On the Subject of Art Pricing
Who’s buying this?!
- The module presents itself with a 4×4 grid of black and white squares, a small labelled tag, a screen with a price, and arrows to change that price.
- Pressing the left/right arrows will increment the most significant digits of the price, while the up/down arrows will increment the number of zeroes.
- To solve the module, correctly determine the art’s value and enter it into the price screen. Press this display to submit your answer.
Step 1: Decrypting the Display
- The art on display has been encrypted, and must be decrypted using the label on the side.
- Take the 4 characters on the label and convert them to 4 rows of black and white squares using the below table.
- Now, create a new image by comparing the image derived from the label with the image on the module by setting each position to black if the corresponding positions in both images are different, and white otherwise.
- The resulting image will be used in the following steps.
| 0 | | 4 | | 8 | | C | | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | | 5 | | 9 | | D | | ||||||||||||||||
| 2 | | 6 | | A | | E | | ||||||||||||||||
| 3 | | 7 | | B | | F | |
Step 2: Determining the Base Value
- Next, a base value from 1–12 must be determined for the art.
- Take the image and number the cells on its border from 1 to 12, starting from the top left and continuing clockwise. Ignore the 4 squares in the center.
- Begin on the cell whose number is the number of the current month. Then, observe the color of that cell and move to a different cell according to the rules below.
- If the cell is black, go clockwise.
- If the cell is white, go counter-clockwise.