Please Patiently Ponder Purported Poe Puzzle 195
grouchomarxist writes: "Salon has an article about a cryptograph attributed to a certain W. B.
Tyler, possibly a pseudonym for Edgar Allen Poe. There is a $2500 prize for the
person who solves the cryptograph." The Gold-Bug , which rates
a mention in the Salon article, was by far the most spell-binding story in my old Horace Mann Reader, and it's the tale
that first turned me on to The Divine Edgar. Could it be that the reason this cryptograph has remained unsolved for so long is that
it is actually insoluble? Now that would be the ultimate posthumous practical joke. Even if you have no intention of trying
to solve it, take a look -- the cryptograph itself is strangely hypnotic.
It'll get solved... (Score:1)
wow, that's pretty weird (Score:1)
not hard (Score:1)
It looks just like... (Score:3)
Just a thought... (Score:4)
Hey, new open source project, FreePoe! Set this thing up on Distibuted and lets get cracking! Damn, it's late.
-Earthman
Re:wow, that's pretty weird (Score:1)
A more light suggestion... maybe we should get D.net involved with this! =) I still have a few CPU cycles to spare!
Won't work (Score:2)
But back to your point, for most simple substitution codes, you can also use the rule that t is the second most repeated letter, and most of the time "t?e" maps on to "the". Doesn't everyone know this?
Re:Just a thought... (Score:3)
Someone should split it in two and run frequency counts on each section.
Are the two puzzles related? (Score:5)
It could be used as a form of "key" to solve the second...
Or maybe that's just my sick twisted mind enjoying the idea of having people struggle to understand something left behind for 150 years while the clues are sitting right there on the same page
Start with the obvious (Score:3)
!TIA is repeated at least twice
!A!mL is repeated at least twice
These are probably "The" and "And"
!i!rz and !irz are both in there
b, !b and K are the only symbols on their own.
Multiple representations of "I" and "A"?
Re:Start with the obvious (Score:2)
A Hint: (Score:2)
I solved it (Score:5)
Schema + Brute force algorithm (Score:4)
I bet 100+ years ago they didn't have networked supercomputers like we did now, so it should be a cinch. So someone with access the juice, please key in the schema and churn
1. Define degrees of freedom schema
-----------------------------------
a) Capital or not (0,1)
b) Big, Small (0,1)
c) Reversed, or not (0,1)
d) The letter (1..26)
2. Key in the data in this schema
---------------------------------
(1,1,0,D),(1,0,0,R),spc,...
3. Run the damn thing
---------------------
Using a standard dictionary substitution methods for the letters d), using various translations for a), b) and c).
less than 12 Hours (Score:1)
Re:Won't work (Score:3)
You missed something obvious. The puzzle contains 6 alphabets. It uses normal and inverted instances of Upper case, lower case, and small caps.
There are 156 possible letters in those 6 script systems altogether (157 including the space char). I haven't counted the letters in the ciphertext, but if there are only 105 symbols in the original text, there would not be enough repeats to form any obvious line of attack. It would all be brute force decoding based on an understanding of the encoding method. Good luck.
Some things just aren't solvable. (Score:2)
Re:wow, that's pretty weird (Score:1)
All the cpu cycles in the world won't help if you don't know how the cypher was encoded in the first place...Well, assuming the cycles aren't used for some as-of-yet-unknown artificial intelligence.
Just a thought... (Score:1)
Re:Won't work (Score:1)
There's 105 letters in this code (upper + lower case upside down and right way up + spaces)
He also uses 3 or 4 different letter sizes. Propably only obfuscation, but you never know... (onless you solve it that is ;)
Reversals are probably capitals (or red herrings) (Score:1)
... probably a and A.
I think it is a direct mapping, i.e. If X -> A then X! -> a or if X -> a then X! -> A.
If you look, you will see all the Bs occuring in midword (where it can't possibly be capital) is B and not B!.
Now lets figure out what big/small, capital/small means....
Re:Reversals are probably capitals (or red herring (Score:1)
i!Rz and iRz are both on. back to the drawing board....
Re:Start with the obvious (Score:1)
Diophantus' Arithmetica (Score:5)
And perhaps, posterity will thank me for having shown it that the ancients did not know everything.
Re:wow, that's pretty weird (Score:1)
Yeah, I was kidding. But you never know, it could be encoded using DES-III. That Poe fellow was ahead of his time! =)
Troll, but funny! (Score:1)
Someone had moderated it as "Interesting"! That is pretty funny.
