Penultimate Puzzle Post

last chance to solve the 2025 angryweasel puzzle

So…

In 2023, I wrote fifty-ish articles - and every single title was the title of a Taylor Swift song. One person figured it out (in the end some other folks said they noticed it, but that it was so obvious, that they didn’t say anything). I think it’s fair to say that the Venn Diagram of Angry Weasel readers and Taylor Swift fans is two circles that barely touch.

I was going to do John Prine songs in 2025, but two people figured that out after two posts. So, I decided to do something much more difficult.

Recap

I posted Puzzles in January with the promise of $250 donated to the charity of the solver’s choice. And then I made the puzzle way too hard. Most people gave up after a few weeks, and with only seventeen days left in the year, I’m going to give some hints in case anyone wants to figure it out before I reveal everything.

The Hints!

Short Version

Here are my notes that I wrote back in January for hints

- Use zero based counting.

- rf 5:1

- Case matters

Long Version

In all of my posts from January 27 through August 10th, I signed them with two numbers separated by a colon. For example, I signed the post on January 27th as

-A 11:2

-A is me (Hi - I’m Alan (or “Angry” if you prefer)). The two numbers refer to a zero-based index pointing to a letter in the post. In this case, the 11th word, 2nd letter (0 based), or 12th word, 3rd letter (1 based).

The first sentence of that post was:

I wrote over fifty blog posts last year - all with the same titles as Taylor Swift songs. In a year, just a few people noticed.

The letter at position 11:2 is the m in the word same.

If you follow this pattern for each of the next 27 posts, you’d get a string of characters looking something like jdkYYtlsoUldkdpskOilI

…which is pure gibberish (and note, the actual string is different. The actual string starts with the letters (and case matters) maSYS

The string is encrypted, but if you put it through a simple decryption based loosely on an auto-post that happened on August 31.

The Answer is…

I’m not telling you…yet, at least. If you’re industrious, you have more than enough to solve it. And if you do solve it, you may be smarter than a whole lot of other people - including me.

Good luck.

-A