Reply To: Challenge 10B
We (father and son (age 13) team) wrote down some thoughts well before the first clue was revealed and they have not yet appeared on the forum…we’re taking that as a hint that those might well be good ideas! Having said that, after that point we’ve been stumped for the last few days. We think what we originally found is too much of a coincidence to not be significant in some way, though we are struggling to find what way!
We see the “REPORT” crib idea (from CF 10.2) and if you just read the ciphertext from left to right it’s clear that “7C” (7 of clubs) ties to the letter “R”…but (1) after that it’s really not obvious how to guess at other letters and using a hill climb approach has not yielded anything useful thus far and (2) doesn’t that seem a little too “simple” in that we get directly from the ciphertext to the plaintext in one step. We think Harry is too devious to give us that as 10B! Therefore, we think we need to find a way to translate the cards into letters but those letters may not be the final plaintext and may need another decryption method applied…BUT that then goes against us assuming we can directly see “REPORT” in the ciphertext…so we are thoroughly confused. Anyone else in the same boat?!