Re:Start with the obvious (Score:1)
Re:Start with the obvious (Score:3)
O!r!t
and !W!c
are all repeated twice.
as for subtile changes there's:
!dhb and dhb
!irz and !i!rz
(all lowercase, hmmm....)
I have been staring at this damn thing for an hour and it baffles me.
A few thoughts: could some of the characters be earmarks for jumping around between? Perhaps caps or upside-down indicates that the value of the letter should be added or subtracted.
That would be cute... (Score:1)
...and although I wouldn't want to call Poe 'twisted' as such, he was definitely, well, shall we say 'interesting' ? :)
Regards,
Denny
# Using Linux in the UK? Check out Linux UK [linuxuk.co.uk]
Re:Troll, but funny! (Score:1)
Re:Start with the obvious (Score:1)
More Poe fun (Score:2)
This is a transformation of the poem "The Raven" converted so the number of letters in each word match the digits in PI. Talk about people with too much time on their hands.
-Restil
The puzzle and A solution? (Score:4)
Look at how some letters extrude out and some go in and some lie in most unusual manner. Also see the cases. There are fonts uses of varying sizes. This gives a very strong feel for depth. The first two letters. Cap D and R with the R being half the size of D, pushing it in. Then the mix of cases and the big OGXEW right up front.
If someone could lay this puzzle in a 3d representation, I'm pretty sure we a solution would open up.
--
Insideoutsiders (Score:2)
Well that is what you get being all alone out there far away all by yourself and so on...
Re:Start with the obvious (Score:1)
Solved (Score:1)
Sounds like something for the NSA (Score:1)
Here is the REAL 19th Century Code Challenge... (Score:4)
Details at:
http://treasurehunt.miningco.com/hobbies/treasu
The Original Uncoded Letter From Beale
St. Louis, Mo., May 9th, 1822.
Robt. Morris, Esq.:
My Esteemed Friend: - Ever since leaving my comfortable quarters at your house I have been journeying to this place, and only succeeded in reaching it yesterday. I have had altogether a pleasant time, the weather being fine and the atmosphere bracing. I shall remain here a week or ten days longer, then "ho" for the plains, to hunt the buffalo and encounter the savage grizzlies. How long I may be absent I cannot now determine, certainly no less than two years, perhaps longer.
With regard to the box left in your charge, I have a few words to say, and, if you will permit me, give you some instructions concerning it. It contains papers vitally affecting the fortunes of myself and many others engaged in business with me, and in the event of my death, its loss might be irreparable. You will, therefore, see the necessity of guarding it with vigilance and care to prevent so great a catastrophe. It also contains some letters addressed to yourself, and which will be necessary to enlighten you concerning the business in which we are engaged. Should none of us ever return you will please preserve carefully the box for the period of ten years from the date of this letter, and if I, or no one with authority from me during that time demands its restoration, you will open it, which can be done by removing the lock. You will find, in addition to the papers addressed to you, other papers which will be unintelligible without the aid of a key to assist you. Such a key I have left in the hands of a friend in this place, sealed, addressed to yourself, and endorsed not to be delivered until June, 1832. By means of this you will understand fully all you will be required to do.
I know you will cheerfully comply with my request, thus adding to the many obligations under which you have already placed me. In the meantime, should death or sickness happen to you, to which all are liable, please select from among your friends some one worthy, and to him hand this letter, and to him delegate your authority. I have been thus particular in my instructions, in consequence of the somewhat perilous enterprise in which we are engaged, but trust we shall meet long ere the time expires, and so save you this trouble. Be the result what it may, however, the game is worth the candle, and we will play it to the end. With kindest wishes for your most excellent wife, compliments to the ladies, a good word to enquiring friends, if there be any, and assurances of my highest esteem for yourself, I remain as ever,
Your sincere friend, T.J.B.
Beale Code Page II - (This is the decrypt; the original is on the web page above)
I have deposited in the county of Bedford, about four miles from Buford's, in an excavation or vault, six feet below the surface of the ground, the following articles, belonging jointly to the parties whose names are given in number "3," herewith:
The first deposit consisted of one thousand and fourteen pounds of gold, and three thousand eight hundred and twelve pounds of silver, deposited November, 1819. The second was made December, 1821, and consisted of nineteen hundred and seven pounds of gold, and twelve hundred and eighty-eight pounds of silver; also jewels, obtained in St. Louis in exchange for silver to save transportation, and valued at $13,000.
