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Post by fennster on Feb 8, 2019 15:01:42 GMT -5
Confirming the number of steps and what those steps are is very very very helpful I would say. If there are more hints as to what the Vigenere Cipher (key phrase) is, then I think many of us will look for those. I know I certainly will. I will be going BOTG again in late March or April. If this gives even the slightest bit of clue for the location, I'm happy to put the energy towards it.
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Post by brydena on Feb 8, 2019 18:24:21 GMT -5
Thanks Jenny. That was more than enough of a clue. It's nice to know we are on the right path. It's even more nice to know the order of the Vig. This will save alot of time switching between webpages trying to apply the vig to all 3 of the options.
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Post by zaphod73491 on Feb 9, 2019 0:21:18 GMT -5
So you all want a clue? You can just ask you know. No one has. I'll release a clue at the end of March! Until then know that the correct order of letters has been confirmed--- and all that needs done is the Vigenere Cipher to provide a different set of letters to rearrange with the last page of numbers. There were clues for all this within the book which are being missed..... No matter, all will be revealed soon! You should realize, many puzzles, like Kryptos for example, go on for YEARS.... it's been a few months. And I've been more than willing to help those who wanted it. So you know the process: 1)Puzzle Pieces give letters via a book code (clues understood for this) 2)Those letters rearranged by Magic Square (clues mostly found for this) 3)Vigenere Cipher applied (clues for this missed) 4)rearrange again by numbers on back page SOLVED! Jenny we appreciate you giving out a clue on it, but know the reason no one has asked you for a clue (at least my best guess) is pride. We don't want to seem "weak" coming to the author asking for another clue. I guess a lot of us would just rather hold on to our dignity and assume the end is not worth the effort...and just leave it, instead of asking for help where we know a few did not and solved it. IronWill: I think you've done a good job of capturing my feelings on the puzzle. If it's well-designed, then there will be no need to contact the puzzle-designer. I would say Jenny did an excellent job on the first two stages of the puzzle, and the fourth stage is pretty obvious (with just 2 variants). But stage 3 is unsolvable without finding the keyphrase, and the keyphrase isn't in the book -- at least word for word it isn't. I like crypto challenges that can be solved through traditional avenues of attack. This is not such a problem (and I can prove it, but it's too technical for this audience). Jenny didn't intend stage 3 to be solved by cryptanalysis. We're supposed to try phrases or sentences from her book that are Fenn-relevant. I'm a crypto-guy, so I hate this revelation: basically it's a problem that doesn't play to my strengths.
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Post by zaphod73491 on Feb 9, 2019 0:28:03 GMT -5
I have some ideas I'm going to try this weekend. I've created a corpus of Fenn Quotes from Mysterious Writings as well as scrapbooks and I think its possible to perform a brute force attack on it. If the code written is custom, the decrypting stage can include the final step of applying the 1-80 transposition. I'm a hobby programmer and will program something along the lines of this: practicalcryptography.com/cryptanalysis/stochastic-searching/cryptanalysis-vigenere-cipher-part-2/Using QuadGrams from the custom Fenn corpus I've created, I think its possible to attempt this. Each k permutation with repetitions on a group of four is 456,976 perms. Bucketizing the 80 character ciphertext into 20 4 character "buckets" yields only 9,139,520 total attacks, and combining the highest scoring quadgram buckets should be fairly trivial. I'll let you know how it goes and upload any code I'll create to a github account. Afraid you will not be successful. I wrote Hill-climbing code to simultaneously solve for Jenny's keyphrase and Forrest's message using log tetragraphs. Unfortunately, 80 letters is too short to converge on the solution.
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Post by harrytruman on Feb 9, 2019 12:22:01 GMT -5
Zap, are you willing to say how you know the keyphrase isn't in the book?
I'm not sure if Jenny is saying (above) that the keyphrase is in the book or just that she hinted at the need to apply Vignere somewhere in the book. Beyond that, I think I remember her saying that "everything we need" is in the book, but this might have been with respect to the "forgotten word," or I might just be mis-remembering.
Even if the keyphrase is some particular phrase in the book, it now seems like the chore (not sure it's a "challenge") is to just continue hunting for and plugging in possible phrases.
If it's not in the book, then it seems to me that GeneticBlend and whoever else solved it really just got lucky (after being frustrated for a long time).
I'm not saying that's the case. My guess/hope right now is that there is some kind of hint somewhere in the book that not only indicates Vignere but also indicates the phrase to use.
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mcb
Junior Member
Posts: 68
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Post by mcb on Feb 9, 2019 12:58:16 GMT -5
Phrases that can give hints or clues:
"The Treasure you are looking for is waiting for you in the place you least expect it."
"The difference between living an ordinary life and living an extraordinary life is simply adding the extra pds"
"There is a hidden treasure in every problem. It is your job to find it."
"Embrace the unknown. It is only there you will find your treasure."
"THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHO YOU ARE AND WHO YOU WANT TO BE IS WHAT YOU DECIDE TO DO EACH DAY"
"today isnt rehearsal its your life capture it"
The 20 keys mean "Seek treasure".
