Puzzle #5 - origami/tangram symbols

I worked on this for longer than I care to admit also. I tried removing the regular alpahbet from the characters, removing the characters below from the ones above with the exception of the "bad" character, which I think isn't bad, it's just not present in the letter lineup above.

I thought of using the Alberti Cipher since the clue said the triangles were diagonally true or something like that, but I didn't make anything from it.

The keywords I did come up with were GHASTLINESS, WORSHIPLESS, GHOSTLINESS; when I removed the letters below from the lineup above the keywords I got were ONEILL, SCIPIO, BRUSHLESS, EARP

*Sigh* nothing yet though.

reply to post by Ian McLean


Looks spot on to me mate, nice work! Much easier on the eyes (although perhaps inverting it may be even easier?)

Im still no further ahead than I was yesterday, I have placed a few S's and a few E's where I think they should be based on statistical probability but when I attempt to combine more letters into it, the whole pattern begins to fall apart.


[edit on 12/8/2008 by Kryties]

Originally posted by Kryties
(although perhaps inverting it may be even easier?)

Ah, good idea! Much more readable:



And the PDF:
www.4shared.com...

Edit: fixed oops



[edit on 12-8-2008 by Ian McLean]

Originally posted by Ian McLean
My eyes were freaking out a bit with all the triangles, so I made this:

Crazy, I was writing it on paper like that because pspro was too hard to deal with and I suck at drawing geometric patters well enough they all came out wrong.



Still have no idea, and this is my first look at the game section... crikey, how can people stay sane doing these Oo

the last one, I only saw the answer, but holy hannah, thats just mad!!

reply to post by Ian McLean


Thats excellent Ian.

Edit to add that i now think we need to consider the interaction between adjacent shapes, as i dont think considering each shape individually works.

[edit on 12/8/2008 by GarethAyres]

Originally posted by sos37
The keywords I did come up with were GHASTLINESS, WORSHIPLESS, GHOSTLINESS; ... BRUSHLESS,

Using the One Look Dictionary, I entered every possible combination for this word. In other words, I used wildcards for all the letters I didn't know - and then each letter of the alphabet for the fourth letter and the last 2 letters.

That doesn't sound like it makes sense so here's the example (? is the wildcard):

???s?????ss
???l?????ll
???d?????dd

I went through the entire alphabet.

Whenever I came across a word, I tried it in the cryptograph and the rest of the sentence became nonsense.

I'm not saying that is the wrong road, but I got totally nowhere for hours of work yesterday and just wanted to let you guys know what I did.

I will add the words I found in my next post.

[edit on 12-8-2008 by Benevolent Heretic]

Im beginning to get the feeling that some of the triangle symbols are put there as distractions to put off such decryption programs. Perhaps the code down the bottom is actually telling us which symbols to ignore?

Here are all of the words I found for possibilities in the one look dictionary. They have the fourth and last 2 letters the same and no other repeated letters in the words:

keraminthaa
constabless
ghastliness
ghostliness
haysickness
prosaicness
worshipless

[edit on 12-8-2008 by Benevolent Heretic]

And if you want to explore the ketchup angle...you can spell the following with the glyphs and known letters in the legend:

h i z t s t
e n i i n

or 'heinz it isnt'

looks like a rail cipher

reply to post by Freenrgy2


But the second set of three glyphs the first and third letters are different?

P.S. Rumkin.com is down, looks like we killed another site.

[edit on 12-8-2008 by Kellter]

Good morning all

I haven't gotten anywhere, but I might as well toss my graphic into the mix. I divided the glyphs into types based mostly on how many triangles were in the top and how many in the bottom. Then arranged the groups from most to least and assigned them to groups of letters. The orange ones are glyphs that I predict but that don't occur in the text we have.

reply to post by americandingbat


Thats a good start mate, although according to your version above we have an 11 letter word (LFMNODCPANN) that ends with two 'B's

But I agree that you are on the correct track. Rearranging what you have there (perhaps reverse order?) may get us somewhere.

reply to post by americandingbat


That's what I was trying to work on. We got to figure out which way it goes, clockwise or counterclockwise. On the second set of 3 symbols, the bottom part goes counterclockwise.

Originally posted by Freenrgy2
h i z t s t
e n i i n

or 'heinz it isnt'

If it isn't heinz, maybe it's Hunts (or Del Monte)?

Originally posted by Kryties

Thats a good start mate, although according to your version above we have an 11 letter word (LFMNODCPANN) that ends with two 'B's

But I agree that you are on the correct track. Rearranging what you have there (perhaps reverse order?) may get us somewhere.

Or 'A's 'C's or 'D's. The glyphs are not arranged in any specific order within sets.

And I'm assuming that even once we translate them into letters we'll have another step, probably similar to the last one (ie, advancing the key by one with every letter). I'm facing a lot of really tedious work today

Just something I noticed (although I don't know if I'm on ignore in here or what... tic-tic-tic ... can anyone see me?)

In the group of 6 symbols at the bottom, they are grouped in two sets of 3.

The 3 characters in the first set each have only one triangle missing.
The 3 characters in the second set all have 4 triangles missing.

Don't know if it means anything, but there it is... I'll go play with my blocks now.

reply to post by Benevolent Heretic


I can see you! Sorry if Im being quiet at the moment, Im taking a break and perusing the forums. The triangles started to hurt my eyes.

No I hadn't noticed that before, perhaps there is something to that. I shall have a looksie.....

(Edited because Im an idiot and repeated myself)


[edit on 12/8/2008 by Kryties]

I've been staring at the bottom two rows, wondering how they will help us. I noticed that if you remove that symbol that doesn't exist in the cryptogram, there are 5 left and there are 5 letters in ENIIN. My eyes are getting crossed and seeing triangles everywhere.

dang guys!
awesome job so far

lovin the work
my brain hurts
ha

Just a thought...

I'm guessing simple substitution isn't going to solve this so what if instead of ABC XYZ at the bottom, it is actually AAA ZZZ? By this I mean what if each symbol changes after the letter is used and the six boxes on the bottom are actually the pattern.