The above is securely packed in iron pots, with iron covers. The vault is roughly lined with stone, and the vessels rest on solid stone, and are covered with others. Paper number "1" describes the exact locality of the vault so that no difficulty will be had in finding it.
THE LOCALITY OF THE VAULT - (This has never been decoded)
71,194,38,1701,89,76,11,83,1629,48,94,63,132,16
975,14,40,64,27,81,139,213,63,90,1120,8,15,3,12
758,485,604,230,436,664,582,150,251,284,308,231
401,370,11,101,305,139,189,17,33,88,208,193,145
918,263,28,500,538,356,117,136,219,27,176,130,1
436,65,84,200,283,118,320,138,36,416,280,15,71,
39,88,61,304,12,21,24,283,134,92,63,246,486,682
18,64,463,474,131,160,79,73,440,95,18,64,581,34
81,12,103,820,62,116,97,103,862,70,60,1317,471,
346,36,150,59,568,614,13,120,63,219,812,2160,17
872,15,28,170,88,4,30,44,112,18,147,436,195,320
8,120,305,42,58,461,44,106,301,13,408,680,93,86
102,38,416,89,71,216,728,965,818,2,38,121,195,1
55,131,234,361,824,5,81,623,48,961,19,26,33,10,
275,346,201,206,86,36,219,324,829,840,64,326,19
919,861,326,985,233,64,68,232,431,960,50,29,81,
81,360,36,51,62,194,78,60,200,314,676,112,4,28,
921,1060,464,895,10,6,66,119,38,41,49,602,423,9
14,23,111,109,62,31,501,823,216,280,34,24,150,1
17,340,19,242,31,86,234,140,607,115,33,191,67,1
121,67,95,122,216,548,96,11,201,77,364,218,65,6
10,98,34,119,56,216,119,71,218,1164,1496,1817,5
540,232,22,141,617,84,290,80,46,207,411,150,29,
39,261,543,897,624,18,212,416,127,931,19,4,63,9
230,460,538,19,27,88,612,1431,90,716,275,74,83,
1300,1706,814,221,132,40,102,34,868,975,1101,84
324,403,912,227,936,447,55,86,34,43,212,107,96,
428,601,203,124,95,216,814,2906,654,820,2,301,1
202,35,10,2,41,17,84,221,736,820,214,11,60,760.
Re:OpenAL (Score:1)
However, I checked out the link to OpenAL. It looks interesting. Excerpts:
and But you gotta wonder if these people are serious whan they name part of their library "Al-Core".This certainly is offtopic here, but in case the AC is right and Slashdot is not posting this for some sinister reason, I figured I'd make it seen using my +1 bonus.
Still, there's no reason to assume the worst; we don't even know if this has been submitted as a story, so don't call me a paranoid conspiracy theorist or anything :-)
--
Mixup with another story (Score:2)
That must be the answer. The puzzle is an example sendmail.cf.
Re:Schema + Brute force algorithm (Score:1)
The word encryption has implications (Score:1)
It must be... (Score:1)
Re:Troll, but funny! (Score:3)
Yeah, well I was serious. Go look up "boustrophedon" at britannica.com if you think I just made it up. Poe was a clever bastard, and his text obviously contains clues to its own solution as a means to humiliate the solver so they'd see how OBVIOUS the clues were once it was solved. Remember, this was Poe's Parthian shot.
The text runs in two directions, suggesting the regular characters are one text stream, and the upside-down characters are running back the other direction, interleaved with each other. Each type font (upper case, lower case, and small caps, plus inversions) could be a separate text stream, possibly there are 6 different interleaved streams, running in boustrophedonic fashion. I could work it out by brute force, but I don't have time. Good crypto cracking takes time, time I haven't got.
So go ahead and label it a troll, it only shows your own ignorance. Maybe if you'd taken a few liberal arts and humanities courses in college, you'd know about this stuff.
Re:The puzzle and A solution? (Score:2)
The question is: would an accomplished LITERARY genius necessarily have good spacial comprehension? If so, then it would be a trait nobody had known about until now.
If not, maybe the puzzle is an attempt at 3D encoding, but not a very good one, so it would be easy to crack. Or utterly impossible if he didn't do it right!
