Encrypted Kart-Racing Solution

How It Works

The left column is valid ASCII - converting to letters yields "Base 2 XOR Mask", which told teams to convert the numbers along the left to (8-digit) binary and use them as an XOR Mask with the numbers to the right of them (XOR masking means that you XOR the digits together - if both are 0 or both are 1, then the result is a 0. If one is a 1 and the other is a 0, then the result is a 1).

Once that was done, you get the following grid:

1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0

The 8x12 dimensions of this grid were a clue that this was actually encoded in Braille. Treating the "1"s as dots and the "0"s as blanks and reading across, teams got the intermediate answer, Kart Password Zoom.

Walking back to the Go-Kart track at the back of the Family Fun Center, a staff member was waiting for the password, at which point they informed the teams that the rest of the data they needed was along the Kart track. Driving along the track, teams would see thirteen signs. The first said, "Use previous solution mask with this overlay, then read down each column," and the rest were a series of numbers as follows:

169 162 216 182 126 95 107 144 216 213 63 150

All that remained was the follow the instructions. First, repeat the mask operation with these numbers and the grid that was the result of the first step, to yield the following:

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0

Finally, teams needed to figure out how to read down each column. "Each" is an important word, meaning that letters are self-contained to columns, which was supposed to dissuade teams from thinking Braille again. The best hook here is that the first row and the seventh row are both all zeroes - this conveniently leaves two sets of 5 useful bits, and 5 bit binary is a standard way to encode letters (since you can get 1-31 with 5 bits, which is enough to get all of the letters).

Solution

Reading down each column, teams could get two letters per column out of these two sets of useful bits, which ended up spelling the solution, Showroom PW Sulfur, meaning that teams should return to the showroom with the password sulfur.