Did I waste my time?
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On part B of the practice, I deciphered it, but since it was set into many 4 letter blocks, I assumed I had to make those blocks into words, so I spent like half an hour separating them into words, but left ones that I could not complete in the finished thing, then pasted it into the challenge; it still said I completed it, despite there being jumbled words still. Please tell me if I’m crazy or not, thanks.
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Not crazy at all. The 4 letter blocks are just how the message is laid out and the checker ignores spaces completely so it only looks at the letters. So for future reference, you didn’t need to split it into words! To quote the Scoring section of the Rules:
A solution will only be deemed to be correct if, disregarding the punctuation [and spacing], the deciphered plaintext (only involving the Roman characters A to Z) is letter perfect as compared to our master solution. UPPER or lower case solutions will be treated the same.
– EotS
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I did the exact same thing too. Turns out it doesn’t matter so we’ll see
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I think the system just checks that the letters are correct, regardless of spacing. However, I have previously been told to fix parts if I put a space between an address in the wrong spot. I would suggest putting the spacing in, especially considering the points its worth don’t drop in just 30 min. It helps with readability, and if you are told you are wrong, its often easier to scan through the text and highlight a mistake. Also, its genuinely useful to keep a copy of each plaintext in a separate file, like a word doc, so that you can find any links between weeks that might provide context for a keyword or cipher type, without having to go back and forth between different pages on the site.
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Dear… I did the same for Part B of the first challenge and spent half an hour.
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If you made a function that roughly did that, it might come in marginally helpful in a later challenge?
(if part A has clues to part B you’ll be able to read it faster + more easily)
I made a function that… tries to do so. However it does come up with a LOT of nonsense.
case in point:
if you made af unction that roughly did that it might come in marginally helpful in ala ter challenge if part aha sc lu est op art by ou ll bea b let ore ad it faster more easily im ade af unction thatt r ie st o doso however itd o es come up withal ot of nonsense-
There is an NLP library in Python called wordninja which can be used to split a block of text into words. It’s not perfect obviously, but does a good job with most strings. Similar to what you said it does help read the deciphered to text to look for any hints/cribs before the official plaintext is up.
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I advise that you submit your decrypt in the same form that the
ciphertext is set (unless your decoding alters it, or it is a
double decrypt cipher) if it passes then you can take your time
wording it out after submitting it.Why? Well in later challenges there are time bands and points.
Suppose it is comming up to the end of the first band for max points
and you have 5 mins before it passes, you have just got a pass. You
do not want to take 30+ mins wording it out only to miss the points
and to get the next bands lesser points, do you?Remember that ONLY the LETTERS (A . . Z) will be checked in SEQUENCE for a match
no matter what is placed between them.
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