Re:Here is the REAL 19th Century Code Challenge... (Score:2)
The most convincing report I've heard says that the Beale cipher was intentionally broken. That is, the first two sheets *were* soluble, with some work, but that's only a tease to make the 3rd one that much more frustrating.
And since I haven't solved it, I'm inclined to bitterly agree.:)
One Starting Place (Score:2)
Perhaps the most obvious observation is that there are really four different sets of characters in the message:
right-side-up UPPER CASE
right-side-up lower case
up-side-down UPPER CASE
up-side-down lower case
If the message isn't obsenely difficult to decode (as with the first message) then there are probably simply four different sets of rules to use with each of the four character types.
A starting place might be to begin with shorter words or common repetitions of characters and begin there.
Simple character replacement isn't all that difficult to decode, but character replacement when you've got 4 times as many encodings could be much more difficult. For instance, the upside "R" and "q" and rightside up "l" and "B" could all be the same letter for instance, making it nearly impossible to identify patterns or repeting characters. Someone want to make some estimates as to the total number of possible encodings?
Is it (26!)^4 or something crazy like that?
(26!)^4 = 2.65 x 10^106
Come on! (Score:1)
--
Surely Poe wasn't a script kiddie... (Score:2)
Eureka (Score:2)
Re:Schema + Brute force algorithm (Score:2)
I would vote against the guy who said to separate the letters by their type (like a 3d puzzle) because Poe wouldn't have gone to all that trouble just to have the letters be easily separated.
Wouldn't it be naughty if the orientation/case was meant to mean something like the following:
LC: leave in current position
UC: Move one space away.
SmallCap: Move two spaces away.
Orientation Normal: Move to the right.
Orientation Reversed: Move to the left.
After you do all that, then you are left with a regular cipher.
New legal dispute coming up! (Score:2)
Darn. Just as one dispute was settled, the next begins. Now etoys.com will have to sue Poe postumly for using something that almost looks like their company name... :)
Cryptography: just add water (Score:1)
But of course! The molecular structure of a cryptogram is polar, meaning that it is insoluable in water. However, if you stir it up enough, it might look like it dissoved.
Of course, that still doesn't mean it insolvable. ;)
Good fellow ... (Score:2)
Since you haven't solved anything ... why don't YOU give some money to the OSS community?
At least, he who will solve it will deserve it ...
Re:OpenAL (Score:1)
But you got moderated down to Flamebait for saying THAT?
Wow, I hope this one comes up in my M2.
Greg
Er this should be moderated up.... (Score:1)
Re:One Starting Place (Score:1)
right-side-up UPPER CASE
right-side-up lower case
up-side-down UPPER CASE
up-side-down lower case
Actually there are more letters than that:
I presume that with upside down you mean rotated 180 degrees. So that leaves us with:
-The four you mention
-small UPPERCASE
-Also possible is upside down
This last one is especially sneaky with symmetric letters, but you may notice that in for example in the letter A the right leg is thicker than the left leg. I haven't found any upside down letters that are non symmetric, but there are some A's that could be upside down
On a different note, what also strikes me is that only capitols (small and large) are used in the To Edgar part. Maybe this is a clue?
Grt,
Arnaud.
Against censorship by stupid moderation (Score:2)
I repost the appropriate, learnèd and interesting post from our fellow A.C. I'll probably get moderated down, but anyway.
A Hint:
It is obviously a multiply interleaved boustrophe donic [britannica.com] text. If you don't know what that means, you have no hope of solving it. I could probably solve the problem given a week or so of hard work, its fairly obvious just from looking at the typesetting as to how it should be solved. But alas, I don't have the time at the moment. The solution is fairly trivial.
I *KNOW* what it is!!!! You owe me $1500!!! (Score:2)
It's Textmode Quake running on Ada Lovelace's mechanical computer! I remember reading on freshmeat last century [freshmeat.net] that aalib had been ported to it!
Re:The puzzle and A solution? (Score:2)
Did anyone notice... (Score:3)
"....Another clue was taken from Tyler's correspondence to Poe in which he discussed the difficulty of deciphering text that was written backwards ("eht", rather than "the"), and spaces and punctuation are omitted."
We should not rule this out when/if attempting a brute force dictionary attack.
