Sometimes Math is Fun
Working on puzzles is good for your brain. Blockchain puzzles are good for your brain, your ego, and your wallet. Why? Because if you figure it out first, there is usually a prize in the form of crypto currency and/or NFT’s.
For the past 3 years Swiss creator and collector Nicolas Sierro has crafted a puzzle for followers of his Twitter account and members of his Telegram channel. The puzzles are very challenging because the questions are presented in the form of elements of the periodic table. Nicolas started a project on the Counterparty meta-protocol which runs on the Bitcoin blockchain called the AtOMo Collection in 2017. There he tokenized every element and attached a GIF to each with 3 frames of data. The image used for his Sodium token is pictured below.
The Puzzles
2024
On January 2024 in the AtOMo Telegram chat room a message from Nicolas appeared along with an image:
“GM. Happy He Li Na V! Why (how) ‘He Li Na V’ references 2024?
Quickly, a member of the room and very smart individual — netidx posted “This is a hard one -.- Tried element number in periodic table/collection, issuance/supply, blocks etc but no dice :/ Also tried discovery dates as input for the riddle…”
Shortly after that, the creator of the first blockchain mobile game Spells of Genesis and Nicolas’ former employer Shaban Shaame joined the chat. His first guess was “feliz navidad”
The response from Nicolas was “The song title is partially using “He Li Na V’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feliz_Navidad_%28song%29. Great that you noticed the common parts, but the answer is really for ‘2024’”
After 24 hours, clue #1 was given in the form of another image
And 20 minutes later, Shaban solved it:
Write the element numbers in order: 231123
Use the numbers in the presented order to write a formula for which the sum is 2024: 2^³ *11* 23 = 2024.
His prize was 1 each of the Counterparty tokens LATOMOHE, LATOMOLI, LATOMONA, and LATOMOV (the images used as the clue).
If you’re new to Counterparty, or NFT’s in general what this means is that these tokens with their attached images were transferred out of one wallet and into another. This can be verified by anyone by viewing transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. They are now owned by Shaban and they are his to do with as he wishes. He can simply enjoy them, gift them away, sell them, trade them, or even destroy them permanently.
Shaban’s response was, “thanks for this little game. I had good fun! And thanks for these historical nfts.”
2025
On January 5, 2025 Nicolas presented the chatroom with the question “Why (how) ‘LiBeBHE’ references 2025?”
Room member Duncan was first to guess. He said, “Each element represents each planet” and posted the following link.
Nicolas’ response was “Cool, but unfortunately no: there is no relation between Venus/Saturn/Jupiter/Mars and Helium/Lithium/Beryllium/Boron.”
Soon after, I invited fellow puzzle enthusiast and all around amazing human being Jolly Rabbit to the room to take a crack at it. Jolly is a programmer and being that the puzzle involved elements, she quickly enlisted the help of her sister who works in the field of chemistry.
Later that day she returned with the solution.
Write the element numbers in order: 3452
Use the numbers in the presented order to write a formula for which the sum is 2025: 3⁴ * 5² = 2025.
Her prize was 1 each of the Counterparty tokens LATOMOLI, LATOMOBE, LATOMOB and LATOMOHE.
Jolly’s response was, “Happy LiBeBHe to all 🐸✨ Thank you for so so much fun! I will share my loot with my lil sis — she is a chemistry nerd and already requests Li 🔥🔥🔥 My chance to open first wallet with her — I will teach her 🙏🪽 Ty @NicolasSierro for creating BIG FUN!
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Duncan came back with, “Lol. Gemini couldn’t figure it out either. I forgot about power operations🤦♂”
2026
On January 20, 2026 puzzle #3 was presented with a caveat. “This year I had to make it GenAI resistant. Asking these LLMs will not be sufficient.” So, the concept is the same: If you win, you get the NFTs of the enigma. This year: 8 AtOMo.
Here we are: “How can you have 2026 with these 8 AtOMo NFTS : N F Mg K As Y I Lv ?”
Room member Vasilis presented the first guess. “By using the atomic number of the elements in an equation, I ended up with 2026”
Duncan commented, “116 is not needed for the equation to succeed” to which Vasilis replied, “I have to include Lv somewhere…”
About the guess, Nicolas had this to say, “Indeed with the atomic numbers you can have several equations,
- Gemini found : (20 ×((11 × 9) + 25 + 12 − 22 − 14)) + 13 + 7 + 6
- Manus found : (((6 − 12) + 22) − (25 − ((9 − 14) + ((11 + (13 × 7)) × 20))))
But, as it is today too easy with these tools, 1 direct equation from atomic numbers is not ok this year.”
