Ready Gladiator 2

Published: April 26, 2023Updated: December 9, 2025

Description

For the final duel you must win every single round. Only elite CoreWars strategies such as Herem/Scimitar consistently stomp the Imp.

Craft or copy a warrior with a 100% win rate versus the Imp (Herem/Scimitar is a reliable bomber).

Pipe the warrior into nc saturn.picoctf.net 54217 and ensure it records 100 wins.

cat <<'RED' > imp.red ;redcode-94 ;name Herem/Scimitar ;author aCa ;strategy bomber tuned versus the Imp bomb dat #4, #4 start add.ab #4, bomb mov.i bomb, @bomb jmp start end start RED
nc saturn.picoctf.net 54217 < imp.red

Solution

  1. Step 1Use a bomber strategy
    Herem/Scimitar walks memory and overwrites the Imp’s process every cycle, guaranteeing victory. Any equally dominant warrior is fine.
  2. Step 2Verify 100 wins
    Wait for the scoreboard to report 100/100 wins; the service then prints the final flag.

Flag

picoCTF{d3m0n_3xpu...24e}

Consistency is key-choose a warrior with deterministic wins rather than probabilistic ones.