Secondly, all symbols in use seem to be in one of 8 alphabets:
* upper/lower case
* small/normal size
* right/upside down
What about reading off the characters in each of the alphabets, (ignoring spaces & other alphabets), to create a stream of "normalised" characters. ie. start reading all upper/small/right, then upper/small/upsidedown, etc. From there, attack the concatenated stream as an alphabetic substitution cypher, allowing reversed words.
Of course, we don't know which order to do the alphabets in.
Hmmm. in the best Bletchley Park tradition, we could run all arrangements of 8 character streams in parallel.
Second Cryptograph (Score:1)
Re:Schema + Brute force algorithm (Score:2)
If we are to believe that Poe was lazy about the writing of the cipher, then we might also believe that Poe was lazy about the encryption schema aswell. In such case we may find that an successful cryptanalysis must also involve an examination of the process used to actually WRITE the cipher on a piece of paper... How would Poe have had to write this cipher down? How would he have done the type-setting?
This involves more careful thought and use of the more arcane tools of cryptanalysis. I was a big fan of Brute force until I used it to try and crack a 500 year old cipher (the Vigenere). The Kasiski test yeilded a key word of 6... the key space was 2 to the 26th... the execution time was 3 days... the result was garbage. (reason: I was using the Mutual Index of Coincidence of English to tell me if I cracked the cipher)
Perhaps my code was just buggy.
The point is: How do you Brute Force something you know nothing about... and How do you know if your answer is "Correct"?
in example Here is a cipher:
KWAKOGCMADSGJRCEANAFAESEAPVWPW
what's the decryption? Not a lot to go on is it? Perhaps Poe's cipher isn't insoluable, we just don't have enough to go on.
-
Can the different letters be separate lines? (Score:1)
If there are so many alphabets, maybe they all map to the same letters, but should be translated one after the other.
What are the frequencies in each alphabet?
----------------
Eruditorum Challenge (Score:2)
crypto challenge [eruditorum.org].
It is certain to be harder than this one.
I wasted half a day, and have since given up.
Mind you the Poe cypher has been around 150 years, Stephenson's Eruditorum challenge has resisted solution for 1 (and counting.)
Good Luck!
Re:Start with the obvious (Score:1)
ode
ole
spring to mind.
andy
Re:The puzzle and A solution? (Score:2)
I didn't say that this WASN'T a possible explanation, just not likely, since I don't think Poe was reknowned for his ability to think spatially (assuming he was the author?). Maybe he could, but he just wasn't known for that specifically.
It seems to me that there would be a more "algorithmic" solution...
Well of course it's soluble! (Score:3)
Now there's an idea for an encryption algorithm, one that yields a false plaintext if an incorrect key is used...
Hey, and does anyone care about Negroponte's challenge from the Being Digital hardcover? (Oooh triple encrypted! It's probably just "Yay! Digital!" over and over...)
yeah, ok. back to work
*snicker
Re:Solved (Score:1)
It's a UU-encoded pic of Mrs. Poe.
It's the vendor key track off the DVD of Poe's first movie.
It's a stolen copy of my first Latin homework assignment. (As you can see, I didn't do very well on it.)
It's a ruse to distract the predecessor of the NSA from the real secret messages, his poetry.
It's the Universal Turing Machine's representation of itself.
It's the transcript of a Ravenish poem about a human who sits on the bookcase and keeps saying "moreover". (That explains the repeats.)
It's a plot summary for the entire X-Files series. (Actually that's just a WAG, based on the fact that they make equal sense to me.)
It's Mr. Poe's public key, used as a
It's the message those two famous Byzantine generals kept sending back and forth.
It's what he got when he happened to write more
It's the way everyone used to write, before the bookmaking cartel decommoditized the protocol.
--
The Gold Bug Variations (Score:1)
Hey! Someone else who's read it and likes to write book reviews (not me) should submit it to Slashdot.
Sorry for the amazon URL. I only buy computer books online, so I wasn't sure what other site was more acceptable to link to.
Re:One Starting Place (Score:2)
I suspect that the author started coding using uppercase letters first, and when he ran out of uppercase he switched to lowercase or smallcaps.
Maybe we can indeed use it.
Furthermore I propose, should we solve this thing together here, to donate the $2500 to the Gutenberg project. It only seems fitting.
----------------------------------------------
Re:Here is the REAL 19th Century Code Challenge... (Score:2)
Spacing (Score:1)
Re:less than 12 Hours (Score:1)
For instance, Poe/Tyler could have used any piece of writing as a key so unless you have a perl script that does a word by word analysis of every bit of published writing from Poe's time, you could be in for a long haul.
