CiSRA Puzzle Competition 2009 - Solutions

This is the archive of the 2009 Puzzle Competition. Please visit the current competition site for information about the latest Puzzle Competition.

D.5 Already Taken

The first thing to notice is that the dark squares spell a message, reading left-to-right and top-to-bottom:

TOP LEFT MOVE DOWN HILBERT CURVE

A Hilbert curve is a space-filling fractal that looks like this when superimposed on the puzzle (starting from the top-left corner and initially moving down, as the message instructs):

Reading the light squares along this path gives another message:

FOUR DIGIT MINOR PLANET NUMBERS

Lists of minor planets (essentially, asteroids) and their numbers and names are available from several places on the web, e.g. here, here, or here.

Taking four-digit numbers along the Hilbert curve (i.e. the path already taken) produces the following list:

7495 Feynman
6501 Isonzo
9307 Regiomontanus
2709 Sagan
3325 TARDIS
4666 Dietz
5561 Iguchi
2483 Guinevere
2115 Irakli
2266 Tchaikovsky
8970 Islandica
5725 Nördlingen
4219 Nakamura
6469 Armstrong
3063 Makhaon
1750 Eckert

Reading down the first letter of each name produces the message:

FIRST DIGIT IN NAME

This suggests that you need to use the first digit of each number as an index in the name (the 7th letter of "Feynman", the 6th letter of "Isonzo", etc.), which results in the message:

NOT ARTHUR C CLARKE

Okay, so we know the answer is not Arthur C. Clarke. Now what?

The final piece of information, about an asteroid that was already taken, comes from a comment in the endnotes of Clarke's 3001: The Final Odyssey (and is mentioned on the web if you look hard enough):

Just a few hours after writing the above, I was delighted to learn that Asteroid 4923 (1981 EO27), discovered by S. J. Bus at Siding Spring, Australia, on 2 March 1981, has been named Clarke, partly in recognition of Project Spaceguard (see Rendevzous with Rama and The Hammer of God). I was informed, with profound apologies, that owing to an unfortunate oversight Number 2001 was no longer available, having been allocated to somebody named A. Einstein. Excuses, excuses...

The answer is EINSTEIN.