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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Art of the Heist » The Art of the Heist: Puzzles
[SOLVED] thingstoask.txt {SD 3/docs/thingstoask.txt}
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johnny5
Entrenched

Joined: 17 Aug 2004
Posts: 995
Location: Elysian Fields

OK, changing tactics.
There are 42 characters in the "morse", divided by 3 yields 14 "elements".
These may represent Trinary (000=0...222=26) or simple substitution.

[EDIT]: Ok, I seem to have messed up the conversion somewhere. Look below

PostPosted: Thu May 12, 2005 4:46 pm
Last edited by johnny5 on Thu May 12, 2005 5:45 pm; edited 1 time in total
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madam o'brien
Boot

Joined: 26 Apr 2005
Posts: 31

I tried this approach and didn't get anything useful.
Using all 6 possible encodings of signs to trinary digits I got

13 19 7 2 6 11 25 0 21 14 25 6 18 7
M S G B F K Y U N Y F R G
13 7 19 24 20 15 1 26 5 12 1 20 10 11
M G S X T O A Z E L A T J K
0 21 15 14 16 5 24 13 19 2 24 16 6 7
U O N P E X M S B X P F G
0 15 21 25 23 7 12 26 11 1 12 23 3 5
O U Y W G L Z K A L W C E
26 11 5 1 3 19 14 0 15 25 14 3 23 21
Z K E A C S N O Y N C W U
26 5 11 12 10 21 2 13 7 24 2 10 20 19
Z E K L J U B M G X B J T S

None of which make any sense to me.

Edit 2

I tried all possible ROT encodings of these messages and also got nothing.

BTW there are exactly 14 of each character in the first encoded line - that doesn't seem like a co-incidence.
_________________
A gun is not a weapon Marge, it's a tool. Like a butcher knife, or a harpoon, or... or an alligator.

PostPosted: Thu May 12, 2005 5:06 pm
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CrispyG4
Veteran

Joined: 01 Aug 2004
Posts: 115
Location: Tallahassee, FL

Hmmm, this could be a long shot, but going by the answers fitting in the blanks, and that Erdlemann is really Erdelmann, and a google hit, Erdelmann's speciality is "singing" which fits in the 4th blank down, giving us the letters N and G as letters in the pass.

PostPosted: Thu May 12, 2005 7:33 pm
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CrispyG4
Veteran

Joined: 01 Aug 2004
Posts: 115
Location: Tallahassee, FL

Oh, and as for Gough...interesting site..

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Jungle/8700/whitelady.htm

Quote:
The legend of the White Lady first seems to have captured public imagination though the claims of the late Mr Charlie Gough of Thringstone. Mr Gough's sighting is mentioned in a Leicester Mercury article of 1964, when he was then aged 75, as having taken place some years previously.

Mr Gough (a worker on the Gracedieu estate for about forty years) told of how he had encountered the spectral form of a nun one night in the grounds of Gracedieu Manor. The figure was dressed entirely in white and wore a wide-brimmed hat, though the apparition disappeared as Mr Gough attempted to take a closer look. (LM:10.01.64)
[/quote]

PostPosted: Thu May 12, 2005 8:07 pm
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Garbanzo
Guest


It may be worth noting that the apostrophes are not standard. On my Mac, in TextEdit they show up as i with an accent (like this, í if you can see that on a windows machine)

Opening the file in Safari and changing the text encoding comes up with some interesting variations in Japanese, Chinese and Cyrillic. I don't know if those variations are important, but the fact that they aren't normal apostrophes seems like it might be significant.

PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2005 6:59 am
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Meatball
Kilroy

Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 1

Enzo, Mather, etc.

I ran a Google search for Enzo and the top listed result was for a group of hackers. Bum lead, I thought, until I noticed that they had morse code on the bottom of their page. Significant?

.-.. . . -|.... .- -..- --- .-. ...

Translates to:

l e e t |h a x o r s

http://www.enzotech.net/

As to Mather, there's a floating museum called the Mather Museum. It's on the OHIO river, which fits the second clue down. Also, perhaps significant, the underlined letters are "O", which may turn out to be more code.

PostPosted: Mon May 16, 2005 4:24 pm
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madam o'brien
Boot

Joined: 26 Apr 2005
Posts: 31

I noticed that the title of the file has 14 characters, excluding the .
So I 'added' this text to the results I got from the trinary encoding system above.
This doesn't seem to lead anywhere but I'll post it to save other a goose chase.
The raw info is here, it's more readable in it's native .doc format, attached.