Check out The Code Book by Simon Singh. He talks
about a piece of code that supposedly leads to several million dollars worth of gold buried in the hills of western Virginia that has never been solved despite the efforts of 1000's of people.
A human being who wants to keep something secret from computer analysis probably can, as long as they don't want anyone else to read it either. You can use several different keys, each being a very obscure text, for instance.
Of course, I could be wrong. This could be a very simple cipher, but something tells me it probably isn't.
What literary genius? (Score:1)
Re:Schema + Brute force algorithm (Score:1)
Another point of obfuscation... (Score:1)
The plaintext for the first few lines reads as follows:
``The soul secure in her existence smil at the drawn dagger and defies ints point the stars shall fade away the sun himoelf grow dim with age anh nature...''
A couple of the 'e's there are periods, whilst the rest are commas. Just to put a bit more of a spin on the problem...
Re:Did anyone notice... (Score:1)
I tried seperating the alphabets, but it's very difficult because certain characters are impossible to tell apart from eachother. For instance, the lowercase 'c', 'o', 's', 'v', 'w', 'x' and 'z' are almost identical to their smallcaps counterparts.
Also, the aligment of the alphabets on certain lines makes it extremely hard to tell what alphabet a letter belongs to. For instance, try to separate the lowercase 'b' from upside-down lowercase 'q', lowercase 'd' from upside-down lowercase 'p', lowercase 'n' from upside-down lowercase 'u', lowercase and smallcaps 'o' from upside-down lowercase and upside-down smallcaps 'o', lowercase and smallcaps 'x' from upside-down lowercase and upside-down smallcaps 'x', and lowercase and smallcaps 'x' from upside-down lowercase and upside-down smallcaps 'z'.
Poe must have known this would be a problem when he constructed the puzzle. Perhaps ambiguous characters default to a certain alphabet, or form an alphabet by themselves?
reversed words....no (Score:1)
Isn't it logical??
He was a programmer! (Score:2)
The crypto thingy looks like it's in good ol' scary Perl anyways...I'd compile it but I'm no good at anything but assembly anymore...damn cprE classes.
Re: My lord, it is about Ninjas! LOOK! (Score:1)
Thank you Mr Poe!
Sotaku
Re:Cryptography: just add water (Score:1)
The molecular structure of a cryptogram is polar, meaning that it is insoluable in water.
Humm... Doesn't it work the other way?
Just ONE little question... (Score:2)
Re:wow, that's pretty weird (Score:1)
Another possibility (Score:1)
I intend to look at this in detail later. Don't expect to crack it, but its fun to spin the wheels ocassionally. (maybe it'll move me towards a career with the NSA or CIA) :-)
Explain the first cryptograph to me? (Score:1)
Would someone please explain the key to this cryptograph? Is it one-to-one, or something more complex?
Re:The puzzle and A solution? (Score:1)
First, what if you write the whole thing around a rectangular rod (i.e. elongated cube): Take each four-letter combination and write it vertically, then match up the vertical sections, then look at each section and rewrite it in whatever direction makes the text readable. This could then be encrypted using standard replacement techniques. Has anyone done a count on whether each type of character has the same number of occurrences in the cipher??
Second, I had flashbacks of an old 3-2-1-Contact episode where they wrote a code around a broomstick, i.e. wrap the paper around a broomstick, then write the message across it, then unravel the paper and transcribe the character pattern. Then you tell your friend how far apart the letters should be and what size broomstick you used and they can decode the message by reversing what you did...
Just my 2c
The "Top 10" Reasons to procrastinate:
Re:Eruditorum Challenge (Score:1)
_______
Scott Jones
Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
Commodore 64 Democoder
Re:Explain the first cryptograph to me? (Score:1)
Re:Explain the first cryptograph to me? (Score:1)
Re:reversed words....no (Score:2)
llama
aardvark
Will work... (Score:2)
1) Possibly, some characters (maybe the ones in all caps, the ones upside-down, or whatever) are just thrown in there to confuse the decryptor.
or 2) The different alignment of characters was meant to allude to different meanings. For example, if this letter could have been secretly written by Poe himself, maybe he based the text on allusions to his different works, or maybe on only one alone. Perhaps each letter alluded to a different word in a work of his.
perhaps 3) The combination of the allignment and case of the letters was only meant to throw people off, and instead means absolutely nothing.
