Clues, Riddles, and Guesses for Treasure 115


Mohammed wrote (Dec 15, 1996):

I lied. The package is here several minutes early, and the URL is:

http://www.cbu.edu/~jorendor/interpol.tar.gz.uu

The puzzle isn't all that difficult. If I arrive at school later today and no solutions await me I'll be a little disappointed. :o)


Mohammed wrote (Dec 19, 1996):

> ----- BEGIN QUINE.I -----
> quine( << $ << ; "=;\n" << ; )=;
> quote( "\"" swap . + << << ; "\n" << ; )=;
> "quine quine. quote quine. quote."quine quine. quote quine. quote.
> ------ END QUINE.I ------

breadbox has found the Treasure of the Interpol Mug. Congratulations! bb was the only player to send a solution. (In fact, he sent three, but this was the first.)

To be perfectly fair, this program uses an undocumented "feature" of the language -- script printing. Using script printing, even shorter self-printing programs are possible; breadbox sent me a 31-character one-liner earlier this morning.

And, /dev/joe suggested this one:

> Do error messages count?
>
> The following (3 lines between the ---) is a
> really lame self-printing interpol program:
> ---
> Stray character ''' found.
> stack dump:  Stray
> stack dump:  character
> ---

I probably wouldn't have accepted that, on the grounds that something doesn't qualify as a "program" unless it actually runs... but it's a very creative solution. Hats off to /dev/joe as well.


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