>> "In the waves of change we often find true purpose" <<
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Post by justsomerando on Feb 9, 2019 13:03:54 GMT -5
Afraid you will not be successful. I wrote Hill-climbing code to simultaneously solve for Jenny's keyphrase and Forrest's message using log tetragraphs. Unfortunately, 80 letters is too short to converge on the solution. Hi Zap, thank you for you're feedback. If its not too much of a bother, could you explain why it takes a longer sequence to converge on a solution? I'm not a cryptanalyst, just a hobby programmer who likes little projects like these. Also, I agree that these sort of attacks aren't in spirit with the book or the challenge, whatever I do, I wont contribute any findings of those sorts. My bad
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Post by ironwill on Feb 9, 2019 16:09:23 GMT -5
Zap, are you willing to say how you know the keyphrase isn't in the book? I'm not sure if Jenny is saying (above) that the keyphrase is in the book or just that she hinted at the need to apply Vignere somewhere in the book. Beyond that, I think I remember her saying that "everything we need" is in the book, but this might have been with respect to the "forgotten word," or I might just be mis-remembering. Even if the keyphrase is some particular phrase in the book, it now seems like the chore (not sure it's a "challenge") is to just continue hunting for and plugging in possible phrases. If it's not in the book, then it seems to me that GeneticBlend and whoever else solved it really just got lucky (after being frustrated for a long time). I'm not saying that's the case. My guess/hope right now is that there is some kind of hint somewhere in the book that not only indicates Vignere but also indicates the phrase to use. Hey Harry. It's a good question, but Zaphod has tried so hard like each of us maybe you should just understand he might have misspoke about that? She said the CLUES pointing towards the Vigenere phrase were missed (speaking of all us complainers ) That means there's more than one that is in the book that might make up the key phrase? I will give you guys some ideas...which I haven't investigated yet due to "desire." They are... 1- Look at all of the Puzzle pieces and the page they are on. Try the following... A- try the page that each are on with repeating alphabetical assignment?
B- Notice that a lot of the puzzle pieces are tied to the same page as book puzzles. Are there any common factors from each of the puzzle?
2- Are there any quotes looking at "DISCOVER" that could be used within the book?
3- Are there any places in the book that contain a quote associated with the numbers 34 or 80? Remember 34 just popped up on the SUM sodoku out of the blue. Perhaps it ties to something...a page? a phrase?
I wish I could help more, but I suppose our fates are tied to the end of March or .....
at the point when GENETIC decides to speak up.
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Post by justsomerando on Feb 9, 2019 18:39:33 GMT -5
Jenny, I would like to ask this: Is the Key Phrase used to Decrypt the Vigenere step intelligable? Or does it look like another Ciphertext?
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Post by fennster on Feb 10, 2019 0:22:18 GMT -5
"The difference between living an ordinary life and living an extraordinary life is simply adding the extra pds" I guess that's the solution for Page 54. I still can't seem to make heads or tails of even with this. Apparently I am just awful at Vigenere ciphers. What I find interesting about this puzzle solution is the end. What is the pds all about? That really stands out as a possible clue. Anyone have thoughts on that? Do we have to add "pds" or multiple "pd"s to the end of a key phrase to make it work?
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Post by foolsgold on Feb 10, 2019 2:44:18 GMT -5
Thank you, MCB. It's starting to make sense now.
The vigenere solution you posted is slightly incorrect. This, in its turn, is due to the key phrase being a little off.
Correct key:
GETYOURQUESTONWITHMW
Correct decryption:
The difference between living an ordinary life and living an extraordinary life is simply adding the extra to it.
If I'm not mistaken, the key phrase is a solution to one of the other puzzles in the book. So, I conject that the correct code for the Forrest's words vigenere will be one of the sentences that resulted from solving other puzzles, perhaps, even this one.
On the phone now, so can't really check them all. I'll try later, or perhaps, Zaph or Iron will beat me to it.
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Post by fennster on Feb 10, 2019 12:46:16 GMT -5
I would not be surprised by that. Either that or the puzzle solutions that are tied to parts of the book dealing with Fenn have clues leading us to the right phrase. Like "Seek High And Low And You Will Find Treasure" That clue is at the end of Fenns Foreword and could be telling us something.
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Post by fennster on Feb 10, 2019 12:54:35 GMT -5
Here's a thought I just had.
The first part of the puzzle with the puzzle pieces is linked to the first part of the book about Forrest aka the Foreward.
The second part of the puzzle has to do with the magic square in the second part of the book about Forrest aka the bit in Part 2 about TTOTC starting on page 57.
The last part of the puzzle that we now know completes the whole thing by transcribing our result for the Vigenere cipher to the final numbers is on the last page of the book.
So maybe the third part of the puzzle otherwise known as the cipher key phrase can be found in that third section dealing with FF and TTOTC. This goes from Page 101 all the way to Page 208.
That's a lot of book to cover, but I would think whatever puzzles are in this section (there are few) would have a higher likelihood to be pointing us in the right direction. Also, I would think this would be a phrase that would stand out and likely would be a direct quote from Forrest.
Just food for thought.
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Post by zaphod73491 on Feb 10, 2019 15:52:04 GMT -5
Fennster: that has been my assumption. That there is a sequential order to solving the 4 stages that follows the order of the book, and that the source material for the keyphrase logically must follow the location of the magic square and be a Fenn-relevant section of the book.
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Post by zaphod73491 on Feb 10, 2019 15:57:56 GMT -5
If I'm not mistaken, the key phrase is a solution to one of the other puzzles in the book. So, I conject that the correct code for the Forrest's words vigenere will be one of the sentences that resulted from solving other puzzles, perhaps, even this one. Unfortunately, apparently not. It's not word-for-word, from what I've been told. Maybe the alteration is minor: like a pronoun/verb tense change to redirect a quote at the reader.
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