This Q&A will be used as a general guide to cops-and-robbers challenges. It is not fully inclusive of every cops-and-robbers challenge but it's a good baseline.

Basic Premise

Cops and Robbers is a coding challenge that requires you to "crack" a language within a set period of time.

Cops create a program that works in at least one language, and post the code for it.
Robbers have to try and figure out a language that will work with the supplied source code.

Two threads will be created. One for cops, containing all of the challenges, and one for robbers, containing answers for each challenge.

Cops

• Write a program fulfilling the challenge set in the question, in a language of your choosing.
• Obfuscate that code to make it as difficult to guess as possible.
• Post a response in the "Cops" thread, formatted as such:
  # ???, N bytes replacing N with the number of bytes, then adding your source code in a code block.
• Robbers will try to guess a language that your answer works in. It does not matter if you did not use that language; if it works, it counts.
  If they do guess, change your title to:
  # Language, N bytes, cracked by [Username](Link to answer in robber thread).
• If nobody has found a correct language within 7 days, you may reveal the answer by changing the title to:
  # Language, N bytes, safe
• Ensure that nobody has answered your question in the Robber thread before you reveal your answer.

You gain a point for every safe answer.

Robbers

• Find an uncracked, unsafe answer in the Cops thread.
• Attempt to decode the language used in it. Any language that compiles the program will be sufficient to "crack" it.
• Once you have cracked the code, post an answer in the Robbers thread with the format:
  # Language, N bytes, cracks [Username's post](Link to question in Cops thread)
• Reply to the original post with a comment linking to your answer in the Robbers thread.
• You may only guess once for each question, so answer wisely!

You gain a point for every question you crack.

The winner of each challenge is the person with the most points at the end.

This guide does not include the extra challenges that cops-and-robbers questions may include; robbers may be given a challenge to encode their posts a specific way, but this must be specified in the original challenge! Cops may not introduce extra challenges.

posted over 3 years ago

CC0

3y ago

Corsaka‭

251 reputation 3 4 29 5