Solution: Interlude: Computer Science

Answer: BUGS

Written by Jonah Ostroff

This interlude helpfully just tells us that the answer is BUGS! But when we try to enter it, we find that there are some bugs in the system: we just get the message “Sorry, UUSG is incorrect.” The goal of this puzzle is to figure out how the system is transforming the answer, and then enter the correct string of letters to produce BUGS.

With some experimentation, we can learn that the output is the following: if the first letter is the Nth letter of the alphabet, write the second letter N times. Then write the remaining letters in reverse order. For example, if the input is EXAMPLE, then since E is the 5th letter of the alphabet, the output is 5 Xs followed by “AMPLE” in reverse, i.e. XXXXXELPMA.

To produce BUGS, we need one B, followed by SGU in reverse, so the only valid input is ABSGU. Entering this into the answer checker tells us that, yes, BUGS is correct!