Geek challenge

Ok, so people on here are generally pretty smart yer? Well give this gives go:

http://www.mythic-beasts.com/cgi-bin/job.pl

Simple eh? Provide it, it took me 2 hrs to do! Please don't post the solution or any hints.

When you do it you'll get further instructions, don't forget to tell them who sent you it either!

Let's see how many smart people we have

I've just spent 45 minutes on this (and still haven't succeeded in solving it) and it's doing my head in... ;)

I might try again tomorrow when I am more awake...

I can do it, but apparently I'm not fast enough!

I thought someone might have done it by now!

I'm not fast enough to get past first damn question...

How are people getting on? Anyone done it yet? Or is the day still young?

Wow! Got the first question wrong. Spent about 4-5 minutes working out the next question and "not fast enough". So I was doing this with a pen and paper - is using a calculator cheating because it's the only way I'm gonna be any faster given the size of some of those numbers!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by tmcd35

Wow! Got the first question wrong. Spent about 4-5 minutes working out the next question and "not fast enough". So I was doing this with a pen and paper - is using a calculator cheating because it's the only way I'm gonna be any faster given the size of some of those numbers!

---

I've not done it, not fast enough. I don't think a calculator is going to help though.

You can use any tool at your disposal

I'm not fast enough either :-( It's frustrating. I don't think it is cheating to use a calculator as some of the figures are pretty intimidating.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by matt40k

You can use any tool at your disposal

---

Well the last one was about 10sec with a calculator and still not fast enough!?!?!

I'm not bloody well Rainman you know ;)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by tmcd35

Well the last one was about 10sec with a calculator and still not fast enough!?!?!

I'm not bloody well Rainman you know ;)

---

Hmm even a quick cut a paste with excel taking a couple of secs isn't quick enough so there's something else going on here?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by tmcd35

Well the last one was about 10sec with a calculator and still not fast enough!?!?!

I'm not bloody well Rainman you know ;)

---

I think there is more to the question than meets the eye, but so far my attempts have failed. Having looked into the domain owners I'm following a different line of reasoning, but I am still too slow to provide an answer which suggests to me that the calculation is either irrelevant or must needs be copy/pasted in some way and the answer lies in syntax rather than resultant value...

But these are speculations, as at present I am still unable to solve this.

Yeah, I had a simple subtraction one, and did it within about 2 seconds yet still not fast enough.