The PSE School of Enigmatics (Part 1)

Question

Update: I fixed up the second image, making it (perhaps) a little bit easier to crack.

You leap out of your bed. Today's the day!

You check your mailbox, and wow, there it is! The frayed look of the letter could not possibly be in greater contrast to the grandeur of its contents.

You can't believe you actually got the letter. It took you hours; no, days of procrastination on Puzzling Stack Exchange to finally, finally enter the PSE school of enigmatics (or PSE for short).

You look at the letter:

But wait, what the bejiggles is this? You find a second scroll, lightly glued to the first:

Oh boy. The hair-tearing will begin a lot sooner than you had anticipated.

Notes: Hello Puzzling Stack Exchange! This is part 1 of a "puzzle story" that I plan to tell over multiple puzzles. I hope you enjoy!

@Mithrandir "professor" Rand al'Thor is within the scope of the question, but (at this stage) I will neither confirm nor deny this :) — Zerium, Jul 13 '17 at 10:01
TIL; that PSE stands for "PSE School of Enigmatics", not "PSE School of Enigmatics School of Enigmatics". — William Nathanael, Jul 13 '17 at 10:41
Deus and GPR didn't let you in but this M.J. feller did? Suspicious — n_plum, Jul 13 '17 at 17:45
@Sid You might have been able to tell that there is something unusual about your letter of acceptance. Perhaps this is what Professor R.A. meant! — Zerium, Jul 14 '17 at 03:31
@Sid & think123 I had totally chalked it up to it being a "normalized score". — feelinferrety, Aug 11 '17 at 23:16
@Sid In my first year at university, we had exams where full marks was considered to be 100, corresponding to 4 questions worth 25 marks each perfectly answered, but you could actually attempt as many as you wanted and the best 5 would be counted, so there's a real-world example where getting over 100% was technically possible! (From the second year upwards, only the best 4 questions were counted.) — Neremanth, Oct 05 '17 at 11:53
I second Sid. I'd like to see some hints and some activity in this puzzle. — Hosea, Nov 17 '17 at 17:12
The second riddle's first words imply 6/a[enter]a5, which looks kindof like something you'd type, and the puzzle does have the [computer-puzzle] tag. It also looks related to the score of 65/64. — Bobson, Dec 19 '17 at 20:47

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 20 '17 at 08:33

3

From Bobsons comment,

six
slash
a hole
enter
an alt
five

seems to me like 6 characters

6
/
0
[enter]
alt
5

Not enough rep to comment, just my thoughts.

answered Dec 20 '17 at 08:33

The Thinker

31
2

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 05 '17 at 18:01

2

65/64 seems to point to:

How can 64 = 65?

Page 2 is beyond me at the moment.

answered Oct 05 '17 at 18:01

JMP

35,612
7
78
151

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 19 '17 at 18:54

Very partial answer here, to try and stimulate some movement on this...

The first portion of the second scroll strikes me as

Equations to solve.

"First there was woman. Then there was man. Neither the man nor woman produced monthly blood."

These aren't actual people, but instead variables man and woman to solve for.

"Woman became one with man,"

woman + man = 1

"but along came another woman. Now there was one more than just man and woman."

2*woman + man = (woman + man) + 1 = 2 Solving for each gives man = 0 and woman = 1

"Man then became one with both women,"

A new set of equations to solve? man + 2*woman = 1

"but taking a liking to one woman, he ran off with the woman." (totally lost here) "In the end, we are given a situation, in which a man and two women are taken away from two men."

2*man - (man + 2*woman) = ?

Perhaps we could interpret this part instead as

pseudocode? I.e. woman = 1; man = 2; (First woman, then man), woman = 1 + man; (Woman became one with man), etc.

In the vein of numbers and/or pseduocode, see my comment on the second riddle — Bobson, Dec 19 '17 at 20:48

The PSE School of Enigmatics (Part 1)

3 Answers3

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