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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Art of the Heist » The Art of the Heist: Puzzles
[ Please - Do We Have It Now? ] The Evil Cube
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johnny5
Entrenched

Joined: 17 Aug 2004
Posts: 995
Location: Elysian Fields
GateKeeper wrote:
helper wrote:
Still, if the cube is encrypted this way, wouldn't we need the key to decode it? It could be nearly anything.


Well, if this is how the code works, then the cube isn't really ciphered, instead the cube IS the key, and we're missing the cipher text. Now, it's possible the cipher text is hidden in the cube somehow I imagine. There's no reason the cipher text itself couldn't look like valid words with this sort of cipher.


Except for the repeated characters in the quadrants which kind of throws a wrench into the works. Unless you break it down into multiple 5x5. Notice also that the four square cipher has i/j sharing a square?

PostPosted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 11:29 am
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GateKeeper
Decorated

Joined: 22 Apr 2005
Posts: 156
johnny5 wrote:

Except for the repeated characters in the quadrants which kind of throws a wrench into the works. Unless you break it down into multiple 5x5. Notice also that the four square cipher has i/j sharing a square?


Yah, the repeated characters are a problem, but maybe that means were looking at the cube from the wrong side? Also, there may be some characters which need to be stripped out. The cube is 20x20x20, but the alphabet can be represented (okay 25 chars anyhow, hence the i/j) in a matrix 10x10.

An insteresting thought is that base 36 characters could fit in a 20x20 plane, but there's no numbers so i doubt that means anything.

Here's a summary on the things in favor and against this four square theory.

In favor;
- It's something we haven't really investigated thus far.
- The decode key forms a grid of letters. I'm not familiar with other types of ciphers dealing in grids of letters.
- When decoding, you form a 'loop.' There's been some spec on loops having significance. Also, this graphically forms a pattern on the grid which looks somewhat like ouroboros to me, but that may be reaching.
- This sort of cipher would allow other text to be inserted into the grid.
- This sort of cipher would have a somewhat flat frequency analysis.

Against;
- A 20x20 grid is much larger than we need to decode the entire alphabet.
- The quadrants of our cube/grids seem to have repeating characters. The cipher doesn't appear to have a way of dealing with this.

Those two arguments could be countered though;
- maybe the 20x20 grid needs to be reduced to form our key?
- this reduction could concievably remove the duplicate characters.

However, for this to proceed we'd need a way to identify what characters (if any) to remove from the cube, what orientation to place the cube in, and where to begin decoding. We also seem to be missing the actual cipher text, so there are certainly a lot of missing parts if this is to work.

On a semi-related note, I had a thought last night that maybe 'OtherDirectionsExist' isn't talking about the orientation of the cube, but telling us that other INSTRUCTIONS exist?

PostPosted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 11:59 am
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SuperJerms
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Joined: 21 Aug 2004
Posts: 537
Location: indiana

 		Hey, just had another thought (although you guys are waaaaay out of my league with this stuff)...

What if the found words made a small 3d model? Since this is a 3d space and we can make words, have we investigated what would happen if you look at those words as draw instructions? I assume that a 20 3 area can't make that complex of a model, and I'd have no idea what words to use, but is this even within the realm of possibility?

I'm thinking something like, take each of the words that lead to the finish it! domain, and make a 3d model of those words' lines. What would that plot out?
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 6:35 pm
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rose
...and then Magic happens


Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 4117

 		Hint from emile
not sure that everyone reads interactions so this is the hint I got from him after asking for help. I am posting the whole thing, if it shouldn't be here twice, sorry... I am just running out the door right now and it is faster to paste it again.

Quote:
Rose,

Wow, there seem to be a number of fascinating things going on with this puzzle, I'm not sure where to start. I've gone through some of the research your fellow puzzlers have done though, and noticed something you might not have picked up on...in the word "ALMOST" going down through the cube, I noticed that if you continue down into the cube one more letter (to the seventh grid), you hit the "I" that starts a word going down and on a diagonal towards the right and stopping at the bottom edge ("INFATUATION"). I'm not sure I saw that one posted anywhere.

Similarly, you and mssphinx might be on to something with your repetitive word lists. I noticed if you think of "able" as "A", and from that advance the value of every square of that layer by 1, one of my boss's favorite words leaps out at you. It would be just like him to do something recursive like that.

Hope this helps! Thanks again for your great feedback on Nisha.