A few comments were then given: “as of toady, the hint is small & weak: Something different.” “Aligned with one of the core AtOMo concept.” “You need to use all 8 elements and only once.”
On January 22nd the first real clue was given: “there are several steps and the last one is only about numbers.”
Duncan suggested that the answer was by creating a formula from each of the elements’ neutron counts.
Nicolas was impressed. “So K [Potassium] & Lv [Livermorium] could have different numbers of neutrons, but you took correctly for each the one of the main common isotope. It’s not what I used to construct the enigma, but your is elegant, especially as it keeps the sequence numbers of the 8 elements. It should be rewarded. So for now there will be 2 distributions of the 8 NFTs: 1 for you (Duncan). And 1 with a bonus NFT for the one finding my enigma.” Duncan was most pleased.
This solution made Nicolas wonder if there was a solution with the numbers of protons too. I responded with the following, “Yes, there is. But I still want to solve it the way you intended it to be solved.”
On January 29th, Jolly came in with a question. “Do you think that the information needed to solve this puzzle is included inside the jsons?” I had read through the json file for the entire AtOMo collection and it was the most complex I had seen. I put it into table format and shared it with Jolly which is why we were going down that path. Nicolas put that theory to rest by responding, “No, nothing from the JSONs.”
On February 1st the group received clue #2 in the form of an image:
By performing a quick Google search, I learned that GAFAM is a known acronym for Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft. How this was meant to help in solving the puzzle still escaped me.
On February 17th, the puzzle was still unsolved so Nicolas gave the group clue #3: “It’s the G of GaFAm”
This was the clue that made it “click” for me. I knew that Google’s parent company is called Alphabet so I converted the eight given elements into their corresponding positions in the English alphabet. This technique is known as the A1Z26 cipher.
This is the result:
N=14, F=6, Mg = 13+7 (20), K = 11, As = 1+19 (20), Y = 25, I =9, Lv = 12 + 22 (34) or 14, 6, 20, 11, 20, 25, 9, 34.
If this puzzle were similar to the prior 2, the next step would be to create a formula using those numbers that would equal 2026. I could not do this step myself so I enlisted the help of ChatGPT. It produced the following (complex) formula:
14+6+(20+(11+20*25)/9)*34=2026
I then checked the result:
20*25=500
11 + 500 = 511
20 + 511 = 531
531 ÷ 9 = 59
59 * 34 = 2006
14 + 6 + 2006 = 2026
I posted all of this in the Telegram room with the “spoiler” text format on (which only shows the text if you click on it).
On February 22nd Nicolas confirmed that I was correct! “@subterranean1 Yes, the way was to get the alphabet number of each letter and then to build a formula”
Our formulas differed, but I was right about the method. And he said as much, “In fact I notice that by involving 8 AtOMo elements, every kind of way or interpretation to have numbers associated to the 8 elements (or 11 letters) will find a mathematical formula (and now easy with LLM to find the formula).”
For finding the solution, I was awarded 1 each of the 8 element NFT’s used in this years puzzle and the bonus NFT that Nicolas had promised earlier.
This was Jolly’s response to the solution, “this was such a fun puzzle, bonkers that the multi-step aspect makes it extra extra complex!!! I finally caved and read subterranean’s solution today 🙏 aaah it’s genius maths 🧮 and the alt solution by Duncan amazing too!
Thank you for sharing these puzzles and joys @NicolasSierro! Idk about everyone else but I’m slowly memorizing these proton numbers by heart.. you’re slowly turning us all into chemistry nerds 🧠🙂🔆”
Nerds indeed
And good news — Nicolas just posted this, “I had an epiphany for the potential enigma of next year, it won’t be obligatory related to the year (e.g. 2027) and so perhaps no more mathematical.”
About Nicolas
Nicolas is a pioneer and veteran in Information & Communications Technology with products & projects experience in marketing, technical and operation activities for startups. He is currently working part time for Privately SA as a Product & Project Manager. He is also self-employed at Blockchainizator which is his personal side project in the Blockchain content area — Creating, managing & promoting NFTs created since 2016 on Bitcoin Counterparty.
