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[LuxCal]

Could this be perhaps in a foreign language, where the "extra" five symbols refer to letters with accents? German wouldn't work, since they only have a single accent, which isn't placed over the e or i. They do have a "sz" letter which looks like a lower-case (greek) beta, but that only brings the total to 30. French is another story; there are at least (it's been a while) four different accents, making the total number of "letters" much larger.

Unfortunately, my french sucks, or I might try to work it out...

[plikma]

Hi! I'm the person using the handle "Quentin Smith" over there by the way.

[jeremo]

what if we tried to attribute letters and symbols to the signs by shape? I know, that would take a lot of fudging around, and it's extremely interpretive, but why not? other thoughts:

do we have the page oriented the right way?

[LuxCal]

[catherwood]

With "word" lengths that long without a break, and an alphabet using more than 18-20 symbols (in this case more than 26), I might offer some other possibilities.

Maybe take similar symbols, group them by type or common characteristics. Then there could be 2 or 3 symbols all mapping to the same alphabetic letter. (I forget if there is a term for this sort of redundancy, multi-to-single mapping?)

Or, take the symbols in pairs or triplets. Are there any repeated groups or patterns? That would then reduce to a single-substitution, but sets of symbols would stand for a single letter.

I haven't tried either of these ideas on this puzzle, I'm just tossing out things i've seen in the past.

[LuxCal]

[WolfHawk]

Maybe each symbol is a word?

[thorlin]

I think we need to be clear as to what we're looking for. Maybe it's a bad idea to take the instructions literally, but they state

"The encryption database has identified some of what the note says... apparently it is instructions for the recipient to post a number of signs around town. We think that no more than 3 different signs could have been made without anyone noticing. If we knew what they said, we could track down this Underground member in our midst."

If we believe this statement, and believe that what we are seeing is the entire note, then it should include the instructions for posting the signs. Additionally, the answer they are looking for is what the 3 signs say, so therefore the note includes that as well.

So this note should include the instructions for posting the the signs as well as what they say. Also, it states they have identified "some of what the note says". I thought I saw a previous post about someone asking for that piece of the translation from Lisa, however now I can't find it.

Anyway...just some thoughts.

[amandathehunter]

Since we all pretty much seem to agree that it means words, and is most likely in english, we've got to figure out what each sign stands for.

The most commonly used letter in the english langauge (by a long shot) is "e".

So look at the paper, find which symbol occurs the most, and replace it with E.

Here's what you get. (. are untranslated symbols)

E...........
.........E......
.....E........
...
E.......
.........
...E.....E.E...
E...E
....

Now this is just a guess, basing it off the most common letter in this message being an E. If we had some type of key, or part of the message, this would snap into place.

[LuxCal]

[thorlin]

I'm not sure it is going to help, but I've messaged Lisa (person making the task assignment) for the partial translation they have. Maybe we'll get something back that works as a key.

[notgordian]

LuxCal--in the past, some puzzles that have remained unsolved had solution counts ranging between 2-6(ish) as the PMs checked the system to make sure it works properly. So the fact that 2 people are reported to have solved the puzzle does not necessarily guarantee the answer is easy. I would assume that is the case here, as they would want to check everything is in order.

[LuxCal]

[thorlin]

Well, asking Lisa for some information didn't get me anywhere. Her response:

[LuxCal]