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PostPosted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 7:36 pm
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missphinx
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Joined: 02 Oct 2003
Posts: 395

 		Thought I'd post, for reference, a compilation (still incomplete) of the most frequently used short words (four letters when possible) in each puzzle by image # (excel #)

8(1) able (or possibly Elba, famous isle of Napolean's exile)
11(2) bold (also jobs appears a couple of times)
13(3) fear
15(4) ? (lol?)
17(5) card
19(6) time or emit
21(7) self
23(8) jump
25(9) note
27(10) dark
29(11) ? (lie, bit, wad - 3x each ?)
31(12) ? (bee or loo ?)
33(13) word
35(14) ? (www (repeats 5x) ?)
37(15) lost
39(16) I am ?
41(17) gear
43(18) open (maybe one or none?)
45(19) pair
47(20) wire

PostPosted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 8:14 pm
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ShadowRuleZ
Boot

Joined: 17 May 2005
Posts: 47

 		Re: Hint from emile
Quote:

Similarly, you and mssphinx might be on to something with your repetitive word lists. I noticed if you think of "able" as "A", and from that advance the value of every square of that layer by 1, one of my boss's favorite words leaps out at you. It would be just like him to do something recursive like that.

Hope this helps! Thanks again for your great feedback on Nisha.


I'm playing with the cube here. Advancing the ASCII value for everying in the first layer of the cube (where able is the common word) I don't really see anything. I did come across VANGOGH, so maybe there is something to doing this.

Edit: Managed to find ARTISTRY as well using the +1. I'm going to rotate the cube and see if anything else pops out at me.

Edit2: I did the whole cube as +1. I wonder if the next layer should be +2 since the word starts with a B.

Edit3: Just in case anyones wants to look at it, layer 1 + 1:

XYDQJRJKPOWOVIDQGTGZ
COPHBSBQBNVDGBIVFSLE
PHMZSASTBVDCFGNINAYR
IBYDQJRJKNVKNTABFSRK
QBBCPMFBAUCCFMTJMZZS
INATBTUGFHPJMUBBZMRK
JOBUCUVBVCKWZMTCUHSL
EJWPXPQBRBBRUNUBCJMF
BBDUVBMJABUJPOBCMFPB
RWJCKCDBBCMFFEMELYTO
CBBPTYLEMEFNVANGOGHP
MXAUHOJEFFMCMBOSFUOJ
FWIHPHOBWBNSFYGYZBBU
MEAAMREXFXYBYXFXERMD
LWHIBCMDIVOWOPFMCBLF
TDUAFBOPJUBSFUJMCPTG
LQPBBPOTGZHZABCMFBLS
SLWVDVCPKOPJUBDJEBSF
FEQPURKTCVQTKCFMCBFQ
ABGTMUMNRQYQXKFMCBAB

PostPosted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 10:28 pm
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rowan
Unfictologist

Joined: 12 Apr 2004
Posts: 1966

 		Forgive me for jumping in here - this is probably nothing, but I found something that seems a bit curious to me - it definitly doesn't seem random, although it could be.

Despite the fact that Emile said you can spell out 'infatuation' all we have been able to get is 'infatdkidru'. I decided to look at the word backwords to see if there was maybe just a mistake in shifting. On the page with the 'u' (image 41, starts with gps) I noticed that the only 'n' on that line was three characters to the left. So, going up to the page with the 'r', I saw that there was an 'o' three characters to the left. Next page up, shift three from the 'd' to get 'i'. Go up, three from 'i' to get 't'. One more step and you shift 3 from 'k' to get the 'a'. So going backwards, we have the letters 'noita' which would normally be what we were going for ('ation' backwards).

At this point, my excitement takes a nosedive when I realize that on the 'd' page (image 31, starts with dsv) there is no 'u' at all on the line in question (line 14). Three left from the 'd' is an 'e'. [If you continued the pattern, eventually you could spell out 'tdxeation' which is nothing].

So - like I said, it's probably nothing, but I personally just thought it odd that the shift was there. I would have expected more random letters (but then, I haven't been studying the cube so maybe this is normal).

(btw - i hope this made sense. lemme know if it doesn't and i'll try to clarify).
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 11:34 pm
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xnbomb
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Joined: 13 Oct 2003
Posts: 660
Location: J302B S8JDC

 		Common Rot
missphinx wrote:
Thought I'd post, for reference, a compilation (still incomplete) of the most frequently used short words (four letters when possible) in each puzzle by image # (excel #)

It may not even need to be the most common 4-letter word, but the most commonly occurring letter in each image. I just had a look at each images' frequency distribution to see which letter was most common in each image, and the most common letters agree well with the most common words you have found in almost every case. The only image that is a little ambiguous in this respect is 39(16), where there are 28 M's, 25 A's, and 25 N's, but we can take M to be the winner there:

Code:
Most Common Letter

|
|   Image Number
|   
|   |  Sheet Number
|   |
|   |  |     Most Common 4-letter Word
|   |  |
|   |  |     |
v   v  v     v

