Religious Woes LOGIC -- Not Adequate for Real Life Situation

[mathgrant]

I win!!!!!!!!!!

This must be some sort of THP. I give up.

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"Mathematics is like the Nile, begins in minuteness, but ends in magnificence." --Charles Caleb Colton

"I could have driven across Texas in the time it took her to say, 'I don't know'!"--contestant on The Weakest Link

[art begotti]

ok, i am to assume this is where we discuss the puzzle, although i have never been sure about those "not adequate" things.

i am almost too sure that the numbers are a combination to a lock or a safe. so, being the freakishly-odd thinker that i am, i say boris locked himself in a safe in a bank encoded in the message above and that he wants you to join him in there.

hey, it was worth a try!

ok, maybe not.

[Top Gun]

Could the code be as simple as each letter represents another letter.

If so it is a very odd message! All 26 letters are used. From z (48 times) to x (12 times).

There are two different 1 letter words y & z (a & i?) though neither appear in upper case except for at the start of a sentence.

There are 18 different 2 letter words. ic appears 5 times, 4 times in the first sentence.

[john]

I just took a look at this and the first thing I thought of was cyptanalysis. I havent tried anything yet but I doubt simple frequency analysis will answer the problem because of the rhyme and combo at the bottom. I will give it a whirl with simple frequency analysis first and see what happens. Anyone else get anywhere yet ?

[Ryoushi]

Well, the second part is obviously a set of dance moves.

[Jen Aside]

Cryptograms... I've never solved one of those

I read a book--but not solved the problems therein--where a lengthy cryptogram changed ciphers after each paragraph or, for instance, changed after each time the letter "H" was used.

Reminds me of that, but I'll be damned if I can solve it.

[Marvin]

The top part looks like a letter substitution puzzle at first, but there's nowhere for the Q to go. Assuming it's always followed by a U. All 26 letters are used, as Top Gun pointed out.

[Laramie]

It's definitely not a simple letter substitution. I also tried reversing each word, with the same result.

[Raist]

Has the IT leaked onto the main page now?

I seriously doubt it is a 'simple' letter subistution as well. It may well be a rotating cypher, but darned if I know how to crack those .. yet.

[Raist]

and on the dance part... that whole rhyme sounds like an odd way to call a dosie-do (sp?) or some sort of line/square dance that I was forced to do in second grade

Grab your partner, swing her around.. etc etc.

[This message has been edited by Raist (edited 11-29-2001).]

[extropalopakettle]

The plain english part sounds like it might be describing how to lay the words out in a spiral manner on a grid. For instance, the first six words, in a spiral, would be:

code:

---

        zp


    pr zlx


    lbkj l


    ,yAf,p


     a lfk


    zo hot

---

And then perhaps a letter substitution on that.

Of course, it's too ambiguous if taken that way - too many tedious possibilities to try.

And then those mysterious numbers at the end.

[Marvin]

I did wonder if the English part was telling you what to do with the encrypted text, but I couldn't come up with anything useful.
There are a number of words repeated, such as sic, siyv, ht at the start, sfu, zmj, se and ic later on, which would seem to point to letter substitution, though. Maybe it's more than one substitution interlaced (eg every other line / word / paragraph)

[Laramie]

I tried several of the longer "words" in cryptogram engines, and found nothing. It appears that any substitution will not be consistent within words (i.e., an "a" would not necessarily represent the same letter, even if it is in the same "word").

[Ferris]

Oh boy! I got a cryptogram!

I'm off to finish it now and not check here for spoilers until I get an answer. Just wanted to post that I made a breakthrough.

[Ferris]

Bah - no wonder that various things won't work - the method of decryption changes part way through. I've only got the first part, which is decoded using the first 'dance move'.

Regular work'll have to wait a bit longer...

[CrystyB]

Yes, Ferris, i got the same stuff as you did! (probably, since you wouldn't post even the outcome - i was ready to post even the code). OK then, we split: you take the spiral and i'll take the others, will you?

On a side note, i always hated '* logic - not adequated', and THIS logic certainly is adequated to real life crypting situations!

[Sofis]

Like I posted in the other thread, I made a mistake in encoding the last cypher. It's really supposed to be
Zmj qfjkdlkrn afekk vjrj z qftqiw zhykkvp lppcilpc, zob ofpkpk vicp lppcilpc bplsrhnw sico.
Sorry about that.

[mith]

the corrected version is up.

[Ghost Post]

hmmm. i looked at this riddle and thought oh god here we go again with the IT continued puzzle. When i came on to this thread though it clicked. Maybe we're all being fooled, all this cryptogram lark(soz bout the spellings again) seems too easy in a hard way, maybe sophie meant it to seem like it was meant to be hard when really its just a simple method
i remember one time i made one of these. simply taking the letters numbers(A=1 B=2 AND SO ON) and simply did somthing to them for example squaring all of the numbers, and adding 2 to the total. obviously it will be harder than this, and i am prob wrong as usual. If i can see a pattern though you lot will be the first to know. It would be an honour to solve this riddle and having my name put up the main page.
YIPEE

[mikegoo]

Perhaps the half and half down and to the right bit is a decypher
scheme like:

a b c d e f g h i j k l m
n o p q r s t u v w x y z

d would become r...wrap around making m to n.

Of course this probably only works in part of the message and a
shift of more than one to the right might work with the faster and faster for another part. Not being a huge crypto fan I doubt I'll get much farther than this. Hope this helps someone.

OOOPS....down and right...not left...it should be right now...sorry...boy do I love to edit my edits

[This message has been edited by mikegoo (edited 11-30-2001).]

[This message has been edited by mikegoo (edited 11-30-2001).]

[This message has been edited by mikegoo (edited 11-30-2001).]

[mathgrant]

D goes to P, not Q????????

[CrystyB]

Yeah you're partially right. It's somewhat like that plus a little twitch at about half the letters. See the other topic.