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| mortality |
Updated cleartext for 0702
corrections based on Ethan's email: unsolved in (); suggested corrections in []; comments in {}
RUCE might be Czech for "hands" or "arms" PONT could be "bridge" in French but I think it's more likely either a character is missing or the symbol represented the digraph OI. It might help to create and upload an image of a legend for the English characters you substituted for the original symbols. Or hand draw and photograph one.  Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 8:17 am |
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| Andh |
This is the reply I got from Ethan:
(I replaced "-" with "->" in the email I sent to him.)
EDIT: This is what we have:
Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 7:51 am |
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| mortality |
The # was not a #
Another thought for that clue: maybe it's meant to direct us to Ezra Pound's poetry.
Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 3:32 am |
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| surfzoned |
Kings
The MSG3 keeps bringing to mind a few things.
King of men or A rise to power (ascension). Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 1:58 am |
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| mortality |
Summary of thoughts on MSG1 and MSG3
I don't have anything nearly as productive.
We still think MSG1, the X-file (too good to pass up, sorry) looks like a poem. Zizka probably has the right rhyme-scheme: ABABABBA. Line 5 and Line 8 may be the same word(s). Can't really determine the meaning of the underlines without plaintext. Maybe it indicates the number of words in the sentence? Letters per line; in parentheses, words per line based off of underlining/punctuation:
Maybe there's a well known poem that has that structure... As for cracking the code more directly: The most likely interpretation for "The # was not a #" is "pound sign" for the first blank and "number (sign)" for the second blank. We have 4 potential symbols and two possible symbol sets.
After some pondering, I think Surf's original analysis is correct and Set 1 is probably right. This would be supported by my interpretation of the # clue. If we have four symbols, I think we can immediately rule out that they delineate vowel consonant. As Surf suggested, one symbol, probably "X#", represents capitalization. If so, that symbol has 26 possibilities. Symbols 2, 3, and 4 would then represent the three types of lower case leters, ascenders (letters that extend above the median line, like "k"), descenders (letters that extend below the base line, like "g" ), and regular (letters that fit between the base and median lines, like "m"). (Cf. typeface if you want a more detailed explanation.) The possible letter sets:
I haven't figured out which set belongs to which symbol. I imagine we can determine which has the regular characters based on frequency analysis, assuming the most common symbol probably stands for group 2. 2 reasons: 1, it has the most characters; 2, it has the most common letter, "e." One other possible assumption is that since "X-x" appears only twice, it represents set 4. Possibilities and symbol frequency:
Even assuming we can figure out the right groupings, I'm not sure how to identify exact letters. Spacing would be determined after we find all the letters and could see likely wordbreaks based on something other than punctuation. Random thoughts on MSG3: I see three possible ways to solve the puzzle. 1) The difficult: If William Wallace refers to the 19th century mathematician, then Simson Lines drawn between Enlil and Ahasuerus may be the key. I imagine "W. Wallace" would be made moot since it's just a clue as to how to use the other two words. 2) The outlandish: Maybe it's another book code? Ahasuerus refers to a number of different people, most having to do with the Old Testament. The most famous is that he's the foolish King Ahasuerus from the Book of Esther. So that would be a book. We'd then need something representing chapter and verse or chapter and word. It's MSG3 and has a triangle, so maybe it's chapter 3, "King Haman's Plot To Destroy The Jews" (well, isn't that morbid?). Word or verse...well, 23 letters total. Or maybe it's 14 if we exclude Ahasuerus since it was the clue to the book. In order of usefulness, least to most: Verse 23: (No 23rd verse...that was easy) Word 23: "all" (kinda worthless) Word 14: "Agagite" (...an "ethnonym" designating Haman's ethnicity. Maybe the Persian town of Agag?) Verse 14: The copy of the writing for a commandment to be given in every province was published unto all people, that they should be ready against that day. (Readiness?) Yeah, it's a reach. 3) The complicated: what are the logical connections among a Biblical king of Babylon/Persia, a Sumerian god who rules Earth, and a Scottish hero or English mathematician? Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 1:46 am |
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| surfzoned |
 WOW!!!!!!
Andh great work!
please email Ethan with your incredible find. From the context of the passage I think the symbols on the upper right side might be phases of the moon. As Yoda said "Code breakers now you are!" 
mail from Ethan
I sent back to him
I think the symbols on the side are moon phases (I sent a mail to Ethan about this idea and he agreed.) Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 5:28 pm |
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| Andh |
Based on surfzoned's first set or letters and casablanca's lead, I managed to get this:
Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 3:17 pm |
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| surfzoned |
Ty casa!
Very good lead there.. Bravo...
We'll make codebreakers out of you yet =D Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 12:34 am |
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| casablanca |
May have found a clue!!
