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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): General/Updates
So, who's hosting the .torrent again?
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Nova
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Joined: 11 Aug 2004
Posts: 529
Location: Frog blasting the vent core
angelo wrote:
Nova wrote:
hmrpita wrote:
You are in a lot of trouble if your brain looks like that! Laughing


I think your brain only starts to look like that if you eat too many oatmeal cream pies...


If that's true, I'd be afraid to see what you're brain looks like after all those beans.


My brain is the least of your worries after that many beans, mate. Smile
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 20, 2004 5:28 pm
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krystyn
I Never Tire of My Own Voice


Joined: 26 Sep 2002
Posts: 3651
Location: Is not Chicago

 		Double kill!

PostPosted: Mon Dec 20, 2004 5:47 pm
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angelo
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Joined: 08 Sep 2004
Posts: 694
Nova wrote:
My brain is the least of your worries after that many beans, mate. Smile


That's probably true, friend... Good thing I live on an entirely seperate continent.
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 20, 2004 6:31 pm
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Shad0
I Have No Life


Joined: 20 Jun 2004
Posts: 2180
Location: Southern California, USA

 		Re: cookie monkey
hmrpita wrote:
A monkey and a cookie! Wheee! Two happy words that make a happy combination. Smile


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These were the puzzles that would take a day, these were puzzles that would take a week, and these puzzles they'd probably never figure out until we broke down and gave them the answers. ... The Cloudmakers solved all of these puzzles on the first day.

PostPosted: Mon Dec 20, 2004 7:41 pm
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angelo
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Joined: 08 Sep 2004
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 		Where did you find that?!?

That is Great! I need that for my avatar!
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 20, 2004 7:50 pm
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Gestas
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Joined: 21 Sep 2004
Posts: 92
Location: Mostly away in Real Life (TM) at present
thebruce wrote:
too...much...my head a-splode!

Seconded Smile

(Edited to remove request for the solution method to Phaedra's puzzle - I confess I am too lazy for my own good...Embarassed but sitting down with my notepad and the solutions Angelo and Shad0 posted, I worked it backwards Smile I still have little idea of how to go about guessing letters for a substitution cipher though. If only there was a program to do it all for me...)

One good thing though - one google search later, and I now know what oatmeal creme pies are Wink

PostPosted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 3:48 am
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angelo
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Joined: 08 Sep 2004
Posts: 694
Gestas wrote:
I still have little idea of how to go about guessing letters for a substitution cipher though. If only there was a program to do it all for me...)


It's a fairly simple process just takes some practice and some lucky guesses at times... I'd gladly explain how I figured out Phaedra's if you'd be interested.

Gestas wrote:

One good thing though - one google search later, and I now know what oatmeal creme pies are Wink


Oatmeal creme pies... Drool
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 11:00 am
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Phaedra
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Joined: 21 Sep 2004
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Gestas wrote:
(Edited to remove request for the solution method to Phaedra's puzzle - I confess I am too lazy for my own good...Embarassed but sitting down with my notepad and the solutions Angelo and Shad0 posted, I worked it backwards Smile I still have little idea of how to go about guessing letters for a substitution cipher though. If only there was a program to do it all for me...)


There's no program that will do it all, but then again, that would take the fun out of it.

There are, however, two very useful tools:

1. Charts of the frequencies with which each letter in the alphabet occurs in the English language; and

2. Programs that analyze how frequently each letter occurs in the ciphertext.

So, if your ciphertext is long enough, it's a good chance that the most frequently occurring letter is E. And so on. It's a good place to start.

Other than that, it's just a matter of "eyeballing" it: learning to recognize patterns of letters that occur frequently (-ing, -ed, etc.) knowing which letters are most likely to be doubled, knowing how often on average verbs are likely to be used and where, etc.

If it's short, you have to rely on eyeballing, since the sample isn't long enough for the frequencies to average out.