Thinking about Poe's work, this particular code seems to fit. In almost all of his works, he has two sides, the light and dark. The fact that the code has right-side-up, upside-down, upper, and lower case seems to blend in with it. Come to think of it, perhaps it is two messages blended into one?
Hold on... (Score:4)
Here's what gets me - no letters are on top of each other. While this sure looks like it was fed into a typewriter and typed over several times with lowercase, smallcaps, and uppercase, upside down and not, it looks like gaps were left by someone who knew that when he got to that exact spot later, he would need a letter there.
Also, I took your advise and looked up boustrophedon (great word by the way) - it means that every line would start at the same side of the page that the last ended on and go in the opposite direction "as the ox plows". If it is written this way, you would have to turn the paper upside down to type the other direction, so the stream would consist of right side up characters from alternating lines, and upside down from the other lines, and then go back the other way.
I think it is more likely that he did something like this:
o Type the entire right side up portion of the message, leaving gaps where he knew the upside down letters would go.
o Turn the paper around
o Type the rest of the message. Done.
The fact that gaps had to be left implies that some planning went into this before the "final copy" was made. He probably had some rough drafts worked out. Also, he was into cryptograms that people worked out as puzzles, not codes that would be unbreakable. I think it's unlikely that there's some obscure text that he used as a key. If I were making a serious attempt at this, I would look for the following:
o Words broken up differently from the spaces in the message.
o Words written backward, or the entire message backward. Or vise versa.
o Dummy characters. Especially at the end (beginning?)
o Different substitution alphabets for different kinds/orientations of characters in the message. (This is doubtful IMHO)
o boustrophedonic writing, like the guy said.
I'm betting it's cheap tricks like this. You can be surprisingly criptic just doing that.
--
grappler
On the wrong track? (Score:3)
Since he solved hundreds of these, he is really in tune with what is used to solve these (which are the trails that most of you seem to be following.) I would expect him to try to foil all or most of those techniques.
I believe that it is solveable. It's a bit too perfect to not be (see what I say later.) And from what scant information I have read that Poe has said about these puzzles, he seems like he would be quite opposed to publishing one that didn't work. And man, did he spend some time typing it in just for a hoax.
6 character sets, or a mutiple of 6, gets us dangerously close to 26 with a multiplier of 4 (6 * 4 ?). Maybe conincidence.
Observations:
You all know this already, but I see 6 classes of 26 characters: lg cap normal, sm cap normal, lg lower normal, lg cap inverted, sm cap inverted, lg lower inverted.
The spaces _look_ like they really could represent spaces. Frequency is about right, and spacing of words seems right.
Take a look at the first 3 lines of the cypher and you will find that there are almost no repeated characters (if you provide that he is using 6 "alphabets.") Repeats come in to play after you go on for a while. I think that there is an alphabet cycling routine going on here, so that the frequency would be perfectly flat! There is NO WAY that this is conincidence.
Notice that, unlike normal words, I don't see any words with repeated letters. This is not simple substitution.
Although I haven't really dug in yet, it seems to be that the different character sets happen more in some instances and less in others. The existence of OGXEW in the very beginning seems to me to be a clue of his algorhythm getting "started" and not into perfect hiding quite yet.
For the 2-d or 3-d theories out there (my theory was that upside down letters were to be read from the bottom to the top, etc.), it's just too darn hard to do such perfect flat freqency if you are dealing with multiple threads of meaning throughout the message. Probably would have taken a computer.
Poe is trying to heavily mask frequency analysis.
Well, that's my $.02.. I'd be interested if anyone could build on this.
Re:Hold on... (Score:2)
--
grappler
For the convenience of amateur cryptography script (Score:2)
For now, here it is, letter orientations ignored.
To Edgar A. Poe, Esq.
