Reply To: !
@the_cryptographer_formerly_known_as_madness Perhaps not, but I had hoped that you (or one of the other regulars) might be able to have a shot at it.
You are correct that there is no canonical way to chose the assignment (I would argue this is still somewhat a problem with the standard hill cipher, as ideally we would want that a change of alphabet indexing plays nicely with the matrix algebra). The encryption was done using this (terrible) python code:
######################
import numpy as np
import galois
alphabet = “ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY”
F = galois.GF(25)
text = “”.join([i for i in “??????”])
blocks = [text[3*i:3*i+3] for i in range(len(text)//3)]
nums = F([[alphabet.index(j) for j in i] for i in blocks]).transpose()
key = F([[?,?,?],[?,?,?],[?,?,?]])
encrypted = key.dot(nums).transpose()
encrypted_matrix = [[alphabet[int(j)] for j in i] for i in encrypted]
encrypted_text = “”.join([“”.join(i) for i in encrypted_matrix])
###########################
As to your suggestion of a duel, I am normally quite opposed to them (you could say I am dual to them). But how dare you refer to me with “thee”. Thou hast dishonored me and shalt be striken down.
OK chaps, we are all for a little friendly rivalry, but duels are definitely beyond the pale. Let’s all keep our honour and avoid any strickening! Remember, the Elves work for Santa as well as BOSS and no-one wants to end up on the naughty list (Santa’s OR Harry’s!)