10

Matty mouse is freshly recovered from a traumatic owl encounter and is looking to relax.

When he gets back to his home, he heads down to the local hole-in-the-wall. But unfortunately for Matty, there is new management. The establishment has been rebranded the Cool™ Club, and they have a bouncer at the door.

As he walks up, he sees a Cool™ Kid walk up to the Bouncer Who Is Quite Good At Intuiting Homophones™ and says, "Awww man, just let me in; you know me—I just forget passwords is all."

The Bouncer says, "You know the rules."
The Cool™ Kid whines pleadingly.
The Bouncer says, "You get seven attempts. I'll respond to each one with a number."

The Cool™ Kid moans pathetically then says:

Bare.
> 5, is the bouncer's response.

Baaa! the Cool™ Kid bleats.
> 4

Tear?
> 2

Ears.
> 2, comes the abrupt response.

Seta.
> 2, comes the same intimidating response.

Star
> 3

Rest.
> 9

Excited, the Cool™ Kid squeals!
But the bouncer says, "Okay, that is seven attempts".
The Cool™ Kid's jaw drops.
"ONE MORE, PLEASE!" he grovels Cool™ly.

"Password or leave."

Drooping his head, the Cool™ Kid crawls away.

Matty gives the Cool™ Kid a confused look, walks up to the bouncer, says the password and Struts In Suavely™ to enjoy the hard-earned Cheeses of his labour.

What is the password, and how did Matty figure it out?

Community
  • 1
Going hamateur
  • 6,053
  • 19
  • 46
  • 4
    The dialogue in the question is very confusing. Can you clarify who is saying what? Is the bouncer asking questions and the Cool™ kid responding, or vice versa? – GentlePurpleRain Jul 22 '15 at 15:43
  • Oh wow that is really confusing in hindsight... thanks for the heads up. – Going hamateur Jul 22 '15 at 15:55
  • OK, that's a little better, but still not ideal. What I'm taking from it is that the Cool™ kid is providing words, and the bouncer is responding with a number each time. After the seventh word, the Cool™ kid is supposed to provide a password, gleaned from the seven questions (?), but fails. We're supposed to figure out what the password is. – GentlePurpleRain Jul 22 '15 at 16:03
  • Yeah. I guess I can just write a little explanation that > = bouncer – Going hamateur Jul 22 '15 at 16:05
  • 3
    Password is a word that is supposed to make the bouncer respond 0? It's a little unclear in your question what the password is supposed to be and what properties it should have. – mmking Jul 22 '15 at 16:16
  • 1
    @Goinghamateur i thought it was clear ;) – Olivier Poulin Jul 22 '15 at 16:16
  • That is intentionally vague, the answer he would give for the password is part of the question. This one has probably 3 levels of figuring out that have to happen. I am thinking of adding more but after the speed my last one was figured out I wanted to start on the less descriptive side. – Going hamateur Jul 22 '15 at 16:17
  • 1
    Why is there 2. and "2"? If he is speaking wouldn't the quotes be implied in all cases, or is the bouncer saying "two-dot" or something? – Mark N Jul 22 '15 at 16:18
  • The quotes are implied in all cases I just added them for grammar reasons, I really wish I went with my initial desire to just have word response in a terminal-esque way. But alas that is a rather dry question delivery system. – Going hamateur Jul 22 '15 at 16:19
  • Everyone upvote Mark N for delivering clarity. – Going hamateur Jul 22 '15 at 16:26
  • 2
    @Goinghamateur, I don't think making a question vague and hard to understand makes for a "better" puzzle. I understand the inclination to make a puzzle "harder" so that it doesn't get solved right away, but I would suggest resisting that inclination. And always make your puzzle clear and easy to understand, regardless of how difficult it is. – GentlePurpleRain Jul 22 '15 at 16:28
  • 1
    While the question had definite writing problems, I feel it has all that it's needed to try and solve it. The "rules" that we don't know are clearly what we have to figure out. – Aioros Jul 22 '15 at 16:32

1 Answers1

11

Any chance the answer is not a word, just a sequence of letters?

BRST

It fits if you

play mastermind, correct appearance of letter is worth 1 point, if also in correct position 3 additional points.

For the answers:

BARE = 4 + 0 + 1 + 0 = 5
BAAA = 4 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 4
TEAR = 1 + 0 + 0 + 1 = 2
EARS = 0 + 0 + 1 + 1 = 2
SETA = 1 + 0 + 1 + 0 = 2
STAR = 1 + 1 + 0 + 1 = 3
REST = 1 + 0 + 4 + 4 = 9

Mark N
  • 5,868
  • 22
  • 60
Moghwyn
  • 3,090
  • 15
  • 21
  • 1
    Well I guess I need harder puzzles man... – Going hamateur Jul 22 '15 at 16:50
  • I found this one pretty hard, I stumbled on the right track quite early but just couldn't get a proper word to fit in. It's a nice twist, it leads you astray by playing with your expectations. – Moghwyn Jul 22 '15 at 16:57
  • 2
    Well I guess a good puzzle can leave some asking for more hints, while others plough ahead and do it. Well done... now to make a harder pattern puzzle with 7 layers of indirection and hexidecimal. – Going hamateur Jul 22 '15 at 16:58
  • 1
    I've played mastermind before, but I've never heard of a scoring system. The boxes of mastermind I have at home have white and black pins that designate whether a color tab is in the right spot/the correct color but wrong spot. I had considered mastermind but this made no sense to me since apparently there's a word + points version I've never heard about – Aify Jul 22 '15 at 17:38
  • Mastermind pin combos is Base4 of this system. So 1 black 1 white is 11 which is 4+1 = 5. Orginally I was thinking of doing 2, 11, 21, 3, 12 etc but I thought people would associate that with mastermind too fast. Oh well moghwyn is a fast fellow nonetheless. – Going hamateur Jul 22 '15 at 17:48