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fretty

It was mensioned earlier that there is in fact a book called ciphers of history which isn't about ciphers, could this somehow be the key.

About inversing matrices:
http://www.purplemath.com/modules/mtrxinvr.htm

I know it's for 3x3 but I should imagine that 4x4 is the same method.

**Posted:** Thu Feb 16, 2006 11:50 am

frantic

As we are now past the 15page point on this one, Can I get a rewind?

The clues we have seem to be

Vons - Count ont his cipher being twice as hard as it looks (spelling as in text message received)

The title of the card is the same as book which is NOT about Ciphers, whose author was Enrico Mario SANTI. which is close to Sente...

Prof Hale does not seem to exist at the Academy, but Hale has led us to Nathan Hale, a patriotic spy known as Hale Secondus by his peers. Fathers name was Richard. Plus there is a Greg Hale in the Dan Brown book Digital Fortress which relates to codes etc...

XtimesY =600

The scrap of paper with the seismic type graph lines and 2 formulas. Btw are we sure of the 2 types of formula? Just wondering if they relate back to Card216 Formal Logic...

The Hebrew text. The fact its written in such an odd layout, ie with gaps, ranged the wrong way, possibly forming a letter R

The semi hidden Hebrew underneath the top note

Using Atbash and or gematria...

I hope this helps someone new reading this... But also I thought it handy for the rest of us to recap as we chase our tails. If I have missed any threads in the recap please add a posting.

**Posted:** Thu Feb 16, 2006 2:11 pm

ALISDAIRPARK

One correction, it doesn't say XtimesY=600, just XY=600.

It may be relevant that they are capitals rather than lowercase, as to me this indicates digrams, rather than algebra.

**Posted:** Thu Feb 16, 2006 3:32 pm

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poozle · Entrenched Joined: 15 Aug 2005 Posts: 1090

**Posted:** Thu Feb 16, 2006 10:35 pm

fretty

No, you can do it that way as wikipedia confirms, by using Gauss-Jordan elimination:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss-Jordan_elimination

**Posted:** Fri Feb 17, 2006 9:08 am

sherbet · Boot Joined: 10 Dec 2005 Posts: 20

just to say, i got an email from the nice folks at pc today, and the infamous he symbol is....*drum roll*...correct.

bugger.

anyone been able to get a confirmation of the spelling in vons clue?

**Posted:** Fri Feb 17, 2006 9:20 pm

JebJoya · Unfettered Joined: 13 Apr 2005 Posts: 679 Location: UK

**Posted:** Sat Feb 18, 2006 12:35 am

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Ramazel · Boot Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 59 Location: Guildford, UK

Just to update you on my attempt with the Hill cipher, I finally managed to do all the necessary calculations, to no avail. Sad

Mind you, when I re-read the description in Wikipedia it did say that the cipher matrix was supposed to be random, so the keyword attempt was probably doomed from the start. At least now I'm sure... Very Happy

Anyway, if at some point somebody had a brilliant idea involving the Hill cipher and wanted to try it, I got all the details for the calculations from http://www.threaded.com/cryptography8.htm. This site has been mentioned before and it's absolutely brilliant!

**Posted:** Sat Feb 18, 2006 1:45 am

primalfear · Boot Joined: 09 Feb 2006 Posts: 14

http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~bradel/projects/cryptography/

check this out its on Borys Bradel's n-Hill Cipher Applet Page

it also has a decrypter on it maybe it might help

**Posted:** Sat Feb 18, 2006 9:50 pm

GinGenie · Boot Joined: 12 Aug 2005 Posts: 16

Hello. I've tried something different.

Instead of taking the individual letter groups as individual number groups, I took the numbers and divided them into groups of two (ignoring the 5 - 10 - 7).

20 83 52 83 05 26 44 93 38 43 16 12 32 04 46 85 02 05 14 35 33 52 02 21 54 66 31 24 87

There might be a pattern as some of the numbers are repeated (02, 05, 52 and 83 etc), though I have no idea how many repetitions should be expected in a random selection of numbers. If they are used to directly represent letters (a = 1, 27 etc) then 'e' is in the sequence 5 times (05, 31 and 83).

Unfortunately this hasnt led to anything comprehensible, and doubly unfortunately you get a very similar pattern if the text is rotated (though I havent tried all the variations of this).

I just thought I'd mention it, as the 'count ont his' clue may be telling us to ignore the original pattern of the letters/numbers.

**Posted:** Mon Feb 20, 2006 3:37 pm

Gibbet · Veteran Joined: 07 Aug 2005 Posts: 121

I can conclude that the answer is:

**Posted:** Tue Feb 21, 2006 12:57 am

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pheebs · Guest

and were either of these right? Wink

mind candy should just tell us. no one will ever get it LOL

**Posted:** Tue Feb 21, 2006 5:20 am

primalfear · Boot Joined: 09 Feb 2006 Posts: 14

nah tried both the message does not make sense and how wheres the embarrassment

**Posted:** Tue Feb 21, 2006 11:32 am

jandee · Greenhorn Joined: 22 Feb 2006 Posts: 4

On a tangent....

**Posted:** Wed Feb 22, 2006 12:13 am

Phill4269 · Greenhorn Joined: 24 Feb 2006 Posts: 7 Location: London

Following on from Ramazel's post. I noticed that the last three lines almost make sense:
Assuming that the 6th line starts 517
FN UN TA
IN AV
TD RC
LA SH

Alternately changing the 2nd letter in the 1st and last pairs gives:
FO UN TA
IN AF
TE RC
LA SS

It doesn't work so well for the first 3 lines but I can sort of make the end of the message read:

**Posted:** Fri Feb 24, 2006 12:10 pm