The official Challenge 10 tips and hints thread

[TattyDoughnut]

Is it pig (like the animal) backwards?

[aq_ueous]

could 10b be a route cipher?

[BobD]

Perhaps the matrix on the crumpled paper is relevant?

[Might be, might not be (at least not in the way I think you mean), but it is a brilliant guess and I wish I had thought of it! Harry]

[Mattyrat2027]

@Cyvann I have no idea about the implications towards the cipher for 10B, but 2*5^3*13 is the product of prime factors for 3250.

——– New message ———-

It’s getting rather hard to work out which part of Challenge 10 everyone is referring to here…

[BobD]

No!!

 

[Yes? Harry]

[Harry]

If you followed the last hint then you will have found the sequence

TT LW MM DJ EA

which matches our template for the crib Tallmadge perfectly!

TT LW MM DJ EA

TA LL MA DG E-

This tells us that the pair TT encodes for ta, LW for ll, MM for ma, DJ for dg, so you can make those substitutions throughout the text and start to break it.

[Shinglington]

There’s this type of transposition cipher that I’ve found from doing research online, which is specifically related to one of the factors of 3250. It’s going to be such a pain to write a program for this niche cipher from a tiny hunch like this. I hope I’m not wasting my time by doing this D:

[Livia_022]

THANK YOU GUYS FOR THE HINTS 😭👍🏻

[firebreathingdragonhedgehog]

hi harry, was the hint earlier (about cribbing) for part 10a or 10b?

 

[It was for 10A and I have updated it to say that. Sorry about the ambiguity. Cribbing is a good idea for both though! Harry]

[newtonsapple]

Dear Harry,

If you feel that it doesn’t reveal too much, may I know the last two characters of the plaintext for 10B?

Thanks

[Nice try, but no! Do you think you might have cracked it? Harry]

[Yeetcadamy]

I think the text might have been padded at the end to get it to 3250 characters because the amount of x’s in the text is a bit high, and four of them appear at position 13 when you modulo by 26

[I am publishing this because it is a nice observation, but that is not to say whether or not it is helpful! Like the thinking. Harry]

[Crackerjack]

Is anything in the case files supposed to help us with 10B?

[Not directly, Harry]

[msjjmathsicloud-com-1]

Dear Harry
‘stew overt’ & have ‘fin’ – typos or a clue to 10B?

[Whoops, typos! Corrected now. Harry]

[f6exb]

I tried by writing the text on a row of 26 cubes 5*5*5 and reading the vertical slices. No success.
With two rows of 13 cubes, no result either.

[Nice idea. Harry]

[madness]

Back in October, when the slip of paper was released, I checked, and yes, it is an invertible matrix.
That makes it useful as a 3×3 Hill key. You may do as you wish with this information. But if it leads
nowhere, don’t get mad at me.

[How could we ever get mad at you? Harry

PS: Oh, I see. Yes, that could make us a bit mad. OK.]

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