201405051316 24sf75

Status: solved (the community's 2014 reading, checked here against the grid). The text comes from the grid; how the pieces join up is a hand-made fit, as explained below.

The post decodes from hexadecimal to plain text, with no cipher. The text is a grid in which every cell starts with #: an empty cell is # and a filled cell is #X. The row labels are cells too. Read that way, the post is:

• a ruler: a bare 0, then the cells 1234567890123456789012345;
• a top block of 12 rows, each a row label (a bare 1 in the first row, a label cell in the rest) and 24 cells;
• a row of 13 label cells, 3456789012345, the labels for rows 13 to 25;
• a bottom block of 338 cells, which is 13 rows of 26.

The top block, with · for an empty cell:

    123456789012345678901234
 1  ················-·······
 2  ··IT············/·····3·
 3  ···.···-·M······u·····5·
 4  ·······/·A······/·T···B·
 5  ·····T·u·N······w·R···3·
 6  H····I·/·3······i·Y···E·
 7  ··H··M·a·YN·····s·····8·
 8  ··A··3·u··O·····h···-·6·
 9  3·V····g········i···/·F·
10  ··3····e······W·w·M·u·D·
11  L······n······3·a·O·/·3·
12  L······w··S·-·A·s·R·e·A·

Read down the columns, skipping the empty cells, 13 columns hold text:

The bottom block, read across:

13  ················0········K
14  .·························
15  ············B33N··SIL3Nona
16  catamaran·················
17  ·····················3.···
18  ·······2···SP3AK.·········
19  ···················athed··
20  ·····iehimmel-············
21  ·················4EEE2B6C9
22  989PUZZL3.·············A85
23  8·OLUTION.················
24  ··························
25  /u/fragglet···············

The top block starts each phrase and the bottom block finishes it. 3 stands for E throughout (B33N, SP3AK, PUZZL3), 0 for O in H3LL0, and 2 for "to":

Put together, this is the reading the Solving_A858 community posted in May 2014:

Hello. I have been silent. Time to speak. -/u/augenwiehimmel Maney (?) No solution. -/u/fragglet Weak puzzle. -/u/wishiwasonacatamaran Try more. -/u/eathed 35B3E86FD3A4EEE2B6C9989 -A858

The "(?)" is the community's own mark of doubt about "Maney", not part of the grid. augenwiehimmel, fragglet, wishiwasonacatamaran and eathed were regulars on r/Solving_A858; the message gives each of them a short verdict. Asked about "Maney" in the AMA a year later, w95 answered: "We can't provide solutions. We don't make mistakes."

What the grid fixes, and what it doesn't. Every piece in the table comes from the grid, and every piece is used exactly once. The reading matches the community's letter for letter (taking 3 as E, 0 as O and 2 as "to"), and its dashes and full stops fall in the same places. The hex string 35B3E86FD3A4EEE2B6C9989 is 23 characters: column 23 of the top block followed by the run 4EEE2B6C9989 in the bottom block.

But the layout doesn't say which bottom piece belongs to which top column. The top columns happen to be in the phrases' order, and the bottom pieces are matched to them by the words they complete. Their positions give no rule: the 0 and the . of "Hello." are in different rows, and the K of "Weak" is in the same row as that 0. The bottom pieces are also not used in the order they appear: the - before the hex sits between iehimmel and 4EEE2B6C9989 in the grid, and A858 comes much later. So the grid shows that the pieces fit the community's text, but it doesn't rebuild the text on its own. Another reader could join the pieces differently and still use every one.

What the hex string means is not known. Tried as a key on every post, directly and through the password recipes the other posts use, it opens none of them.

The next day's post, 24tmeo, is a word search with another message to the solvers.