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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Perplex City » PXC: Project Syzygy Pre-Game
[UPDATE] Postcard
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Seej
Unfettered


Joined: 30 Nov 2004
Posts: 614

WolverineFan wrote:

Gibberish any way I slice it... Hope this doesn't count as brute force Smile


I think you only need to worry about brute force when it comes to finding out passwords etc. Various crypto techniques are effectively a brute force attack on the ciphertext (e.g. frequency analysis) and unless it's in some way obvious what method of analysis we should be using I think you're pretty much good to try what you like. However....

WolverineFan wrote:

Here's what I tried:
o The strings:
'Image on reverse: \'Perplex City Sleeps\' (artist unknown), #02 in a series of postcards depicting the city at night. The full set is available from the Academy gift shop.',
'Despite heightened security Academy tours are still running twice daily from gatehouse twelve. Advance booking essential.',
'Adamek Carrick Delaney Kermeen Noi Taversen Zeller quaerere initium sapientiae',
'quaerere initium sapientiae Adamek Carrick Delaney Kermeen Noi Taversen Zeller',
'November 23 2004 My friends - I need your help. Cube - Missing. Presumed Stolen. Not enough room to explain here. Too risky. Your assistance will be rewarded. More contact to follow - stay alert. Yours in hope, Sente',
'My friends - I need your help.Cube - Missing.Presumed Stolen.Not enough room to explain here.Too risky.Your assistance will be rewarded.More contact to follow - stay alert. Yours in hope, Sente',
'November 23 2004My friends - I need your help.Cube - Missing.Presumed Stolen.Not enough room to explain here.Too risky.Your assistance will be rewarded.More contact to follow - stay alert. Yours in hope, Sente',

o I tried starting the count from 0 and 1 for the first letter of each string, though since one of the pairs is 00 it's unlikely that would be useful.
o I tried using an offset of 2, 2, 1, 0, 22, 10 to each string. I also tried doing that starting with 1 as the first character.
o I tried with all punctuation (including spaces), without spaces, without any punctuation at all
o I tried with and without ROT-13 too (just to be safe). I think I did the ROT right, I rotated each letter character 13 places and ignored non-letter characters. (as I said, not a crypto person)

There were something like 400 combinations total, nothing but gibberish. I'd post the results but I don't think it'll help anyone. If anyone wants to see the results or has a suggestion for something else I should try let me know. Especially if you see any typos in my source strings... That would be bad.


I already tried quite a few of those mate Wink . Not complaining; it's just sometimes worth checking what's already been done. I listed them to save you the effort (and to save anyone else pulling their hair out like I did). Still, it's cool that you're trying too.

WolverineFan wrote:

One quick note: The WIKI has a typo in the vertical string, it says "hightened" but the card actually says "heightened". Could have been important if I was on to something Smile


Now sorted - well spotted.

PostPosted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 6:08 pm
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WolverineFan
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Joined: 30 Dec 2004
Posts: 192
Location: Michigan/USA

Seej wrote:
I already tried quite a few of those mate Wink . Not complaining; it's just sometimes worth checking what's already been done. I listed them to save you the effort (and to save anyone else pulling their hair out like I did). Still, it's cool that you're trying too.


Yeah, I noticed you tried the main body of the text on the postcard with the date (which is where I got the idea to do this), but I figured I'd throw it in with and without the date just for fun. Plus I wanted to try the shifting by 2, 1, -1, 22, 10, etc. Unfortunately, it's still just gibberish... Ah well. Maybe we have a date with an EOIPH soon Very Happy

PostPosted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 6:19 pm
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penguinwhoflew
Guest


www.perplexcity.com was flipped.

what if the semacode to it is too.

cant do it myself cause i dont know how, but i think its worth a try to see what the semacode of www.perplexcity.com is upside down.

PostPosted: Thu Dec 30, 2004 10:01 pm
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Nik_Doof
Unfettered


Joined: 09 Oct 2004
Posts: 494
Location: Liverpool, UK

penguinwhoflew wrote:
www.perplexcity.com was flipped.

what if the semacode to it is too.

cant do it myself cause i dont know how, but i think its worth a try to see what the semacode of www.perplexcity.com is upside down.


unreadable, as its a DataMatrix with ECC200, flipping it would make it unreadable...or come out backwards Smile
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 11:21 am
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tanner
Entrenched


Joined: 21 May 2003
Posts: 875
Location: (x,y,z,t,i, ...)+

thats it!!!!!!

perplex city runs backwards in time --- by the time we find the cube it will be before they actually lost it Very Happy Very Happy Very Happy Very Happy
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 11:31 am
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Nik_Doof
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Joined: 09 Oct 2004
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Location: Liverpool, UK

tanner wrote:
thats it!!!!!!

perplex city runs backwards in time --- by the time we find the cube it will be before they actually lost it Very Happy Very Happy Very Happy Very Happy


(gets is wild spec hat on)

Woah, by the time the ARG finishes Zeller will be alive Smile
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Nik_Doof
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 11:37 am
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Black Cat
Boot


Joined: 09 Oct 2004
Posts: 29
Location: UK

And when we get to the end we will be at the beginning so we can start over again! Very Happy
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 11:39 am
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Daffy889
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Joined: 25 Aug 2004
Posts: 493
Location: South Australia

tanner wrote:
thats it!!!!!!

perplex city runs backwards in time --- by the time we find the cube it will be before they actually lost it Very Happy Very Happy Very Happy Very Happy


Couldn't we just warn them to keep a better watch on it so they don't lose it to begin with?

