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[Esteed]

This one looks interesting. Count me in. I sent Conor an email, hopefully I'll get a reply soon. Here's what I sent:

[GlitchTybalt]

Alright, got a reply, and an interesting one at that. Here's what was said.

[blag]

Site updated

[degravedi]

Well the quote is from the book "The Pearl" by John Steinbeck.

I'm coming up with a blank on how to decode the characters though.

[Esteed]

I received a reply from Conor.

[degravedi]

[blag]

The only copy of The Pearl I can find online is in Google's cache:
http://tinyurl.com/2jor5r

The exact quote comes up when the protagonist ("Kino") is trying to sell an abnormally large pearl he has found. The pearl-dealers all conspire against him to offer him a low price for the pearl. The "evil music" thing is a recurring theme in the story; whenever Kino feels especially happy, scared or angry he hears certain songs in his head.

I'm stumped on the code, though. Presumably once we solve this we send an email to Conor with the solution in the subject line.

[Esteed]

Yeah, I figure the solve will equal the subject line once we have it. Someone who knows Steinbeck better than me, I have a question: Were there any ciphers of any kind used prominently in any of his works? It's been a while since I read Of Mice and Men so I can't recall offhand about that one.

[blag]

25 23 unique characters in the encoded message. Substitution?

_{Edit: Duh...}

[dickeja8]

I'm a big Grapes of Wrath (THE great American novel) and of mice and men fan....but I'm not as familiar with The Pearl.

My verison of it has the quote on Pages 65-66 if that triggers any thoughts, although I don't know what they would be.

In the novel, the Pearl goes on to cause great troubles. Some people die. Kino himself is threatened by those trying to steal the pearl. In the end (I'll spoiler in case someone wants to read it)...

[dickeja8]

Patterns

[tipsila]

Those symbols are hard on the eyes. I thought it might be easier if they were changed to letters. There are 23 unique symbols, I used A-W.

[ALISDAIRPARK]

In case it will help others I have converted the string of characters to letters: Beat me to it by seconds Tips..

I'll try working on a simple sub, but I don't have a great track record...

EDIT: Is the string of characters above correct? The reason I ask is the double letter at the start - if this is right it's unlikely we're looking at a simple sub. There are hardly any words that start with a double letter...

EDIT 2: And if it's any other form of cypher we have the problem of converting the characters to letters first. It could by luck be Tips conversion above, but there's no guarantee of that.

[GlitchTybalt]

Well, I'm not sure how much our friend Conor knows about me, but I got this an hour or two ago.

[Esteed]

Yeah, I got the same email Glitch did. Unfortunately, I don't know coding very well at all. I'd say give PERL a try, since there has to be a reason for using the quote from that particular book.

EDIT: As far as the meaning behind why Glitch, Crystal and I were picked out, while I can't say anything for Glitch or Crystal (though it's possible that Glitch was picked for his knowledge of code) I can say that my emails contained quite a bit of information. I've been studying conspiracies/alien abduction phenomena/UFOs practically from being able to read, so I know a thing or two about the subject. I guess I asked the kind of questions someone "in the know" would ask, and provided some info in a similar vein. So they're thinking I may be an "inside man" for the government. (This is IG, of course.) If there's some other reason for it, I honestly have no idea.