Static Sky's Cipher Game

In under an hour, Ian McLeans "Dicey Ground" will be worth 600 points. I absolutely love the looks of this puzzle. Great job Ian! And good luck everyone.

Thanks Static Sky! And also excellent job on the last puzzle, danamoon! That's the spirit, it's the fun of the puzzle that's the best purpose, hopefully, not the points - although they're nice too and I think you deserve applause for your perseverance.

Reposting the current puzzle, for the new page:




Dicey Ground

Sorry I'm late everyone. I was trying to figure out that whole thing about moving my avatar hosting to the new media sub-site. Got it done though. Only 3 tries, too. LOL.

Anyways, "Dicey Ground" is at 700 points now. Cheers!

reply to post by Static Sky


I'm finding this one sort of imposing so I haven't done anything with it yet.

Plus I keep getting caught up in the diagram at top left and wondering about things like how to get from "Nintendo Kids" to "Bribes".

And what the black box is. And whether it has anything to do with behaviorism.

And what threads are on the front page of ATS, because I can't quite read the letters.

In other words, Ian, I think you gave me too much to think about

reply to post by americandingbat


LOL. I've been wondering a lot of the same things. I'm assuming first that Ian has given some clues already in what you see in the puzzle itself. I will continue to think that, until such time as I can completely rule it out. I also wonder if just the tops of the dice are in play, or the 2 sides you see best, or even all sides you see clearly....

Amazing looking puzzle again, IAN. Cheers for that.

And "Dicey Ground" is at 800 points now, too. Good luck all!

[edit on 2/21/2009 by Static Sky]

Originally posted by Static Sky
I also wonder if just the tops of the dice are in play, or the 2 sides you see best, or even all sides you see clearly....

I'm working on the assumption that two sides of each die are in play, the top and the front. That gives 24 possible combinations, which is a pretty nice match to the alphabet.

I haven't broken it yet, but I also haven't ruled it out as a possibility, so I'm sticking with it for now. And trying to ignore the distractions

Answer:

TO LIVE ONLY FOR SOME FUTURE GOAL IS SHALLOW. IT'S THE SIDES OF THE MOUNTAIN THAT SUSTAIN LIFE, NOT THE TOP.

reply to post by Tuning Spork


Congratulations, Tuning Spork!

So, how'd you solve it? You realize you're only encouraging me to make the next puzzle harder, right?

reply to post by Ian McLean


Well, first all, let me warn you that, back when I had a long commute and I forgot to bring a pen with me for the ride, I used to solve crytograms in my head.

In this case I, like americandingbat, assumed that the top and front faces of the dice represented a letter. There are 19 combinations in the puzzle, out of a possible 36, which was encouraging.

I wrote them all out in order (1/3, 6/5, 5/4, 3/5, etc...), and assigned each combo a letter. The top row, for instance, reads ABCDEFBGCHIB.

Then I counted up all of the combos.

1/2 appears in the puzzle 5 times.
1/3 appears 12 times.
1/5 appears only once, etc, etc.

Since the letter E often appears the most often in any given long snippet of English prose, first I assigned the 1/3 dice as the letter E and looked for possibilties of the word "THE". There 4 good possibilities since the preceeding dice could reasonably be converted, based on their frequency in the puzzle, to T and H. Once I identified 3/1 as the E and got the two "THE"s, I began to work on spacing.

Then I said nuts to that and just copy/pasted the translated line of letters with the letters I'd already solved into a decryption program. Saved me some time and ink.



Edit to add:

I just went back to the beginning of this thread and read that there should be no use of decryption programs. I feel terrible for taking that shortcut, and I wont do that again. Yeah, it saved some time, but it did stunt the challenge.



[edit on 22-2-2009 by Tuning Spork]

reply to post by Tuning Spork


No huge worries, Tuning Spork. Although there was a little hidden information in the puzzle indicating word-breaks, to make by-hand cryptogram solving a little easier. Let's see if anyone finds it.

Confession: I did the same thing, on the first puzzle (or was it second?) that I solved here. As soon as I recognized it as a Caesar cipher, I broke out one of my programs from the "What Is The Conspiracy" game and feed the ciphertext into it. Oops, I felt bad when I went back and re-read the thread. But, perhaps, the biggest part of the challenge is recognizing what technique to use, what information to find important, and what to discard. Difficult to automate that!

The next puzzle will be an example of this. Insert maniacal cackle here.

reply to post by Tuning Spork


Hi Tuning Spork. Thanks for joining the game. And congrats on solving "Dicey Ground"! And thank you for your honesty in regards to decryption programs.

