On the fateful first of April, 2002, the following fearsome message appeared on M*U*S*H's usual port: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- HAHAHA! Not today! If you want to visit M*U*S*H you'll have to prove your worthiness and decode its location from this clue: 0011111110011000000 0000011000001111100 0110000011011000011 0001111000011000110 0000000011011000011 0000011000110000011 0011111110011000011 0000011000110000011 0110000000011111111 1000011000110000011 0110000000000000011 0000011000011000110 0111111111000000011 0001111110001111100 (Important note: the M*U*S*H server detects portscanners and firewalls them off, so scanning for the MUSH port is ill-advised. The port for M*U*S*H is definitely a higher number than 1024.) Hint #1: No math is required. 0 and 1 could just as well be "x" and "@" Hint #2: (Implict in the reformatting of the clue...) Hint #3: Having trouble? Join the line. Another hint will be posted here later in the day. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The true port was found by, as hint #3 suggests, joining the pairs of lines, then eliminating the spaces between them. This yielded: 00111111100110000000000011000001111100 01100000110110000110001111000011000110 00000000110110000110000011000110000011 00111111100110000110000011000110000011 01100000000111111111000011000110000011 01100000000000000110000011000011000110 01111111110000000110001111110001111100 Which, looked at as ASCII art, reads "2410", the port on which M*U*S*H was to be found. Javelin, upon returning M*U*S*H to the proper port around 7:30 PM CST, also made a bbpost reading: scoob is to be commended for being the first player to find M*U*S*H under the new port (2410), which was encoded by being written in big ascii art letters using only 0 and 1 as symbols, and then split into 19-character lines. scoob required only the first of the hints (No math is required. 0 and 1 could just as well be "x" and "@")