OK, I didn't want to admit this but it never even occurred to me to replace the symbols with letters and punctuation to make it easier to manipulate.  That made me realize that I should probably do some basic reading before I make a (bigger) fool of myself. So I checked wikipedia for substitution ciphers (great article, BTW) and part of the article includes this
That sounded like a good thing to look for and I thought I would google for other unique letter patterns to check for, but before I even did that I looked back at Surfzoned's post and since the first five characters are the same for the first three lines that second line just jumped right out at me. Especially since I think Surfzoned has already applied some frequency analysis and thinks that the A may be an A. After reading the chat transcript from the other night, this seemed like the kind of little clue these guys might include with the puzzle. Anyway, just wanted to post that right away in case it actually turns out to help. Going to go use that tool Surfzoned mentioned to see what this does to the rest of the message. I hope I can figure out how to use it!   Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 12:25 am |
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| surfzoned |
Beer with me!
The header is not a typo. You will need a drink if you plan on understanding this stuff!
What I did was count up how many times a symbol appeared. Then I wrote that symbol and it's total on scratch paper. RINSE->REPEAT... until you have a a list of ALL symbols with the total times they appeared on your scratch paper.. [Skip this part because I did it for you. /bows...] Next compare the totals to a letter frequency chart. Then start replacing symbols with letters based on how often they are seen in the cipher. [Again, I already did it, no point in repeating my headache!] (after you have used all the letters in the English language start using punctuation marks to replace symbols.) What we finally get is gibberish but its gibberish that we can at least manipulate.
Now we can start working on it. There is an amazing tool http://www.purplehell.com/riddletools/applets/cryptogram.htm; you will need java to use it. I personally find the auto-solve function useless. However, with the edit checkbox enabled you can edit our ciphertext. More importantly when nothing is checked you can put your cursor right in front of a letter and type a new letter to replace it. When you do this the applet will replace the old letter with the new one. The amazing part is it replaces all the old instances of the letter you just typed with whatever letter you typed over. Try the tool and you will understand my mumblings pretty quickly. Then you get to do what I've been doing. Which is changing letters around based on how frequently they occur and based on how English linguistics works. Right this second the permutation that I'm working with is
If you're feeling courageous or suicidal then a good place to read up on what letter combinations are the most common in the English language go to http://www.umich.edu/~umich/fm-34-40-2/. Some of the appendixes have a ton of examples of common di-,tri- and tetra- graphs. (thats 2, 3 & 4 letter combinations) Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 9:52 pm |
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| casablanca |
Taking a breather from 0702
Surfzoned, Please do! I've been trying my hand at 0702, and not really getting anywhere. I would love to not try the same things that you have already tried.   Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 7:58 pm |
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| surfzoned |
FA
The best I can do with frequency analysis isn't good enough to bring anything concrete out in plain text.. There is some rule governing the cipher. If someone else wants to take a crack at it be my guest...
/me takes aspirin and writes a story to pass the time Posting my work so far later today! Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 1:04 am |
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| wkelly42 |
This thing reminds me of the Pigpen cipher a bit. (http://www.braingle.com/brainteasers/codes/pigpen.php) I don't have the time tonight (probably not tomorrow either, unfortunately), so maybe someone can take a look at that possibility -- could be a modified version or something.
Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 8:10 pm |
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| petunia |
Zizka, I don't think you have to worry about us figuring this one out too fast.
Here's what I've got so far. The letter or whatever it is has 8 sections with a total of 16 lines, using 31 characters (I know I said 32 before - I changed my mind, 'kay?) for a total of 310 characters. Actually, very few of them appear to be exact matches for letters in either the Greek or Phoenician alphabets (just going from the Wikipedia entries for each). The most common letters: upside-down A triangle (Gr. Delta) backwards D y with a horizontal tail, or weird z capital I a horizontal line through the middle dot -| The least common (these only show up once): A triangle w/ a dot in the middle square A on its left side, or weird K (Ph. Aleph) O w/ a | through the bottom O w/ a dot in the middle shepherd's crook w/ a horizontal line through the middle Patterns: A few letters show up doubled: upside-down A O with a vertical line through the top backwards D - shows up SIX TIMES!!! and in two of those times, there is a 6-letter pattern (it's in sections 7 & 8, with the DD in the middle of the pattern). Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 7:09 pm |
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| zizka |
Re: In reply
That's basically the idea I had, with a few embellishments, but near enough that I'd say we're on the same page, if not the same paragraph. Raised would be a letter like "b" or "d" or "l" that is 'tall,' as opposed to "a" or "w" that comes up to the middle of the line. Dropped would be 'tailed' letters like "g" "p" "q" that fall below the bottom of the line. I might add, I think it's pretty remote that this tree be the right one. This new puzzle looks seck-seeee. can't believe I missed it until now.  Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 4:43 pm |
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