PostPosted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 11:43 am
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WolverineFan
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Joined: 30 Dec 2004
Posts: 192
Location: Michigan/USA

Yet more permutations...

o I didn't know the length of the blacked out portion of the original Sente letter, so I tried that paragraph with everything from 4 to 7 characters
o I added offsets 12 and 24 (the gatehouses for tours and staff respectively)
o I changed the "original" text to treat all whitespace as a single space (but since there's really no way to determine how much whitespace there is in a photo/graphic/handwritten note, I almost didn't bother to include it at all).
o Someone mentioned that the original number might be base 9 due to the lack of 9's (there also aren't any 7's so I suspect it's just a coincidence) but I tried converting each pair of numbers from base 9 to 10 just for fun.

See all ~5000 results of mainly gibberish with a random word here and there:
http://wiki.incognitus.net/files/ppc/allstrings_base10.txt (Base 10)
http://wiki.incognitus.net/files/ppc/allstrings_base9.txt (Base 9)

PostPosted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 3:35 pm
Last edited by WolverineFan on Sat Jan 01, 2005 9:10 am; edited 1 time in total
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tanner
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Joined: 21 May 2003
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Quote:
Couldn't we just warn them to keep a better watch on it so they don't lose it to begin with?


sounds like a good idea but then they wouldnt tell us us they lost it -- and then we wouldnt warn them so theyd lose it -- so then we'd get the message and warn them and then ............ oh god


Very Happy Very Happy
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"And the princess and the prince discuss what's real and what is not,
But it doesn't matter inside the Gates of Eden" - BD


PostPosted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 4:44 pm
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WhiteGulls
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Joined: 08 Aug 2004
Posts: 331
Location: Portland

Ah, temporal anomolies. Arn't they fun! =P I loved trying to figure that stuff out on Star Trek. "So, if they do this, and stop that, then... huuuuuuh? How do they plan on keeping that stopped, because now they.... my head hurts." Then, you just accept that it spawned a new timeline, and that we're doomed to a cycle of brain-busting pain.
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 8:50 pm
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Seej
Unfettered


Joined: 30 Nov 2004
Posts: 614

penguinwhoflew wrote:
www.perplexcity.com was flipped.

what if the semacode to it is too.

cant do it myself cause i dont know how, but i think its worth a try to see what the semacode of www.perplexcity.com is upside down.


Speaking of which, does anyone know of a way for those of us who don't have mobile phones w/ the right functions to interpret semacode? I could make sense of it given the rules (which don't seem to be on their site but I could be wrong) and I'm prepared to write some very dirty C to analyse it, but I still think someone with more skillZ than me ought to make it possible to read it.

And I only mention this because on the bottle of Benylin I'm using to make my cough better there's a teeny semacode (which I assume is a link to the medicine site, but hey).

Uh, anyway, no results on the number doing what I said above but I haven't really tried much yet given the time of year......

PostPosted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 12:25 am
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Enigmaster
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Joined: 16 Nov 2004
Posts: 274
Location: Jersey, CI

We've had this for so long now I don't know whats been tried and what hasn't with these numbers, but here goes; has anyone attempted to put the binary of the number into a grid of corresponding black and white squares and run that through a semacode reader?
Appologies if its already been done of course Smile
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 3:59 pm
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Nik_Doof
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Joined: 09 Oct 2004
Posts: 494
Location: Liverpool, UK

for it to be valid, u would need 16-12 1s to denote black squares, as u can see the left and bottom of the barcode is solid black to make it valid. Try it en all u never know Smile

I was looking to see if there was like codes produced with the datamatrix (like you see on normal barcodes) but i couldnt find eout.
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No you cant have my 333 Letimark Very Happy


PostPosted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 5:41 pm
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KevDude
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Joined: 01 Sep 2004
Posts: 78

I'd like to announce that that postcard has OFFICIALLY taken longer to solve then where.gif. Unless of course, we don't have all the info we need to solve it yet or the the numbers and the maze aren't actually puzzles. But if they are solveable and we have all the needed info, we have broken unbreakable records in poor solving! YAY!

PostPosted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 10:26 pm
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