unforum

[Grizy]

Fuseunderground,
I think your grid is close to where i came in on this puzzle. Apparently there are prime numbers in the cipher which a grid that uses multiplication can't handle.
The simplicity of the 24 by 25 grid just counting each cell sequentially is:-
It covers all numbers between 1 & 600.
It "Count"s with ref to vons clue.
It points to 2 letters in sequence for each number.

The downside is that the output is gibberish. The text may become clearer by rotating the grid but I haven't got that far yet.

Saturday night and the beer is calling.

[hally]

I now have two sets of letters:

The Original (possibly wrong)

IA NO AH LW
KE SZ OU ME
ET HW SA BY HX
FN IZ IM
IN AE
TX RY
MA ST

The New Letters

IY NN AH LR
KD SY OT MD
ES HV RZ BX HW
FM IY IL
IM AE
TW RX
LZ SS

Now I'm in a muddle because the whole exam thing in the first set of letters seems spot on. Perhaps the message is a combination of the two sets.

[ALISDAIRPARK]

I get a completely different set of numbers, but stil not making sense

[hally]

What letters are you getting ALISDAIRPARK?

[Fuseunderground]

Sorry, yes I realise that my grid couldn't cope with primes,
I was just stating another way 25x24 could make 600.

Wasn't there a translation a while back with no primes?

I am thinking the message could be something like
"...what is the answer to question 13?"
which would mean a prime could indicate an actual number.

Alternatively it could be along the lines of
"...I fancy 'X' " which would include a name.

Just more food for thought,
I'm sure the Perplexians would have much
more 'high-brow' notes though

[Grizy]

None of the suggested options are without merit.

Von's clue states

[ramsfan]

I thought I'd summarise the different strands, partly cos I'm getting confused, but also cos last time I did this, someone corrected my mistakes, then the next person provided the answer. I've simplified it to the extent that I've not included all the alternative numbering systems you come across.

The letters appear to be Hebrew rather that Yiddish. That's been confirmed by a Hebrew speaker and also I took my card to a batmitzvah (no one asked me to play). It can't be translated directly. That might be different if we manipulated the letters as below, but seems unlikely to be required.

Hebrew reads right to left, but the way everything lines up to the left, suggests it should be read left to right. The shadowy letters suggest the possibility of a 90 degree rotation, possibly of numbers on a grid.

The two main manipulations are called Atbash and Atlam. They assume the standard 22 letter alphabet. Atbash then swaps 1 for 22, 2 for 21 etc. Atlam does a rot11 on them, ie 1 becomes 12 etc. The thing against both of these is that the 4th letter in the 4th line appears to be the 23rd letter, added for numerical purposes.

The other way of translating letters into numbers is called Gemetria. It's the same as the standard numbering up to 10. Then it goes in multiples of 10 up to 100, then in multiples of 100. The standard 22 letter alphabet only goes up to 400, but extra letters have been added to cover 500-900 (hence my referring to the 23rd letter).

Applying Gemetria to the message provides the solution which starts with 208. They all make sense until the 1st letter of the 6th line which is a 5 where it should be a 500 (or other multiple of 100). Von's hint could apply here. It suggests that a group or groups of letters should be separated so that one letter goes to the other letter group. Perhaps this group should be separated into 5 and 17. Grizy's ingenious suggestion is that this group indicates numbers, eg a meeting time. Von's hint starts with count which may support gemetria, but could equally apply to the standard numbering of the 22 letter alphabet. The rest of the message could just indicate the complexity of our task, or could mean we have to halve or double the answers.

XY=600 points to the numbers being translated into 2 letter combinations. Gemetria produces some numbers which can't be translated, eg 305, which factors into 5 and 61. Grizy's grid deals with this by numbering the letter combinations sequentially. Unfortunately it doesn't provide as likely looking answers as Hally, who had used a straightforward factor grid but made some errors.

So come on. The next person tell me what I've got wrong and the one after that, give us the answer. I can feel we're almost there.

[BBuck]

Sorry to say that I think you've got it all pretty spot on...

The only thing I'd sort of disagree with is

[ALISDAIRPARK]

Yeah I think most of the thought streams are there. I'm going to pull together a flowchart to show the various options, which might help clarify things - or at least we can be more systematic and cross things off once done.

On that point I think we need to peer review outputs. By this I don't mean we all need to agree the one form of grid is right, but that based on the grid used no errors have been made etc. so basically double checking our work. Let's face it it's easy to make errors!

Just on the grid debate, if we went for the values based on multiplication we end up with numbers not on the grid and duplicates, so I don't think it's that. Likewise I don't think we are supposed to work back from a number, getting it's factors and trying to determine the original letters as there are so many permutations to that. (see my previous post).

[Maxamus]

Hi been following the progress

i think you are pretty close but i think you are not using enough letter grids
a few pages ago someone mentioned a Two-hill cipher
this was one ordinary alphabet and the rest of the letters where in a different order in the second grid

Has anyone tried this yet

[BBuck]

I'm not sure what you mean by Two-hill cipher (can't find the reference in the thread).

[ALISDAIRPARK]

Ok this is a basic flowchart of options. If anyone thinks of other routes let me know and I will update it.

EDIT: Included book code, and character spacings.

[Maxamus]

Sorry looks like it wasent mentioned earlier but i found this and it has some relevance to do with the grids

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-square_cipher

It could also fit in with Vons clue

[Maxamus]

OK i put Vons clue into the search engine and it came up with this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ww

If its been covered before i apoligise but i thought it might be useful

[ALISDAIRPARK]

The 2 square cipher looks interesting, although based on what it says it looks like brute force is our only hope of cracking it. there isn't enough text and the only duplicate at all is in the atbashed text.