The decoding of the first coded line of the thingstoask.txt file, using 1st encoding of _ . and spaces into trinary.
Then mapping the output (0-26) using 0 = space, 1=A, 2=B etc
M S G B F K Y U N Y F R G
T H I N G S T O A S K T X T
(First line + second line) mode 26
G A P P M D S O V G J P A
The decoding of the first coded line of the thingstoask.txt file, using 2nd encoding of _ . and spaces into trinary.
M G S X T O A Z E L A T J K
T H I N G S T O A S K T X T
G O B L A H U O F E L N H E
The decoding of the first coded line of the thingstoask.txt file, using 3rd encoding of _ . and spaces into trinary.
U O N P E X M S B X P F G
T H I N G S T O A S K T X T
T C X B W X R B T U I J D A
The decoding of the first coded line of the thingstoask.txt file, using 4th encoding of _ . and spaces into trinary.
O U Y W G L Z K A L W C E
T H I N G S T O A S K T X T
T W D M D F O L T W Q A Y
The decoding of the first coded line of the thingstoask.txt file, using 5th encoding of _ . and spaces into trinary
Z K E A C S N O Y N C W U
T H I N G S T O A S K T X T
T S N O J L H O P R Y W U O
The decoding of the first coded line of the thingstoask.txt file, using 6th encoding of _ . and spaces into trinary.
Z E K L J U B M G X B J T S
T H I N G S T O A S K T X T
T M T Q N V B H Q M D R M
thingstoask bad;y decoded.doc
Description 
doc

 Download 
Filename  thingstoask bad;y decoded.doc 
Filesize  163.1KB 
Downloaded  143 Time(s) 
_________________
A gun is not a weapon Marge, it's a tool. Like a butcher knife, or a harpoon, or... or an alligator.

PostPosted: Mon May 16, 2005 6:37 pm
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clalonde
Boot

Joined: 06 May 2005
Posts: 39

Trout?

I have a feeling that I am reaching too far on this one, however I thought I would share in case it sparks ideas for anyone. I went back to revisit the "morse code" at the beginning of the thingstoask.txt and wondered what would happen if I substituted 0 for the _ and 1 for the .

If you do this you get the following:

_. ._ .._._. .___ ..._ . ___ ._. _ _.
01 10 110101 1000 1110 1 0000101 0 01

If you take that binary string, remove the spaces and translate it into ASCII you get: MCI or possibly 1101 if you view the letters as roman numerals.

I tried MCI and 1101 as possible passwords to the ThingsToCopy.zip file with no luck.

Then I decided to try following the path that was used with the ppics.zip file and convert the above into octal. Still no dice using the octal translations.

Back to the drawing board but I thought I would try to save others some time should anyone else have had this idea.

- C

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2005 5:07 pm
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landlord
Greenhorn

Joined: 23 May 2005
Posts: 9

"morse code section"

for what it is worth, imho i believe that the section that we have been referring to as morse code is not morse code at all evidenced by the fact that morse is composed with dots "." and dashes"-" and this text section contains underscores"_" ....

also careful attention was paid to the spacing from the left margin on the page except for this line of code

I am curoius if the first letters of each one of the names EMPEGBRNH would be helpful I say this because none of the names seem logical as to anything that would pertain to this puzzle.
Rolling Eyes

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2005 5:58 pm
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madam o'brien
Boot

Joined: 26 Apr 2005
Posts: 31

Decoding the - .

I think I've decoded the 42 character string made up of underscores, dots and spaces in thingstoask.txt
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
Take the original text
_. ._ .._._. .___ ..._ . ___ ._. _ _.

Replace spaces with dashes and underscores with spaces, giving

--- .-. -.. . .-. -... -.-- -. .- -- .

This translates as standard morse with a triple space representing a word break. This gives

order by name


I'm not yet sure how to follow this instruction but will work on it.

I think this instruction tells us to re-order the questions in alphabetical order. Then we would put the answer to the first question (now Bigelow's gallery) in the first 'answer' space below.
This seems right because it lines up a question which might be expected to have a 2 character answer - Hem's age - with a 2 character answer.