It is kind of a boarderline call but seeing as you did solve the start of it on your own, you were honest in admitting that you had a program finish it off for you, and you said you won't do it again, I'll award the full points. 800 points will find you soon. I've also added you to my friends list. One can never know too many honest people. Plus your avatar makes me smile.

Ian, thanks again for a great puzzle and I look forward to your next challenge. Good luck everyone, and thanks for playing.

[edit on 2/22/2009 by Static Sky]

As I sit enjoying my morning coffee, it is my pleasure to present the next puzzle. Enjoy, everyone!




Bean There Done That

"Bean There Done That" is at 600 points now. When I first saw it, the pattern in the beans reminded me of those 'Magic Eye' pictures. After 20 minutes or so, and a bit of a headache, I'm convinced that this is not a magic eye illusion. LOL. Good luck everyone!

"Bean There Done That" is at 700 points now. I've tried a bunch of things but no luck yet. Can't help but think the beans that are in pattern mean something. Hmmm. Anyways, good luck to all!

reply to post by Static Sky


I haven't done anything with this one yet. Maybe I'll work on it this afternoon. I agree about the beans being significant though

"SLEEP IS A SYMPTOM OF CAFFEINE DEPRIVATION"


How I solved it:

Step 1: Notice that there are 36 numbers, 1 through 36. Assume that this is a 36-letter sentence, and that the order of letters in that sentence are 1 through 36.

Step 2: Notice that each letter is surrounded by four beans, each one oriented either vertically or horizontally. Assume that each arrangement of four beans represents a different letter.

Step 3: Plot out the 36 letters in numerical order as a cypher:

ABCCDEAFAGHDIJHJKLFKKCEMCNCDOEPFIEJM


Step 4: Notice that the numbers are in two different shades of yellow; one lighter and one darker. (Actually that was the first thing I noticed.) Circle the light yellow characters and discover that the light and dark numbers run in strings that suspiciously look like the words of a sentence:

ABCCD EA F AGHDIJH JK LFKKCEMC NCDOEPFIEJM


Step 5: Solve as a regular ol' cryptogram.


The first letter I substituted was A for F because that lonely F was either A or I, and I figured that the quote was more likely to include the word "a" rather and "I". Having A in place, it seemed natural to preceed it with "is".

Then, with the "a"s, "i"s and "s"s in place, and since "C" appeared the most frequently (5 times), I went with that as "e" and the word "sleep" jumped out me.

"Of", at that point, was a gimme (Edit to add: Actually I tried "on" first but nevermind

) which then led right to ending the sentence with "-tion", and the word "CAFFEINE" now had everything but the C. Well call me butter 'cuz I'm on a roll.

So now we've got:
SLEEP IS A S**PTO* OF CAFFEINE *EP*I*ATION

Golly Gee, what could that be?

Excellent puzzle, Ian!




[edit on 24-2-2009 by Tuning Spork]

reply to post by Tuning Spork


Nice job, Tuning Spork! Congratulations!

reply to post by Tuning Spork


Excellent job, Tuning Spork! 700 points is your reward. Wow, I was really thinking this one would make it to over 1000!

Great explanation; your technique and process is exactly correct.

This was quite a fun puzzle to put together. It was a little experiment of mine - can a cipher be made where portions 'overlap', and information is 'shared' between multiple encrypted glyphs? It actually took quite a bit of number crunching to search the solution-space of all possible layouts to find a conforming arrangement of the 36-number sequence. Interestingly, not near as much number-crunching as I thought, given that there are 36!/8 possible (but not necessarily valid) layouts, counting symmetry.

This cipher worked only because there were no more than 16 unique letters in the plaintext. Each of the 'bean patterns' can encode 4-bits of information, which allows for a maximum of 16 possibilities to be represented. As a bonus, I was also able to a 'hidden message' in the cryptogram key. Hint: North=+1, West=+8.

Again, well done, and fast work!

Fortunately (MO-HA-HA!) I have prepared for the contingency of a 'quick-solve', and have another puzzle ready 'on deck'. It will be posted shortly, so get ready!

Originally posted by Ian McLeanIt was a little experiment of mine - can a cipher be made where portions 'overlap', and information is 'shared' between multiple encrypted glyphs?

This is what fooled me. I was working on the assumption that only two beans per number were significant, so that they wouldn't overlap

But it was a very elegant puzzle, and well solved by TS.


P.S. Ha! I have more points than you

Originally posted by americandingbat
P.S. Ha! I have more points than you

207813 > 203021




Oh, BTS points.