Question

Note: The above should render as a bunch of flag emoji, which Windows 10 and 11 apparently don't support (!), so here's a screenshot if you want to see it.

Hint 1:

This is a total Chad move

Hint 2:

What is a Chad move?

P.S. Now that this is solved, here's the link to the Python code I used to generate it:

Gist

_{Thanks PuzzlingFerret for the screenshot.}

I am using Windows and Microsoft refuses to implement any country flags emojis in order to avoid political controversies, showing them as two-letter codes instead. So, what I see here is just "ROTDROTDROTDRORO ROTDROROROTDRORO". So, can someone post a screenshot of what it looks like in some other platform? — Victor Stafusa - BozoNaCadeia, May 12 '22 at 06:36
@VictorStafusa, the issue seems to happen with IE11, Edge and Chrome, but it works on Firefox for Windows. — Amessihel, May 12 '22 at 09:30
Probably should replace the emojis with the image version, as it's a major spoiler to anyone using an affected browser. (Although as an image it might be impossible to solve. Hmm, damn Chromium ruining a perfectly good puzzle...) — Darrel Hoffman, May 12 '22 at 13:20
@Amessihel it's because Firefox uses its own font renderer and font to support emoji on even OSes that don't support that like older Windows or Linux — phuclv, May 12 '22 at 14:18
@VictorStafusa Are there any ongoing controversies where two equally powerful groups claim the rightful flag of a two-letter country code...? — user253751, May 12 '22 at 15:00
@Darrel Sorry, are you talking about the Windows issue that Victor brought up? I'm using Chrome on Ubuntu and Android and it's fine. (If it is Windows, here's a nickel, kid. Get yourself a better OS ) — wjandrea, May 12 '22 at 15:29
@user253751 It's not the codes, it's the status as countries, like Taiwan, Israel, Palestine, and Kosovo for example. I couldn't find a source directly from Microsoft, but in the past they've gotten themselves into international disputes and opted to remove the offending feature, so the emoji situation seems to be in line with that. — wjandrea, May 12 '22 at 15:51
Work computer, don't exactly have any choice in the matter. Such a weird arbitrary thing for Microsoft to do though, as if the mere sight of a national flag would be offensive to someone? — Darrel Hoffman, May 12 '22 at 16:08
@wjandrea I believe that's why they're officially called region codes rather than country codes... one would assume that it's an easily recognizable fact that Taiwan does have a flag and a code assigned... — user253751, May 12 '22 at 16:20
@glenn Actually, it's not any better for the colour-seeing :p Hover for spoiler — wjandrea, May 12 '22 at 22:09
Windows 10 with Firefox is good :)) I have no problem with this — Arash Hatami, May 13 '22 at 05:03
@glennjackman Seeing the colors as most of other people see won't give you any useful information in this puzzle. — Victor Stafusa - BozoNaCadeia, May 13 '22 at 08:29
@user253751 I also couldn't found an official statement, but I once read somewhere that it is because some countries have significant controversies (like Afghanistan after being retaken by taliban which promptly changed the country flag), some countries cease to exists, some new might be created (like South Sudan was), some have partial recognition (Taiwan, Palestine), etc. To avoid all of that and also avoid the political problem of supporting the flag of some country but not supporting the flag of some other country, they simply choose to not support any flag at all. — Victor Stafusa - BozoNaCadeia, May 13 '22 at 08:43
@Victor, the problem is not what colours I perceive, it's that the two flags are indistinguishable. — glenn jackman, May 13 '22 at 14:06
@glennjackman the flags are 99% indistinguishable for me (I am not colourblind) - the challenge to this puzzle seems to be to look for a difference where there doesn't seem to be one. This can be used to comapre the hex codes: https://embed.plnkr.co/plunk/ERaf37 (enter #bc0a28 and #c90c21). It's showing a 1% difference for me — PuzzlingFerret, May 13 '22 at 14:45
If anyone has a source on why there are two different Spanish flags, I would be very interested. Because the name of the second emoji, "Flag for Ceuta & Melilla" is utter nonsense: Ceuta and Melilla are two different cities, each has a flag, and those flags are very different from the Spanish flag... — wimi, May 13 '22 at 17:18
@wimi my guess is that this is the flag used when referring to them together. — PuzzlingFerret, May 13 '22 at 21:40

juicifer · Accepted Answer · 2022-05-11T21:03:34.537

37

A "Chad move," as described in the hints, seems to involve

two identical (or nearly identical) flags, such as those of Chad and Romania.

These are each grouped together in sets of eight. Interpreting these as

binary gives us ASCII character codes. For example, the first group (choosing Romania as 0 and Chad as 1) gives us 01011001, which is "Y".

Continuing this pattern, we get:

01011001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01110011 01101111 01101100 01110110 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110000 01110101 01111010 01111010 01101100 01100101 00100001

or, in other words,

You have solved this puzzle!

Additionally, the title gives us

01010100 01000100, which translates as "TD", the two-letter country code for Chad. Truly a Chad move.

edited May 11 '22 at 21:03

answered May 11 '22 at 20:58

juicifer

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According to this blog, in in GeoGuessr's Battle Royale mode, "'The Chad move' is where a player positively identifies the country on screen as being Romania, but then before selecting Romania, instead initially 'guesses' at Chad. [...] a (seemingly) Romanian flag then pops up in the 'already made guesses' corner of the screen, meaning that other competitors won’t guess at Romania and will be knocked out." – 2012rcampion May 11 '22 at 21:31
@2012rcampion Yes, thank you! I forgot to explain :) – wjandrea May 11 '22 at 22:35
1

I was going to ask how we know which is 0 and which is 1, but given that we have 8 flags in each block and we're rot13(rapbqvat NFPVV), then we can always choose 0 first. – Toby Speight May 12 '22 at 07:42

1 Answers1