But no, while there's no program to do it all, there are tools. There are even programs that will run it through and spit out the most likely solutions. But using those for a game would be cheating. And how satisfied would you feel if all you had to do to solve it was run it through a program?
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 12:45 pm
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CoffeeJedi
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Joined: 27 Jul 2004
Posts: 1327
Location: Charlotte NC, USA
Phaedra wrote:

But no, while there's no program to do it all, there are tools. There are even programs that will run it through and spit out the most likely solutions. But using those for a game would be cheating. And how satisfied would you feel if all you had to do to solve it was run it through a program?

i took an advanced crypto class in college, our first day, within the first five minutes of class, the prof hands everyone a sheet of paper with seemingly random letters on it and says "your first assignment is to tell me what that says by friday", then proceeded with his lecture about basic cryptogrophy methods

in order to solve it, a friend and i devised a program just like that, a letter analyzer, and figured the key was "Lager" (the name of his dog, named so because of a resemblance to the color of our favorite local brew)

he gave us "no limits" as to how to arrive at the answer, so social engineering, and stealing from another team (or threatening it out of them, "rubber hose cryptography") were allowed (most of us just wrote an analyzer program though)



oh the paper? it was the course sylabus Smile
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 12:54 pm
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thebruce
Dances With Wikis


Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 6899
Location: Kitchener, Ontario

 		and how did you do on the project? Smile
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 2:24 pm
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Shad0
I Have No Life


Joined: 20 Jun 2004
Posts: 2180
Location: Southern California, USA

 		Re: Decrypting cryptograms
Phaedra wrote:
Vja qcfc csncphoyd uy jnag? Mccmcc. Gjffv, vja bagh dch u ponmcf.

Hmc Giccnoyd Nfoypcgg hmoyrg O gmjaie guv hmog:

Hmog og lv 777hm njgh. Nicugc gcye ncuyah xahhcf guyeqopmcg tjf lv upmockclcyh. Hmc cye.

Uphauiiv, hmjadm, O'e nfctcf ncuyah xahhcf *pjjrocg.*

Xv hmc quv, O *ej* ijkc vja uii. Vja ryjq hmuh, fodmh?

This is hardly a primer on how to decipher, but it's how I tackled it:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):
The single, capitalized letter O has to be I. So, substitute I for all of the Os in the cipher.

Next, we know this is about Phaedra's 777th post, and it contains the text "777hm." So, substitute T for H, and H for M. The next word is almost certainly "post" -- since it's a four-letter word ending in T -- but let's wait a bit.

Now, just about the most common three-letter word in the English language is "the," and we already know that H and M are really T and H. So I see a few occurrences of "hmc" in the code, and I substitute E for C.

Look at the second-to last word: "hmuh." Again, we know that H and M are really T and H, and the most common word -- in fact, the only word I can think of -- with the pattern TH-T is "that." So substitute A for U.

Take a look at that third paragraph now. Using capital letters for the letters we've already decrypted, we see: "THIg Ig lv 777TH njgT." Those first two words -- missing the same letter -- look like "THIS IS" to me. So substitute S for G. And now that the last word is "njST," I feel more comfortable deciding that it is "post." So substitute P for N, and O for J.

With that sentence now reading THIS IS lv 777TH POST," that "lv" has got to be "my." So substitute M for L, and Y for V.

Now, the very first word is "YOa." The most common word with the pattern YO- is "you," so I substitute U for A.

Next, look at the second paragraph. It begins: "THE SiEEPIyd PfIypESS ..." All three words are capitalized, which implies a name or title of some sort. Considering the context here, it looks an awful lot like "The Sleeping Princess" to me -- and the fact that Y would be N in both words just confirms it. So substitute N for Y; L for I; G for D; R for F; and C for P.

Now it's all coming together. Looking at the rest of that sentence, we see: "... THIN-S I SHOUL- SAY THIS:" That looks like "thinks I should say this," so I substitute K for R and D for E.

In the next paragraph, we now see: "PEANUT -UTTER SAND-ICHES." So substitute B for X and W for Q.

In the paragraph after that, we see: "I'D PRE-ER PEANUT BUTTER *COOKIES*." So substitute F for T.

