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Post by mrpoirot on Aug 15, 2019 16:55:05 GMT -5
Great new information! The good news is that we what to do now. But I am pretty sure most of us had a feeling that the stanzas would provide a keyword that would then solve the cipher (didn't he elude to that in the video? I don't remember). At least we know for sure now. Great! The only concern here is that this cipher is supposed to be unsolvable unless we have the correct key... That does not stop me from hoping to solve this by means of brute force though...
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Post by elysethecat on Aug 15, 2019 17:03:41 GMT -5
I'm glad there's a keyword - because I've only been trying to solve with keywords! Still working on it...looking forward to having some solving time over the weekend.
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Post by efanton on Aug 15, 2019 18:28:02 GMT -5
I have been looking at keyword ciphers
Lukas says he has
I suspect that this means that the keyword is not placed at the beginning of the decipher alphabet, which would make brute force cracking easier. I have tried the keyword "TripleCrown" with the encrypted text and it has not worked. I then tried it with the encrypted text reversed and it did not work. I then tried it with every other letter going clockwise around the grid twice and then through the center line, this also did not work
so I have either chosen the wrong keyword (but I have tried many) or the position of the keyword is significant (ABCkeywordFGH etc.). What in the verse would give us a clues as to position of the KEYWORD?
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Mini Hunt
Aug 15, 2019 18:32:43 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by inatimate1 on Aug 15, 2019 18:32:43 GMT -5
I have been looking at keyword ciphers Lukas says he has I suspect that this means that the keyword is not placed at the beginning of the decipher alphabet. I have tried the keyword "TripleCrown" with the encrypted text ad it has not worked. I then tried it with the encrypted text reversed and it did not work. I then tried it with every other letter going clockwise around the grid twice and then through the center line, this also did not work so I have either chosen the wrong keyword (but I have tried many) or the position of the keyword is significant (ABCkeywordFGH etc.). What in the verse would give us a clues as to position of the KEYWORD "Twice round and through" seems more like an instruction, from what I can find the Kentucky Derby is only over a single circuit plus an extra few yards.
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Post by efanton on Aug 15, 2019 18:35:49 GMT -5
I have been looking at keyword ciphers Lukas says he has I suspect that this means that the keyword is not placed at the beginning of the decipher alphabet. I have tried the keyword "TripleCrown" with the encrypted text ad it has not worked. I then tried it with the encrypted text reversed and it did not work. I then tried it with every other letter going clockwise around the grid twice and then through the center line, this also did not work so I have either chosen the wrong keyword (but I have tried many) or the position of the keyword is significant (ABCkeywordFGH etc.). What in the verse would give us a clues as to position of the KEYWORD "Twice round and through" seems more like an instruction, from what I can find the Kentucky Derby is only over a single circuit plus an extra few yards. It looks like we were posting at the same time, and I was editing my post as you posted. So to save any confusion I will report I have been looking at keyword ciphers Lukas says he has I suspect that this means that the keyword is not placed at the beginning of the decipher alphabet, which would make brute force cracking easier. I have tried the keyword "TripleCrown" with the encrypted text and it has not worked. I then tried it with the encrypted text reversed and it did not work. I then tried it with every other letter going clockwise around the grid twice and then through the center line, this also did not work so I have either chosen the wrong keyword (but I have tried many) or the position of the keyword is significant (ABCkeywordFGH etc.). What in the verse would give us a clues as to position of the KEYWORD?
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Post by mrpoirot on Aug 15, 2019 20:16:30 GMT -5
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Post by susb8383 on Aug 16, 2019 6:44:00 GMT -5
Those are some good points. So do you think the text is using some kind of cipher that needs a keyword? Did you not read my post? Straight from the horses mouth, the verse gives a keyword that is used to decrypt the cipher text Wow! I totally missed the memo!! Thanks for asking him that question.
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Mini Hunt
Aug 16, 2019 13:16:05 GMT -5
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Post by artofhiddenmessages on Aug 16, 2019 13:16:05 GMT -5
[/quote] "Twice round and through"... from what I can find the Kentucky Derby is only over a single circuit plus an extra few yards.[/quote]
Yes, you are correct. My mistake. The horses run through two turns, then through the finish line.
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Post by inatimate1 on Aug 16, 2019 13:19:28 GMT -5
I hadn't thought of it that way. Twice round could mean twice round the bend, very well connected!
