Overview
Three Goldbug challenges were tested under open-web, leak-blocked, and hint-blocked conditions. The separate Minerva Lux swarm used solstice-alpha with high reasoning across all 15 puzzles; dedicated follow-up swarms now use solstice-alpha with xhigh reasoning on the two unresolved targets.
Goldbug puzzle gallery
Original challenge assets and the outcome of each valid solving run.
Dress 1 solved · 1 unsolved
Lace strips, knots, colored beads, and an encoded dress message. Solved with an official organizer clue; the separate hint-blind run failed.
Accepted answer: INCONSISTENTKNOTS
Cubes 3 solved · 0 unsolved
Colored puzzle cubes whose hidden faces and perspective reveal letters. Three clean solves. Every successful route eventually used an official clue.
Accepted answer: LACKOFDUST
Ducks 0 solved · 1 unsolved
Seven duck drawings with embedded cryptographic or steganographic details. The valid leak-blocked run stopped without solving after 102 guesses.
Result: Never solved.
Verified Goldbug run timeline
Black denotes an accepted solution; gray denotes an unsolved run.
All run results
| Run | Judge result | Hints | Duration | Tokens | Guesses |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cubes Open web | Solved | Official clue | 2h 02m | 67.7M† | 5 |
| Ducks Blocked leaks | Unsolved | Public clues | 6h 07m | 146.9M‡ | 102 |
| Dress Blocked leaks | Solved | Official clue | 1h 19m | 7.98M† | 2 |
| Cubes Blocked leaks | Solved | Official clue | 2h 33m | — | 7 |
| Cubes Hints blocked | Solved | Injected later | 5h 25m | 2.45B‡ | 6 |
| Dress Hints blocked | Unsolved | Injected, unused | 4h 19m | 1.69B‡ | 20 |
| Minerva Lux 15-puzzle swarm | 10/15 solved | Unrestricted | 28h 18m | 36.86B | 191 |
| Puzzle 4 Focused continuation | Running | Prior research | 46m | 889.3M | 34 |
| Puzzle 5 Focused continuation | Running | Prior research | 46m | 951.7M | 93 |
† Main-agent tokens only. ‡ Partial swarm accounting. — No token counter survived. Focused-run durations describe the current xhigh continuation; their token totals include earlier activity.
Minerva Lux puzzle outcomes
Every row shows the actual source artwork, judge-verified answer when solved, required answer length, and submission count from the completed 15-puzzle swarm.
| Artwork | Puzzle | Judge result | Accepted answer | Attempts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Puzzle 1 24 characters | Solved | control alternate delete | 2 |
 | Puzzle 2 9 characters | Solved | 146511208 | 3 |
 | Puzzle 3 9 characters | Solved | 232792560 | 7 |
 | Puzzle 4 9 characters | Unsolved Focused run active | — | 34 |
 | Puzzle 5 15 characters | Unsolved Focused run active | — | 53 |
 | Puzzle 6 52 characters | Solved | the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts | 2 |
 | Puzzle 7 31 characters | Unsolved | — | 4 |
 | Puzzle 8 48 characters | Solved | let the flood come and wash away the work of man | 2 |
 | Puzzle 9 11 characters | Unsolved | — | 40 |
 | Puzzle 10 11 characters | Solved | oppositorum | 3 |
 | Puzzle 11 14 characters | Solved | a digital rain | 3 |
 | Puzzle 12 19 characters | Solved | find form from flux | 3 |
 | Puzzle 13 22 characters | Solved | walk like an eggyptian | 4 |
 | Puzzle 14 28 characters | Solved | a water drop hollows a stone | 1 |
 | Puzzle 15 20 characters | Unsolved | — | 30 |
Dedicated Puzzle 4 and Puzzle 5 investigations
Each continuation has its own isolated solving container, judge, audit trail, token counter, and optional agent swarm. Dashboard snapshots are embedded instead of linking to private infrastructure.
Puzzle 4 Running
- Configuration
- solstice-alpha · xhigh reasoning
- Fresh attempts
- 34 new · 33 inherited rejections
- Observed tokens
- 889,295,141 across 259 sessions
- Latest candidate
363050040· incorrect- Current segment
- 46m since the xhigh restart; cumulative token totals include the earlier paused segment.
Puzzle 5 Running
- Configuration
- solstice-alpha · xhigh reasoning
- Fresh attempts
- 93 new · 61 inherited rejections
- Observed tokens
- 951,717,192 across 311 sessions
- Latest candidate
RESISTOR BRIDGE· incorrect- Current segment
- 46m since the xhigh restart; cumulative token totals include the earlier paused segment.
Run notes and methodology
- Cubes · Open web: Used the allowed organizer perspective clue and derived letters from solved cube fronts and undersides.
- Ducks · Blocked leaks: No forbidden source observed. Submitted 102 candidates and stopped without solving.
- Dress · Blocked leaks: Used the allowed organizer clue about U-110 and June 1941, reconstructed the dress cipher, and solved on the second submission.
- Cubes · Blocked leaks: Used allowed organizer clues and correctly decoded LACK / OF / DUST. The process reported failure after the judge had accepted the answer.
- Cubes · Hints blocked: Initially hint-blind. Official clues were injected at 01:54 UTC; the resumed swarm solved at 03:07 UTC. Its saved result incorrectly remains unsolved.
- Dress · Hints blocked: Hint-blind for most of the run. A hint file arrived seven minutes before failure, with no evidence that the solver read it.
- Minerva Lux · 15-puzzle swarm: Original swarm completed with 10 judge-confirmed solutions. Its saved summary reported 10 and cannot be treated as authoritative.
- Puzzle 4 · Focused continuation: Dedicated single-puzzle xhigh-reasoning swarm. Inherited 33 historical rejections and has made 34 new attempts.
- Puzzle 5 · Focused continuation: Dedicated single-puzzle xhigh-reasoning swarm. Inherited 61 historical rejections and has made 93 new attempts.
- Outcome source
- Persisted local judge ledgers; accepted answers override stopped, failed, or stale process summaries.
- Hint interpretation
- Official organizer clues count as hints. Injected clues are distinguished from clues never read.
- Token accounting
- At least 43,060,898,186 observed tokens; early main-only and partial counters mean the true total is higher.
- Audit data
- 92.4 GB of persisted event logs across included runs, measured at capture time.
- Included runs
- Only valid benchmark runs with a functioning environment and trustworthy solving conditions.