What is this about?

There is a blog page about it: The Synacor Challenge.

The original Synacor Challenge web site is apparently gone for good. There is a cached copy at archive.org though!

What about the material here?

I found out about Aneurysm9’s repository; basically, a gentle soul that had already solved the challenge and validated the codes put their puzzle inputs (specification and binary) in a repo, along with the solution codes (well, not directly the solution codes but their MD5 hashes, which is equivalent for the purpose of solution validation).

The two downloadable files available here come directly from that repository.

Who should I thank?

The original author Eric Wastl (of Advent of Code fame) and Aneurysm9.

What if I already have my personalized material?

My suggestion is to go with the material above first, just to make sure that you get all solutions in the right way. After that, you can re-apply your solution ideas to your specific input, which might still require some tinkering.

Hints?

Some notes have been collected in the wiki. You can safely land on that page without worrying about spoilers; from that page you can then jump to code-specific pages where you will eventually get them!

Page credits

Credits for assets used in this page.

Synacor Challenge assets

I can only assume that the challenge binary and architecture specifications belong to Synacor. The specific material in this page is from Aneurysm9’s repository.

Font

The FontStruction “Inter Revision Version A Scanlines” (https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/2553978) by Null Error is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).

“Inter Revision Version A Scanlines” was originally cloned (copied) from the FontStruction “Inter Revision Version A” (https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/2553813) by Null Error, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).