View topic - [PUZZLE TRAIL] "Torment"

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Forum index » Diversions » TimeWasters

[PUZZLE TRAIL] "Torment"
Moderators: Giskard, ndemeter, ScarpeGrosse

Page 20 of 52 [768 Posts]

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Chuck
Greenhorn

Joined: 08 May 2007
Posts: 6

Pity?

If I know greengecko....and I SHOULD...I'm certain there will be NO pity.

"In the present instance I have no sympathy --at least no pity --for him who descends. "

Posted: Sat May 12, 2007 8:03 pm

Tormented
Kilroy

Joined: 13 May 2007
Posts: 1

"Chuck"

Hmm...on-target analysis of situation, relevant quote from work of great literature...I know who you really are, "Chuck". Smile

Thanks for the tip on Cryptool as well...who knew?

Posted: Sun May 13, 2007 11:38 am

simokon
Boot

Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 45
Location: San Jose, CA

Blocks?

Anybody have any noteworthy leads on the block puzzle?

It smells a lot like the circles code (a flip and rotate puts a snail in the upper left and leaves a jagged right edge), but if so, it's not using the same key (the acute shortage of E's of any direction has ruled that out). Applying the circle code and shifting the result doesn't do anything either.

I suspect that it's some variant - the three doubled letters in the last column seems to indicate that the rotations matter. I'm not sure I have the wherewithal (or the time) to try to derive a new key.

Any ideas? I'm about ready to throw in the towel - it's quickly becoming more frustrating than fun.

Posted: Sun May 13, 2007 9:02 pm

writerjoel
Boot

Joined: 10 May 2007
Posts: 23

Blocks??

What if the snails tell us only which letters to regard? When the snail points up, only upright letters count. The weeded out message would still be encrypted, of course. Figuring out where the puzzle starts is the big problem. Again, I'm guessing the lower right, the only corner with a snail.

Posted: Sun May 13, 2007 11:44 pm

Jetpac
Greenhorn

Joined: 22 Feb 2007
Posts: 8

Chalk Man
Help

can someone please pm me the answer or a rather large clue to this level please? i am very stuck, ive looked at the hints in the thread but cant get anywhere with them.

at first i thought if it want the obvious it must be:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

Plato, as in the school of athens he is supposedly based on davinci

please help!

ok ive worked out the alternate answer to the first painting.
is chalkman a dead end or not....?

Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 8:49 am

writerjoel
Boot

Joined: 10 May 2007
Posts: 23

RE: Jetpac

the Da Vinci portrait does have an alternate answer:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

Look for the same inspiration as the alternate answer to the first Da Vinci painting.

But I'll rethrow your question out to the group, since I've only found the same escape as you from what appears to be an endless loop of the same series of paintings: Is there any path out of this series other than the way to the two photos, one of the winged woman in the forest behind a silhouette, the other of runes?

Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 1:35 pm

Uberg33k
Entrenched

Joined: 10 Apr 2006
Posts: 905
Location: Atlanta

Re: RE: Jetpac

writerjoel wrote:

the Da Vinci portrait does have an alternate answer:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

Look for the same inspiration as the alternate answer to the first Da Vinci painting.

If there is, no one has found it.

Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 1:38 pm

simokon
Boot

Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 45
Location: San Jose, CA

Re: Blocks??

writerjoel wrote:

One observation that I've made (that I have yet to point out in this forum) is that every code we've seen has come from another source: there have been no made-up ciphers.

We've also seen at least once that a cipher was reused in a slightly different form:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

Two vigs with the same keyword: one with regular spacing, one with ciphertext in groups of five.

Unless this level is a big break in the pattern, we should be looking for similar pre-existing ciphers. That's why I'm starting with a variant of the circle cipher, because it has similar characteristics, it's pre-existing, and it's been used before. Unless anyone knows of other ciphers that involve rotated characters?

Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 1:46 pm

Uberg33k
Entrenched

Joined: 10 Apr 2006
Posts: 905
Location: Atlanta

Re: Blocks??

simokon wrote:

writerjoel wrote:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

Two vigs with the same keyword: one with regular spacing, one with ciphertext in groups of five.

grngecko used this cipher before and a solution was never found. That was several months ago. With the amount of people that have looked at it by now, if there was a published key, I think it would have been found.

Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 1:58 pm

writerjoel
Boot

Joined: 10 May 2007
Posts: 23

Re: Blocks??

Uberg33k wrote:

simokon wrote:

writerjoel wrote:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

Two vigs with the same keyword: one with regular spacing, one with ciphertext in groups of five.

I too suspect similarity with the circle cipher. But the symbols in the circle cipher corresonded one to one with the alphabet. The rotations of the blocks symbols don't work that way. A rotated S doesn't become a D, for example. So we're left with a 4 to 1 symbol to alphabet ratio. I think this is more than substitution or transposition.

It's confusion and diffusion.

http://www.cs.uleth.ca/~cheng/courses/cs3730/slides/block-4up.pdf

This has the clearest breakdown of what we're up against that I've seen. We need a key, a key structure, and the math sense of a PHD!

Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 2:18 pm

writerjoel
Boot

Joined: 10 May 2007
Posts: 23

potential key structure

What if the blocks, which each contain six letters (five of them hidden), combined with the snails, tell us together which side of each block is the relevant one?

I'm not sure I've gotten the concept, but this COULD be a key structure to reveal the ciphertext which would then be unlocked by the key, yes?

How we find out how these blocks are laid out on all sides, I have no idea.

Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 6:38 pm

simokon
Boot

Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 45
Location: San Jose, CA

Re: potential key structure

writerjoel wrote:

Curiously enough, these blocks are still manufactured (see http://www.oldfashionedblocks.com/alphabet_abc_blocks.html - the third picture... gee doesn't that snail look familiar?). However, there seems to be only one letter per block per the pictures.

Oh well.

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 2:53 am

Uberg33k
Entrenched

Joined: 10 Apr 2006
Posts: 905
Location: Atlanta

Re: potential key structure

writerjoel wrote:

That would be interesting, but we would still need a definite way to know what's on each side of each block.

simokon wrote:

Excellent detective work!

Does anyone get the feeling that we're missing some critical clue or hint here? I was looking at the puzzle and the previous geocache and it would seem that there are some similarities between the pictures. I can't quite piece together what it would be telling us though.

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 9:27 am

Uberg33k
Entrenched

Joined: 10 Apr 2006
Posts: 905
Location: Atlanta

grngecko has issued a hint!

"Ye who read are still among the living, but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows. For indeed strange things shall happen, and many secret things be known, ..."

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 10:26 am

simokon
Boot

Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 45
Location: San Jose, CA

Re: Blocks??

writerjoel wrote:

Well, if that S were converted to a circle symbol first, any flip or rotate would still produce a valid symbol. Of course, this doesn't work with regular letters, so it would require a key to convert to circles first. And the key is pretty clearly not the one we used before. And I can barely comprehend how hard it would be to derive a new one without some clues.

I think very few of the previous ciphers could have been cracked without already knowing what kind of cipher we were working with (mostly due to the short ciphertext lengths). Unless we get some idea of how it was encoded in the first place, I doubt we'll get any further than we are.

Oh, and Uberg33k, can you post a link to the geocache puzzle?

Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 4:33 pm

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