Next paragraph: "BY THE WAY, I *DO* LO-E YOU ALL." Substitute V for K, and grin like an idiot. Very Happy

We're running out of possible letters. First paragraph: "YOU WERE E-PECTING AN OPUS?" Substitute X for S. "SORRY, YOU -UST GET A CIPHER." Theoretically that word could be "must" -- but we already know that L is M, and there can't be two letters that decrypt to M. So substitute J for B.

Ta-da!

Incidentally, this site has a very nice applet for making automatic letter substitutions in cryptograms, if you don't like doing it by hand. In pencil. So you can erase your mistakes. And keep the original untouched.
_________________
These were the puzzles that would take a day, these were puzzles that would take a week, and these puzzles they'd probably never figure out until we broke down and gave them the answers. ... The Cloudmakers solved all of these puzzles on the first day.

PostPosted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 3:29 pm
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CoffeeJedi
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Joined: 27 Jul 2004
Posts: 1327
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thebruce wrote:
and how did you do on the project? Smile

we got it solved by tuesday night iirc, i think it was just a little 10 point thing

it was an advanced 400 level elective class, so if you showed up and engaged the prof and your fellow classmates in discussion, and participated in the group projects, you got basically got an A (i think there was a midterm, but Dr. Ross decided a final wasn't neccesary, as we knew the material)
it was a really enjoyable course
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 3:38 pm
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thebruce
Dances With Wikis


Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 6899
Location: Kitchener, Ontario

 		Re: Decrypting cryptograms
Shad0 wrote:
This is hardly a primer on how to decipher, but it's how I tackled it:

Ta-da!


hehe, sounds like you used magic by that quote Smile

Yeah, your description is pretty much exactly how I go about simple cyphers too... I love those puzzles you find in magazines and 'puzzles for the mind' type books... when I was a kid, my favourite kind of puzzle was the logic puzzle... the grid based 'A=B, C!=A, etc' type of puzzle... they're very much not hard when it's strictly a matter of saying what is and what isn't... the better ones are the ones that you have to do calculations and other solves in order to find a definite logic declaration for the grid, or when not all the possible answers are available to label rows and columns...

...and... I'm sure... matrices... have some role... in calculating how... the bits of a torret served file... are dispersed among the leechers! There, I un-hijacked the thread! Confused um... so who's hosting the .torrent again?

Razz
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 4:01 pm
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angelo
Unfettered

Joined: 08 Sep 2004
Posts: 694

 		Re: Decrypting cryptograms
thebruce wrote:

...and... I'm sure... matrices... have some role... in calculating how... the bits of a torret served file... are dispersed among the leechers! There, I un-hijacked the thread! Confused um... so who's hosting the .torrent again?
Razz


Too bad. I'll re-jack it...

For you bored souls out there...

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#120A8F#3299CC#00C957 #8E2323#EE6363#734A12#3299CC#00C5CD
#8E2323#EE6363#4F2F4F#00C957 #75A1D0#EE6363#00C5CD#3299CC
#FF83FA#120A8F#00C5CD #FF83FA#8E2323 #00C957#FFEFDB#EE7621#CD6090
#00C957#EE6363#008B00#CD6090#00C5CD

10100010
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00111001
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11010100

01001001

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00001001

00111001
00101111
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01011010
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 4:03 pm
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Phaedra
Lurker v2.0


Joined: 21 Sep 2004
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 		Re: Decrypting cryptograms
angelo wrote:
thebruce wrote:

...and... I'm sure... matrices... have some role... in calculating how... the bits of a torret served file... are dispersed among the leechers! There, I un-hijacked the thread! Confused um... so who's hosting the .torrent again?
Razz


Too bad. I'll re-jack it...


Whew. Thanks, angelo. Things were in danger for a moment there of becoming completely out of control!

Quote:
For you bored souls out there...


Hey, there, cats and kittens, cipher coming at you!

See, I made mine *easy*!
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 4:18 pm
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