A - 8 (1)  - able
B - 11(2)  - bold
F - 13(3)  - fear
H - 15(4)  - ?
C - 17(5)  - card
T - 19(6)  - time
S - 21(7)  - self
J - 23(8)  - jump
N - 25(9)  - note
D - 27(10) - dark
I - 29(11) - ?
K - 31(12) - ?
W - 33(13) - word
W - 35(14) - www
L - 37(15) - lost
M - 39(16) - I am
G - 41(17) - gear
O - 43(18) - open
P - 45(19) - pair
W - 47(20) - wire


EDITED AGAIN: Nevermind, found it.
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{J302B S8JDC, 8996N M8L4W, 92D40 Q1JX5, 4PPRN R2B97, 8DC7C NZJNV, 8CH7V Q891H}

PostPosted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 3:37 am
Last edited by xnbomb on Wed Jun 08, 2005 6:06 am; edited 2 times in total
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helper
Boot

Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 29

 		Re: Common Rot
Okay. Well, using that set of offsets, I rotated all the planes, generated all the candidate (using just the short step vectors, up to (1,1,1) and (19,19,19)), then ran it against the biggest dictionary I have so far. Attached are all the 5-character or longer words found.

If you want to try with a different set of rotations, that shouldn't be any problem - just let me know. Or if you want to do it yourself, I could give you the code. It's MS-Visual C++ v6. You need the code because I just hacked this together, and the vector of rotation letters is hardcoded, not a command line argument or a prompted input. To be clear, the rotations I used were:

Code:

//                          01234567890123456789
static char RotByPlane[] = "ABFHCTSJNDIKWWLMGOPW";


--helper
filtered_5pluschars.txt
Description  Rotate all the letters on each sheet by an offset equal to the most frequently used letter on that sheet, then generate all the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal words, and filter through a list of common and story-specific words and phrases. This is th
 txt

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Filename  filtered_5pluschars.txt 
Filesize  10.05KB 
Downloaded  186 Time(s) 

PostPosted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 4:41 am
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helper
Boot

Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 29

 		What the heck, it's too late to go to bed now anyway... I went ahead produced the results for the one uncertain rotation: sheet 16, as xnbomb numbers them. Attached are the results produced using the two other possibilities suggested by missphinx's work - 'a' and 'i', and by xnbomb's comments - 'n'. I hope I did this right / kept the files straight...

Gee, maybe it's not to late to go to sleep... z... for... z... a little... z... while... zzzzzzz...

--h
Rot_Sheet16_By_A.txt
Description  Rotate sheet 16 by 'A' instead of 'M'
 txt

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Filename  Rot_Sheet16_By_A.txt 
Filesize  9.54KB 
Downloaded  133 Time(s) 
Rot_Sheet_16_By_I.txt
Description  Rotate sheet 16 by 'I' instead of 'M' or 'A'
 txt

 Download 
Filename  Rot_Sheet_16_By_I.txt 
Filesize  9.89KB 
Downloaded  115 Time(s) 
Rot_Sheet16_By_N.txt
Description  Rotate sheet 16 by 'N' instead of 'M', 'A', or 'I'...
 txt

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Filename  Rot_Sheet16_By_N.txt 
Filesize  11.06KB 
Downloaded  133 Time(s) 

PostPosted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 5:21 am
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Ehsan
Entrenched

Joined: 09 May 2003
Posts: 992

 		I don't like the way this is going..

Looking back at the past few pages, it seems there are so many trains of thought, it's hard to grab one idea and follow it through..

We're making a lot of progress, finding new things everyday, but then we find something new and don't really know what to do with the old stuff. For example, the very first clue we found was "sideways start at three", but then we found a protected folder, then we found a lot of words in different directions, then repeated words, more hidden folders, ROT-ed planes, 2 sets of hints, words that we can't find.. and that's just the half of it..

I'm mentioning this because we're on the 10th page of this thread. Does anyone have any ideas on how to better organize the search? Should we lock this one and start with a fresh thread and a summary of everything we found?

...

-frustrated

P.S. helper, it could be useful to have that source code if you don't mind

PostPosted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 5:28 am
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Ehsan
Entrenched

Joined: 09 May 2003
Posts: 992

 		Gah, can we stop finding stuff!

Using helper's new ROTed results

Plane 0: Van Gogh
Plane 1: Vermeer
Plane 2: El Greco
Plane 3: Corot (Edit: thanks xnbomb)

Painters... is that a pattern?

Nothing on plane 4 but maybe we need a dictionary with artist names..

Also Plane 5: Rabelais (writer)

All the results that make sense to me don't cross-over planes, so direction is (x,y,0) .. it makes sense then to revisit the ROT letter we used for planes where we can't find any words..

PostPosted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 5:46 am
Last edited by Ehsan on Wed Jun 08, 2005 6:03 am; edited 2 times in total
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xnbomb
Unfettered


Joined: 13 Oct 2003
Posts: 660
Location: J302B S8JDC

 		Re: Common Rot
helper wrote:
Okay. Well, using that set of offsets, I rotated all the planes, generated all the candidate (using just the short step vectors, up to (1,1,1) and (19,19,19)), then ran it against the biggest dictionary I have so far. Attached are all the 5-character or longer words found.

