Clue

[harrytruman]

Zap, it seems to me that your second possibility is more likely. I’m guessing that she changed the first and fifth words of some “known” Fenn phrase. As you suggest, she might have changed a “he” to a “they,” making the “he” hidden within the “they,” etc.

Wouldn’t doing this twice within the first five words throw off your code?

[mcb]

Apr 2, 2019 12:00:13 GMT -5 zaphod73491 said:

McB: Jenny confirmed what I shared long ago -- that the keyphrase is not a word-for-word match with a phrase found in the book, but it is close. Could be the order of a couple clauses is swapped, or a pronoun or two (and their associated verbs) were changed to make the phrase more general -- e.g. to make it sound like it's directed at us collectively rather than a single individual.

Now what I find interesting (disturbing?) is that Jenny has implied that if my code could find the right keyphrase if 25 consecutive letters are identical with what's in the book, then that code should have found it. Therefore, there are two possibilities: my file is missing the keyphrase she used (possible), or the 25+ letter match is NOT contained within the first 28 letters of the phrase (more likely). (The reason this is relevant is that only the first 28 letters of the keyphrase are repeated.)

I can try another tack: if a decent fraction of the unchanged portion of the keyphrase is included within the first 28 letters, I may still be able to find it.

I tried a few sentences / words separating the first and second part too (52/28) but nothing so far. The fact that it is not an exact phrase leaves the challenge a little pointless. It's like trying to guess the name of every member of a family that lives in China. It can be anything like: "Finding a treasure chest your problems will disappear at dusk."

[zaphod73491]

Apr 2, 2019 12:10:23 GMT -5 harrytruman said:

Zap, it seems to me that your second possibility is more likely. I’m guessing that she changed the first and fifth words of some “known” Fenn phrase. As you suggest, she might have changed a “he” to a “they,” making the “he” hidden within the “they,” etc.

Wouldn’t doing this twice within the first five words throw off your code?

Hi Harry: it would if no 25-consecutive-letter sequence in the result could be found in the original. But Jenny suggested this isn't the case because she said my code should have found it -- i.e., that there ARE 25 consecutive letters (or more) that match the original phrase. Now if most of those 25 letters are not in the first 28 letters of her keyphrase, my code might miss it because not enough of them are duplicated at the end. Best case I've got 50 letters to score (e.g. 1-25 plus their repeats at 53-77) -- more than adequate. Worse case I've got 26 if those 25 are at positions 28-52 since only the one at position 28 would be repeated at position 80.

Now, I think the odds that I just happened to throw out the number 25 and Jenny said my code should have found it means that it's unlikely there are ONLY 25 consecutive unchanged letters. There could be more -- especially if the changes are near the beginning.

[mcb]

Apr 2, 2019 12:10:23 GMT -5 harrytruman said:

Zap, it seems to me that your second possibility is more likely. I’m guessing that she changed the first and fifth words of some “known” Fenn phrase. As you suggest, she might have changed a “he” to a “they,” making the “he” hidden within the “they,” etc.

Wouldn’t doing this twice within the first five words throw off your code?

Or maybe, subtracted the first and fifth words??

[banjo]

"Hidden" and "so" appear at the bottom of p.176, but I can't get it to work.

[fennster]

Noticed that the second to last set of dice is 1 and 5. The last one in the set is 6,6 aka ff.

I'm not sure if this is of any relevance, but found it interesting.

[banjo]

I feel like I have exhausted everything possible. Are we certain it is a 52 letter phrase?
Fennster, I also noted the 6/6 and looked for every answer after March and around that 6/6 date, nada.
The one that caught my eye is on p.184 from 4/5 that is not bold, but I'm still back to square one.

[zaphod73491]

Hi Banjo: I guess we can't be ~completely~ sure the keyphrase length is 52, but that is the number of cards in a standard deck once the jokers are removed. I've done a thorough dictionary attack of potential starting words that produce Vigenere decryptions that score high against English letter frequencies, and then eliminated all the ones that have no relevance to the Chase. For instance "KINSFOLK" scores high because it generates "INEETGAE" at position 1, and "OHWTNHAS" at position 53, but that word does not appear anywhere in Jenny's book so it's obviously incorrect.

Of the 200 highest-scoring words, I found only 12 that I considered possible, 6 of which are the most likely. So I'm taking each of those six in turn and seeing what high-scoring words follow each of them.

[banjo]

Thank you, Z. Do you know if "the first word is seen hidden and so is the fifth" applies to the keyword phrase or the end message? I promise I'm not an idiot, but Jenny's very good at hiding things.

[fennster]

Seeing that Jenny said she would be releasing the length of the keyphrase I have to think 52 is what we are looking at. As some have suggested, I am now thinking the first and fifth are likely the words in the keyphrase, especially since Jenny has mentioned how the keyphrase is not word for word what you would find in the book.

In could be that the first word is a name. Forrest often starts a response with the person's name. For example: "Fennster, the treasure is definitely, completely wet." Something similar may be expected for the fifth word as well in that scenario.

[fennster]

PS. I hope at the very least people will share that they have the solve even if they want to keep it secret at this point.

[banjo]

I'll keep at it with that in mind, thank you. I will share the key phrase if I find it, and hope for the same.

[zaphod73491]

Apr 3, 2019 14:41:34 GMT -5 banjo said:

Thank you, Z. Do you know if "the first word is seen hidden and so is the fifth" applies to the keyword phrase or the end message? I promise I'm not an idiot, but Jenny's very good at hiding things.

Hi Banjo -- it could go either way. I don't see enough information in Jenny's clue to decide whether "the first word is seen hidden and so is the fifth" is her phrase or Forrest's. I will say this much: FIND is a high-scoring first word. It yields NNET and THWI, and there are a lot of Fenn phrases with the word FIND in them.

[mcb]

Zap, FIND was my first attempt on dozens of words. But without success yet...

[banjo]

Idk friends, I've tried everything. I'm going to start trying 42 letters. If March is gone and the jokers, too, it is April 2nd (4/2) and Jenny seems to like that number. Will report back.