This does mean that we might have to look elsewhere for the password to the thingstocopy.zip


Thanks to Clalonde, your post above inspired me to look at morse again.[/strike]
_________________
A gun is not a weapon Marge, it's a tool. Like a butcher knife, or a harpoon, or... or an alligator.

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2005 6:03 pm
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landlord
Greenhorn

Joined: 23 May 2005
Posts: 9

great work madam

is it likely that the relevent answers to the questions asked i.e. erdlemann's specialty would then correspond with the blanks below
in this order:

Bigelow's gallery = _ _ ,
Enzo's move date =_ _,
Erdlemann's specialty = _ _ ,
Gough's last sighting = __ ,
Hem's age =__,
Mather's location = _ _ ,
Novotny current home =_ _ ,
Pang's occupation = _ _ ,
Renford technique = _ _ ,

I still dont believe that the names are of any real meaning but now we may try BEEGHMNPR

SEE ABOVE POST Rolling Eyes

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2005 6:24 pm
Last edited by landlord on Mon May 23, 2005 6:37 pm; edited 1 time in total
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clalonde
Boot

Joined: 06 May 2005
Posts: 39

right track

I think that this is definitely on the right track as the order is now:

Bigelow's gallery = 9 letters
Enzo's move date = 4 numbers?
Erdlemann's specialty = 9 letters
Gough's last sighting = 7 letters
Hem's age = 2 numbers?
Mather's location = 11 letters
Novotny current home = 6 letters
Pang's occupation = 9 letters
Renford technique = 14 letters


With Enzo's date being 4 digits a 4 digit year?
And Hem's age being 2 digits - 2 number age? Possibly the aforementioned 61.

Great work Madam O'Brien

- C

PostPosted: Mon May 23, 2005 6:26 pm
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hamatoyoshi
Veteran

Joined: 02 Aug 2004
Posts: 127

landlord wrote:
is it likely that the relevent answers to the questions asked i.e. erdlemann's specialty would then correspond with the blanks below
in this order:


We run into the problem again of the fact that it's very difficult to track any of those names to an individual, especially to a particular relevant fact about any individual with that given name.

However, realigning the names to the underlined spaces, one gets (note that the bracketed characters are where the commas lie):

Quote:
Bigelow's[ ]gallery

Enzo[']s move date

Erdlemann[']s specialty

Gough's[ ]last sighting

He[m]'s age

Mather's lo[c]ation

Novotn[y] current home

Pang's oc[c]upation

Renford techni[q]ue


Which leaves the letters ileornugHehrNonsot underlined and [ '' mcycq] comma'd. I ran them through the Internet Anagram Server for good measure and found nothing that seemed relevant.

I do run into one major question though: if my technique were the correct one (big if), what part do the commas play?

In general, what part do the commas play?

Unless they simply delineate the length of the correct answer, what part would they play in other possible entries?

I can't see how the underscores and commas could be translated to morse offhand, but is there a possibility of using the line for space substitution technique to make the underscores and commas read like morse?

PostPosted: Tue May 24, 2005 9:52 am
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nhansard
Decorated

Joined: 07 Apr 2005
Posts: 159

based on the information from the photos the answers are:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

o(t)he(r)Side,
(1)99(8),
R(e)mbran(d)t,
Sa(n)(J)uan,
(2)(7),
Lin(z)A(u)stria,
(P)ra(g)ue,
Pr(o)fe(s)sor,
Doub(l)eLa(y)ering,

this gives the following letters as the underlined ones

tr18ednj27zupgosly

and that opens the zip file


EDIE:
dumb nick.. didn't count the spaces right... it works now.

PostPosted: Wed May 25, 2005 7:17 pm
Last edited by nhansard on Wed May 25, 2005 7:40 pm; edited 2 times in total
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nhansard
Decorated

Joined: 07 Apr 2005
Posts: 159

Images from ppics2.zip (virgil's solve). used for answers to thingstoask.
pic1.jpg
 Description   
 Filesize   173.06KB
 Viewed   174 Time(s)

pic1.jpg

pic2.jpg
 Description   
 Filesize   195.39KB
 Viewed   174 Time(s)

pic2.jpg

pic3.jpg
 Description   
 Filesize   855.94KB
 Viewed   160 Time(s)

pic3.jpg


PostPosted: Wed May 25, 2005 7:22 pm
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