Nice work Helper, those are great. For most layers, they confirm that we have found a useful ROT, although there are a couple that I wonder about. My criteria here are a little subjective: For each layer, I'm looking for at least one word that is obviously a 'Virgil' word, usually in one of the cardinal directions on a single layer:

Code:
0  - VANGOGH
1  - VERMEER
2  - ELGRECO
3  - COROT
4  - ? (TYROL/DUFFY ... not too happy with these)
5  - RABELAIS
6  - TORMENT
7  - HIDEKO (leads to a password-protected dir)
8  - CUBISM
9  - SOPHISM
10 - CHEAT (leads to a password-protected dir)
11 - ZORRO
12 - DEMISE (leads to password-protected dir)
13 - GRIEF (leads to a password-protected dir)
14 - BURROW
15 - DEMONS
16 - FORGERY (or just FORGER, which leads to a password-protected dir)
17 - DEFRAUD
18 - ARTISTRY
19 - ? (MUDDLE/EXULT ... less confident here)


EDIT: Alright, they're only likely to be useful if they are in any way unusual, and based on Ehsan's preliminary testing they are not. I'm going to conclude that they are ROT herrings, and not terribly interesting. However, Emile's other suggestion might prove to be the real thing. Rowan has captured the essence of it in her post above. If we read AFTERSIXTHEBEGINNING to mean that we apply some procedure after we reach the seventh letter of a word, and SIDEWAYSSTARTATTHREE to mean that for the seventh letter and beyond the letters are shifted three in some direction, Emile's INFATUATION almost makes sense: INFAT are all in a line in the (1,1,1) direction, and ATION are all shifted three spaces to the left of where we'd expect them to be on the same line. But what happened to the letter U?

And more importantly why does Emile know this? I refuse to accept that this is an obvious interpretation of the directions. It is not. Did Emile make this puzzle? When he gives us a hint that implies that INFATUATION is simply there and easy to read, what is he playing at? I'd like to think he's helping us see how we could apply the after six, sideways three scheme by pointing us to an example, but I'm too bothered by the notion that he knows how to read it to see it that way.
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My location is a little tricky, but sooner or later, you'll get the knack.

{J302B S8JDC, 8996N M8L4W, 92D40 Q1JX5, 4PPRN R2B97, 8DC7C NZJNV, 8CH7V Q891H}

PostPosted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 5:51 am
Last edited by xnbomb on Wed Jun 08, 2005 6:34 am; edited 1 time in total
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Ehsan
Entrenched

Joined: 09 May 2003
Posts: 992

 		God make it stop!

I was thinking we were lucky to find the correct ROT to each layer.. until I looked at the extra work by helper..

Sheet 16 ROT A - Main word: Demons
Sheet 16 ROT I - Main word: Demons
Sheet 16 ROT N - Main word: Forgery


Aha.. I WANT to be wrong.. but the conclusion I get from this is, if you ROT any layer with any letter you will find another Virgil word! Somebody please refute this..

EDIT: oh man..

Sheet 1 ROT A - VANGOGH
Sheet 1 ROT B - VANGOGH
Sheet 1 ROT C - VANGOGH

Then I just stopped..

EDIT 2: New spec.. cross out all the words on a sheet, ROT+1, cross out, ROT+1, rinse, repeat.. maybe that's the way to really find all the words and see what letters remain...

PostPosted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 6:00 am
Last edited by Ehsan on Wed Jun 08, 2005 6:33 am; edited 2 times in total
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jlandgr
Boot

Joined: 27 May 2005
Posts: 67
Location: Münster, Germany
Ehsan wrote:
God make it stop!

I was thinking we were lucky to find the correct ROT to each layer.. until I looked at the extra work by helper..

Sheet 16 ROT A - Main word: Demons
Sheet 16 ROT I - Main word: Demons
Sheet 16 ROT N - Main word: Forgery


Aha.. I WANT to be wrong.. but the conclusion I get from this is, if you ROT any layer with any letter you will find another Virgil word! Somebody please refute this..

Could be, I smell something fishy (red herrings) Shocked
Or, on the other hand, something really, really complex ....
As Virgil writes in his bio: layers upon layers of puzzles and ciphers.

For sheet 16, as helper already noticed, "forger" leads to a password protected dir, so "n" might be the correct decryption here (I really hope there is only one correct decryption per worksheet and we don't have to take into account multiple decryptions)
So, the challenge might be to identify the decryption that leads to keywords that lead to password-protected areas? Who knows.
Really evil, this cube ...

PostPosted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 6:13 am
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