It's not as hard as you think, and the clues are there. Nice kata.

Any more hints, please?

No, I don't know that "old saying". And google doesn't know it, either. And I disagree with it.

I can't make a good and fair judgement of it yet. Did I say I can?

It's like Dr Phil said, I have no way of knowing whether I'm even making any progress or going in any right direction. I don't know whether it's possible for me to solve without happening to have certain knowledge, I don't know whether the background story details are hints, I don't know whether the "obfuscation" even is a function or whether it's injective... I have a feeling much could be clarified and preventing me from wasting my time, without spoonfeeding me the solution or even giving me hints.

Well, but you know the old saying: "everything I can't solve is 8dan". If you don't know what the key point of a kata is, how can you make a good and fair judgement on the kata itself?

(I don't like the whole attitude about this because it gives the wrong impression to newbies that katas should spoonfeed them, and if they're stuck they're entitled to think that it's kata's fault. This happens very often on, again, white/yellow katas (which brings misinformation and annoyance to almost everyone with a functioning brain) and I don't what this to infect the blue/purple katas too. I'm okay with people asking genuine questions about katas, but if they're trying to imply the kata has fault for not spoonfeeding them enough, I have huge problems with that.)

I don't want to forfeit. And I don't understand that white/yellow argument. I've looked into that other one before and while I haven't cracked it yet, it at least seems doable. This one here, especially after your "if you have experience on a very specific, particular matter" "hint", I don't even know whether it's possible for me to solve it. Maybe it's about some game or whatever that I don't happen to know, with arbitrary rules that I can't possibly guess.

Or you know, you can always forfeit the kata ;-)

If everyone's behaving like this ("this kata's unapproachable, so it must suck and the author should feel bad"), all we're going to have are white and yellow katas that everyone even with a dead brain can solve effortlessly. Are you sure that's a good thing?

(Also, in case you aren't aware already, there's https://www.codewars.com/kata/mystery-function-number-2. Have fun on that ;-))

Yeah, the main reason I'm still trying to solve this is that I want to rate it poorly...

This is incredibly easy if you have experience on a very specific, particular matter.

If not, yes, it's gonna be very tough ;-)

So Joe is going to pay me $20 to NOT solve this problem?
I'll take the money please.