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Post by susb8383 on Aug 16, 2019 19:48:15 GMT -5
Or twice round could mean the letters oo.
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Post by efanton on Aug 18, 2019 11:43:16 GMT -5
My hunch is twice round and through is both a clue to the verse and a clue as to how to manipulate the encrypted text before applying the keyword. That would mean every second letter across the top line of text, every second letter in reverse of the last line, the unused letters of top line, then unused letters of bottom line in reverse and finally the second line in full. In effect you are going twice round the cipher-text and through the middle to finish. Currently on one of my mad missions writing a visual basic program to help with the decrypt. Haven't written a visual basic program before but how hard can it be (and yes I know you have heard me use that phrase before so lets see what the next few nights and days brings lol, expect another post later this week, and if it works everyone that wants one gets a free copy. Yay! ) I also suspect that it simply is not the case that you can put the Keyword at the beginning of your cipher-alphabet and filling the rest with the unused letters. I have a sneaky suspicion that the keyword must be placed at a specific position in the cipher-alphabet. I have tried what I consider to be likely candidates for keywords already with the keyword at the beginning of the cipher-alphabet and that resulted in complete gibberish. I then tried rearranging the cipher-text as described above and got yet more gibberish. Even if only a few of the letters in the keyword were correct and in the right position I would expect the clear-text to be slightly readable, of course the getting length of the keyword would feck it up completely. That is why I suspect he has doctored the ciper-text and possibly inserted the keyword somewhere other than the beginning of the cipher-alphabet. Of course I could be using the wrong keyword but I am reasonably confident that my guesses are good ones. That's why I am going to have a go Writing a program that will allow me to insert the keyword at all positions in a cipher-alphabet If that works, then I will try get it to manipulate the cipher-text in various ways. Doing it manually is both tedious and error prone. If it works then I will have a quicker way to try various combinations and know I haven't made some silly mistake. It will not be able to brute force solve the puzzle, you will still have to know how to manipulate the cipher-text and what position the keyword is inserted in the cipher-alphabet, but it will definitely speed things up. Even if it doesn't give me a solve for this puzzle, it will be a useful tool for future puzzles.
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Post by mrpoirot on Aug 18, 2019 14:11:18 GMT -5
I am impressed with your efforts on this and I think it is interesting to follow your searches!
I am not sure I am following the idea that the keyword might be shifted so I created a little test for myself.
Assume we have this plain text: YOUSOLVEDTHEPUZZLE
And we know the key: FLOWER
If we encrypt this as a columnar (vertical) transposition cipher we get the following cipher text: OHLYVPOEUUDZLEESTZ
Now, if we use a brute force solver (e.g. dSolve) for this cipher it finds the correct solution (solution #2 in the list) right away without us even providing the key.
Let us now take the last three letters and put them in front (as in keyword not starting at the beginning). We then get the following cipher: STZOHLYVPOEUUDZLEE. It again finds the solution easily (solution #3 in the list). Granted, this cipher uses a keyword with 6 letters which is not very long (6!=720). Thus, I don't think this is the way to make it harder. If anything, I think a long keyword is used and perhaps in combination with some exotic obfuscation. But who knows....
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Mini Hunt
Aug 18, 2019 14:30:03 GMT -5
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Post by inatimate1 on Aug 18, 2019 14:30:03 GMT -5
I must admit that efanton deserves a medal of some sort just for sheer will and determination to cover all bases and find the answer!
I believe that twice round and through is going to be a major key in solving the final part of the code, and I hope you do find the correct way to incorporate it!
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Post by catherwood on Aug 18, 2019 16:11:33 GMT -5
There are online tools for simple column transformation ciphers, but I won't discourage anyone from building their own tools. I just don't think this method will do. My interpretation of "twice round" is that the ciphertext was to be read from a spiral pattern; however, I haven't been successful looking at it this way. I also don't have tools to experiment with spirals easily, and I'm not sure the puzzle has the right number of letters for a proper spiral layout. Oh well.
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Post by efanton on Aug 18, 2019 18:48:21 GMT -5
There are online tools for simple column transformation ciphers, but I won't discourage anyone from building their own tools. I just don't think this method will do. My interpretation of "twice round" is that the ciphertext was to be read from a spiral pattern; however, I haven't been successful looking at it this way. I also don't have tools to experiment with spirals easily, and I'm not sure the puzzle has the right number of letters for a proper spiral layout. Oh well. I have tried that too, no joy, but its so easy to make mistakes.
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