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The National Cipher Challenge

The story

Viewing 8 posts - 31 through 38 (of 38 total)
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  • #98353
    USB-C_is_supreme
    Participant

    Why am I finding Part A harder than Part B in challenge 4?

    Because your puzzle master has a twisted worldview! Harry

    #98372
    bridges
    Participant

    what’s inerin?

    I wouldn’t normally post a question like this during a live challenge, but think of it as a free hint! As to the question, if you pay careful attention to the story, you already know! Harry

    #98411
    robb
    Participant

    @bridges #98372 Perhaps re-reading the answer to Challenge 1B will help you? … if you will allow the extra pointer Harry

    #97949
    Yeetcadamy
    Participant

    I believe that the bullet might state IVMDCCCLI (Caesar Cipher) – Jan 5th, 1851 (or potentially May 1st, 1851, but considering Babbage to be British, I would imagine it to be the former)

    #98498
    Team_Name_Goes_Here
    Participant

    Don’t know whether this helps anything or if this was a random fact, but because the Great Exhibition was placed in a park (Hyde?), Sparrows used to nest in the windowsills and make a mess of the floor! Bit of Useful/Useless knowledge that I hope interests you!

    #98551
    JH_Maths
    Participant

    Since it’s near the end of the week and the hints have been posted in the case files, I think it’s okay to talk about my experience with challenge 5B, which consisted predomaninatly of trying every transposition cipher I could think of for an afternoon, having seen the frequency distribution. I’d seen the allusion to Vigenere in 5A, but had guessed it was going to be a clue for challenge 6+.

    So the realisation that not only was it Vigenere, but a choice of key word I should have guessed, and one that left the majority of the text unencrypted, made me feel a little foolish. But leaving a lot of unchanged text *would* make the frequencies look a lot like transposition – so I conclude that our puzzlemaster is a cruel one that enjoys the sound people make while they’re kicking themselves. You win this round. *Shakes fist*.

    #98600
    RickOShea
    Participant

    Although I wasn’t around in 1851, I am quite old. I seem to remember that telegraph messages and telegrams started with the code “ZZZZ” and concluded with the code “NNNN”. This was to allow the operator to distinguish the individual messages received at any one station. Was this a common (universal) practice?

    #98839
    Mrs-Robot
    Participant

    I wonder how long it takes for the characters to decrypt the messages with just pen and paper. I imagine it’d take a few hours at most

Viewing 8 posts - 31 through 38 (of 38 total)
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