Hacker history

Emmanuel Goldstein from 2600 Magazine sez, “As part of a massive archiving project, 2600 Magazine is releasing all of the remastered videos from the second Hackers On Planet Earth conference – Beyond HOPE in 1997. Last month, videos from the first HOPE conference back in 1994 were put online. This weekend’s hour-by-hour video release from 1997 will include speakers like cryptographer Bruce Schneier, *everyone* from The L0pht and Cult of the Dead Cow, privacy advocates, technologists, along with lots of glimpses at 1990s websites. It’s an enlightening trip down Memory Lane to visit a pre-9/11 conspiracy theorist world – from a hacker perspective.”

Angry Animals

Play here

Perplex City

In 2007 The Hour did a piece about this incredible game Perplex City. It was a super elaborate puzzle game that led people on a real life treasure hunt for an elusive object called the Receda Cube. Well the Cube has been found. It was burried in the Wakerley Great Wood near Stamford, Northamptonshire UK. Andy Darley from Middlesex found the cube and has won the the 100,000 pound prize.

Inception’s Penrose Staircase

You’re trapped in a dream featuring a Penrose staircase, the impossible architecture that characters grappled with in Inception. You start on the blue step, and you’re allowed eight moves. On each one, you may travel either up or down. If you go up, you move a number of spaces equal to N-1, where N is the number on the step you began the move—6 at the start. If you go down, travel N+1 spaces. At the end of your move, you’ll be on a step with another number. Again, move up or down the stairs following the same rules (N-1 or N+1). Each move must end on an unvisited step. Your goal is to finish where you began—on blue 6.

Solution

This level of the dream is far larger in size, and has many more dead ends. You start on the 4 step, and you must visit all 16 steps exactly once each, ending back where you started.

Solution

Now you are on the final level of the dream, where staircases rise and fall like imaginary skyscrapers. The movement rules are the same as before, requiring you to visit all 24 steps once each, returning to your starting point. However, once you leave a step, you must either go all up or all down during that particular move. Here there may be many ways to complete the journey, but you may be hard pressed to find even one. Once you have completed this staircase, you may finally exit the dream. That is, assuming you believe that you started in reality….

Solution

Inception Explained

Click on the image below to see the full infographic about the layers of Inception:

Top 5 children’s tech toys for Christmas 2010

Gadgety toys are all the thing this Christmas so we went along to an industry bash to find out what the top five tech toys for kids are this Christmas.

Ge the full report here

Windosill

Windowsill is a new game by Patrick Smith at Vectorpark.com. An adventure type puzzle, it is your task to go level to level solving somewhat logical puzzles. The word is populated by objects and beings but it is the square that fits right above the door on your right is the object you are after. This may be given to you by the bird or it could be the part of letter “i”. None of this might make sense but you really need to play the game to find out what is all about. Greeted by weird but wonderful five objects on plant stems, each with individual properties. Definitely not a game for the impatient. Windowsill is nevertheless a wonderfully drawn and animated game. From the weird characters to the little steam engine that is ‘you’, everything in the game looks great.

Play it at windosill.com

Brain Games

An introduction to Lumosity, a website for cognitive training and learning games.

Go Play at Lumosity here

Sadistically Demanding Brainteasers

The May 09 issue of Wired magazine was oozing with oodles of brainteasers, which were compiled by Mike Selinker, the founder of puzzle-game studio Lone Shark Games, and Teeuwynn Woodruff, the company’s creative director. Lone Shark enlisted the help of some of the biggest names in the puzzle world, such as New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz and the legendary Martin Gardner, who boggled the minds of several generations of geeks with his puzzle column that ran in Scientific American from the 1950s to the 1980s. Sharpen your virtual pencils!

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/1813626064?isVid=1&publisherID=1564549380

Clik here to download a copy of the Wired Puzzles
Click to go and play Digidoku (and more)

Quizicon

Welcome to the Quizicon, the website of puzzles!

Play 100 Most Common English Words See how many of the 100 most common words in the English language you can guess in 5 minutes… This list was compiled using the Oxford English Corpus, used by the makers of the Oxford English Dictionary, which contains over 2 billion words of written English.

Play Most Common Computer Passwords How many of the most common computer passwords can you guess in 5 minutes (hint: think expletives, names, numbers)