----------- original sequence a square ---------
DR LIK OGXEW PFHFYY NBUH TIA VQSMGQ
XDTBJS SNB ESALNKGYQJCP TVOL HLZGUCC
LTTKRF PR NDDQL VWO HJFXIKFRI GXHYMEE TA
QJETBXPEE YGWPUP BV STAVA NAZ TCGDYRC
DHB YFKXDGF ZCNSMETL RK ORT OFNR ZQH MFG
WCVIEGXHB AML NKU AFKSO IYBJDV BEFSGFLPL
SPZL CEMNSW BGERTH ANJMY SEAYHTAA YAKTXDIX
WG JCP JERK OFQARL NDOTY KCR ORT DJTBGP
SEB DNBLQU LPH NJNJV ALGF DIKY WVO CEPIMXAY
SYJZ EIF KMK XYKSSG HTITAW QBP QTLC DEYJ RVV
UQRCPME NK VFHV LDAH XMKTIAX YE VJR ADFHW
XQCMKUYWEKA GS B AGOIY NMEY RPC GIOQBG
NBTEMMQ NK LCOPR SVIBPLSI NZQ DGTJH YDUGF
RZNK CTE YL W TX JDMNARUFQX GDHYFBRI
BZNL LBTPH FW EETOYDK TIA VIRQMFTV
VVEHQLP DHB NNGJ WC MTEUJYRTF JDV HPHR
KYSXTCEFA GS AML LQIGMXAR WC NFUIKY PM
AGGB MJG ARNWADQ CMR IRZ XRHOEL KSYWTB
CFG JC YK FJEO IDBLSTP IKRZ VNKADQ CTXH
QDJW QCJPPE LUDFA K ADTV B GERPEC UTA VJYI
KJ EMY IW GDF
-----------------------------------------------
A frequency counter.
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
@sequence=;
foreach(@sequence)
{
chomp;
foreach(split(//))
{
$freq{$_}++;
}
}
foreach (sort(keys(%freq)))
{
$temp=$freq{$_};
$byvalue{$temp}
}
foreach (reverse(sort(numeric(keys(%byvalue)))))
{
chop($byvalue{$_});
print "$byvalue{$_} has a frequency of $_ \n";
}
sub numeric
{
if ($a ;
for ($i=0; $i 90;
print chr($j);
}
}
print "\n";
}
print "---- NEXT SHIFT ----\n";
}
I FIGURED IT OUT!!!@~!@!~@~!!~!!!!@! (Score:2)
He said no.
10 minutes ago, he knocks on my door and hands me a PB&J on potato rye. As he is walking out the door, I say "thank you"... but with a mouth full of PB&J, it sounded something like "TbRfaamQz".
Thats when i figued it out... I figured out the encryption algorighim!!!!
After discovering the secret to PB&J encryption, reversing the cycle and finding the cypher for reverse PB&J encoding was quite easy.
Now go make yourself a sandwich, read the encrypted page, and enjoy! I won't spoil the answer here, you'll enjoy it much more if you taste it for yourself
Vorro
---------------------------
A wise man speaks because he has something to say.
A foolish man speaks because he has to say something.
Re:On the wrong track? (Score:2)
Personally, nothing inspires me more than a challenge. (but don't send me any 'challenges', I'm a lazy-assed procrastinator, too.) And that's really what this cypher does- it challenges you to think about new things. If 'simple' cyphers can be cracked by symbol frequency, then mask the frequency somehow, by not having a 1-to-1 correspondence between symbols. ;) But it seems that this is another part of problem analysis which could yield some good starts- figure out the problems resulting from trying to map 26 characters up to 156. I pose to the reader, how do you choose what set of 26 characters to use, and then what character? (so I pop open the calculator and start shuffling numbers... nothing really conclusive.)
-One means of doing this using the Lewis Carrol encryption algorithm. (look it up!:) I don't think that's at work here, because of the lack of repeated characters- in a Lewis Carrol code, you could see the same character repeated several times, each appearance corresponding to a different character because of the cypher key. (that'll make more sense if you looked it up.;)
-Another means of 'flattening the frequencies' is at work here. Whether or not it's some alphabetic rotation as proposed won't be known until it's cracked.
-Following the last idea of character mapping, then there's the matter of building words, and building the paragraph line by line. Maybe the words are encoded, and then their order is determined by another algorithm. (And here I'll give thanks to the Anonymous Coward who offered 'boustrophedon', and to dictionary.com for having the definition!) This compounds the problem of decryption, because finding out how a word is encoded is now foiled by it potentially being upside down and backwards. So in trying to solve the character-mapping problem, you have to think of every which way each word could be turned.
That should be enough thought-provoking schlock for anybody either looking at the problem, or at encryption in general.
"Holy exponential permutations!" -cryptomancer
Re:Did anyone notice... (Score:2)
Early Obfuscated DeCSS Contest entry? (Score:2)