unforum

[GuyIncognito]

...also no luck with the James Irby translation of The Library of Babel (by Borges).

[Soulsproximity1]

has anyone tried the beale code with Naomi Alderman's book "Disobedience". She is the creator of this card after all.

[Bendover]

As per the Beale code are you all just taking the numbers and correlating them with a(secret place) random text and seeing if the numbers match up? or are you actually deciphering the code?

[zepheria]

no beale joy with the book from excerpt #2 on this card.

Alderman book idea is excellent - I can check tomorrow.

[DarkHuman]

(sorry, here's "welcome to 2/3 weeks ago.>in pm chat")

1.Naomi Alderman wrote 2 books (the MC puzzle artist)
>"Disobedience" &"Smile and the world smiles with you" the first JUST came out, but i can't find excerpts for either.

2.http://www.braingle.com/brainteasers/codes/beale.php

best site ever!!!!! (use the 2nd row box and enter in:)
100 139 6 148 62 127 118 119 131 151 146 88 135 107 112 152 124 150 130 100 147 93 121 149 134 144 126 98 133 103 143 116 63 111 91 101 70 61 106 62 76 117 123 84 102 89 115 96 137 92 85 122 87 53 104 90 145

then for the 2nd box, use the text you think it is. spaces mark new words.
(did like 7 books in minutes!!!)
and #3.http://www.xenosoftinc.com/P61.htm

a program that claims if we enter in JUST the #'s it can find the text.

just it costs $$$ (got the demo, but it will not let you enter in your personal codes to crack.)>>and i can't find anywhere to get it for free.

also, i didn't know that V1&3 of the origional beale cipher's were decoded in 2000, and the vault was empty, lol. (they used programs like xenosoftinc's , cuz no one knows what was used for the 1 & 3 keys.)
till next headache
-Darkhuman

[zepheria]

tried Alderman's Disobedience this morning -

"Kippur vital priests overripe congregation for even danced but";

also tried treating numbers as page numbers instead of word numbers but found

"nothing there them on hold with everything Esti that"



Bendover, my interpretation of the Beale code was finding words in a specific text - have I got that wrong? is there further encoding?

[Soulsproximity1]

you take the letter not the word

[DarkHuman]

did you find it online, or do you have a copy of her book??! still, the words make "kvpocfedb...." from your info. Not right either.

[GuyIncognito]

[DarkHuman]

[DarkHuman]

Hey real fast, i just wanted to thank anyone who has tried ANY book / puzzle card / etc. as the Beale code.

Thanks! keep up the good work!
we'll get it, or go crazy trying

[GuyIncognito]

Ok, to avoid major trouting/strangling, I went back and redid the "Library of Babel" decyphering with letters instead of words...still nothing (Phew!).

Anyway, I still think both are viable options. Given the subject of this card, I think it's just as likely to be a book code (using words) as a Beale cypher (using letters). And, DarkHuman, you're right 57 letters could be a website or something...but I guess 57 words could also be a riddle or some sort of description. So just to be sure, I'm gonna try both.

[themandotcom]

The only problem with the Beale cipher is that it is very hard to crack if you don't know the text. Just speak to the guys who did the one with the *real* treasure But maybe its one of the books in the background of a call to the past! I dont have the card but ill take a look on the forum.

[Tufty]

A random thought that came to me in the middle of the night. I haven't got a copy myself so I can't try it out, but has anyone tried the Risk Instruction Manual/Rules?

[BBuck]

Just started looking at the book code/cipher. I think that the numbers have to represent letters rather than words.

If you put all of the numbers into order, then it runs 6, 53, 61,..., 152. So there are 56 characters taken from a possible 100 numbers (53-152). Another interesting point is that there are only two duplicates, 62 and 100.

The frequency of first letters in words is very different from the frequency of letters. According to this site, the former is:

t o a w b c d s f m r h i y e g l n p? u j k q/v/x/z

whereas the latter (and there are alternatives) is the good old:

e t a o i n s r h l d c u m f p g w y b v k x j q z

So the smaller the number of words to draw on, the less likely it is that there will be sufficient "unique" numbers to represent letters, and lots of duplicates will be required.

For example, "e" is 15th most frequent as the first letter of a word. So on a rough guess, it would be expected to occur 2-3 words out of every 100. But in a normal piece of text, it would be expected to occur roughly 7 times in 56 letters, and so there will need to be duplicates. As there are very few duplicates, and a restricted range, I think this points to letter rather than words.

If so, then there may be a way to solve this without trial and error of lots of texts. Putting the numbers in order gives some quite long unbroken sequences, such as 143-152, or runs with only a few gaps, such as 115-119, 121-124, 126-127. If the numbers are characters not words, then it is possible to try some likely text on the numbers and see if it fits in with the sequences.

For instance, assuming that this is a message signed by Combed Thunderclap, we can put back into the original text the letters generated. This would mean that:

84 = B
85 = D
86 = ?
87 = R
88 = ?
89 = D
90 = A
91 = ?
92 = N

so the original text on which the cipher was based would include

BD?R?DA?N

There's no word I can find with BD in it, so this means:

B D?R?DA?N

and might be something like:

B DaRkDAwN

or some such. This might be a slower method than trying likely texts, or faster. Depends if we feel lucky or clever, I suppose