The story
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Why am I finding Part A harder than Part B in challenge 4?
Because your puzzle master has a twisted worldview! Harry
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
@bridges #98372 Perhaps re-reading the answer to Challenge 1B will help you? … if you will allow the extra pointer Harry
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)
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!
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*.
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?
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
Charles Babbage born 26 December 1791… Happy Babbage day!
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