Teen develops method to prove digital puzzle solved without revealing answer

Think of a situation where you are working on a challenging puzzle when someone asks you to demonstrate that you’ve solved it, but you can’t show them your work. That sounds like near impossibility. But for 18-year-old Celine Zhang of Princeton, New Jersey, that challenge became the foundation for an innovative computer science project: building a better robot. According to a report by Society for Science, Zhang’s computer science project at the Regeneron Science Talent Search was based on a mathematical idea called zero-knowledge proofs. These are techniques that allow a person to prove to someone else that they know something without revealing the knowledge, mentions the report. Zhang realized the idea in puzzle games with a moving avatar that fuses blocks. Her method allows a player who has solved a puzzle to prove that they know the solution without just giving it away to another player.