offering a hash string as a puzzle and asking for the 10GB video file as the solution?

[kop316]

Sort of. A one time pad does not destroy data, but a hash will.

Wikipedia has a good example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad

In their example, "HELLO" is the plain text, "XMCKL" is the key, and the ciphertext is "EQNVZ". However, with a one time pad, an equally plausible plain text is "later" with the key "TQURI". Thus, without anymore data, it is simply impossible to know what the original message is.

[lazide]

Was the 10GB video file never released anywhere and is stored in a now bit rotted old HD in your basement?

Reasonable puzzles can be worked out (albeit maybe with a lot of work) with information provided by the puzzle or available somewhere in the environment.

Unreasonable puzzles (like some old Sierra games cough) are impossible without secret inside knowledge by the puzzle maker and/or brute force. And sometimes not even with brute force.

The hash/video example might just be an Easter egg hunt requiring looking across a wide set of videos (somewhat reasonable but boring), or completely unreasonable depending on circumstances.