skygiants | (no subject)

HELP ME, INTERNET-KENOBI.

So, excitingly, I have found a SECRET MESSAGE in the back of my library copy of Snuff!

Obviously my mission is to TRANSLATE it . . .

. . . but I am busy and terrible at codes. (Also I am going to feel really silly if it's someone's algebra homework.)

So . . . crowdsourcing? IS ANYBODY REALLY BORED TODAY AND INTERESTED IN DECODING A SECRET MESSAGE FROM A TERRY PRATCHETT FAN? This could be the start of a great adventure here, people! Like, we're talking potentially secret-message-on-the-back-of-the-Constitution big!

ETA: SOLVED IN COMMENTS, you guys all rock and I feel I should give you prizes.

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/344657.html

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

silveraspen

I am busy and not bored, but I am also super-curious now!

First thought from looking at this would be to check for a simple replacement code using a symbol font. I see what appear to be logical word groups, and possbly even punctuation (not certain, though).

There are also tricks you can do with predictive modeling of letter frequency and symbol occurrence to see if word-pieces start to show up.

From:

skygiants

The thing that really throws me is that =0. Unless the = is also a substitution, but in that case it would have to be a really rare letter, since that's the only place it shows . . .

From:

dorothean

Oh dear oh dear oh dear, I am busy but so very bored. *scribbles furtively*

From:

dorothean

I think perhaps the =o is a two-letter word, there's nothing wrong with having a letter appear only once in such a short message (besides which, there are other characters that do so too). But my other theory is that =o is an illustration and the text, when translated, will say something like 'well that's done now, I'm off to play frisbee.'

I want to know what the bomb stands for!

From:

skygiants

Oh wow I kind of secretly hope it does mean frisbee now. BEST ILLUSTRATION EVER. *__*

From:

dorothean

I solved it -- alas, it is not about frisbee.

It's a simple substitution made slightly more difficult by the writer leaving out one letter from the longest word (the first one) which you might otherwise guess right away. I don't think this was intentional, because there's another omission elsewhere.

The most commonly used symbol ($; you have to distinguish between the circle and the squashed circle) is E. And then there's a three-letter word ending in E and you can just go from there.

(I will comment with the translation if you like, but won't do it without asking first since I don't know if it's possible to do a spoiler-cut on comments!)

From:

vass

There are 23 different characters, if you count the sideways O and vertical O as two different letters - I'm not sure if that's just the cipherer's handwriting - and if ! and . are symbols, not punctuation marks. I'll note that that's a lot for a sample this small.

The cipherer also keeps us guessing with the spacing: is the whole first line a single 15-letter word? Or a 14 letter word with an exclamation mark? Or are the -> marks punctuation too, dividing three smaller? They look like they might be.

The first 15-letter word that leaped into my head was CONGRATULATIONS. Which would be very helpful, especially since it would confirm -> as A, but it can't be: that would make both upward-hoop and kanji-sun-radical mean T, and if the cipherer's doing that, this is a much harder cipher than I can crack.

My next thought is that they misspelled it, and the first T is actually a D in their version.

My next thought after this would be to put all the known symbols in order of frequency, then start trying letters, one at a time, using the most frequent letters (ETAOIN SHRDLU) to see what emerges. I'd also look for double letters (which if they're vowels almost always have a consonant on either side, and vice versa), but there aren't any.

But it's 6:20am and I haven't slept yet because I'm having one of those crazy nights when I'm scared of going to bed, so my brain isn't working well enough for this. Someone else's turn now.

From:

hebethen

Assigning a random English letter to each symbol for easier working on the computer yields "tpsaornzorbpsx! opn wolm cmtpmc eo [or e?] xmtdmr zosanoam! qor ?pndxmzi [or opndxmzi] ps rwm koty." Assuming they aren't being tricksy about linebreaks and spaces and things like that, but let's just take for granted that it's a simple substitution cipher, shall we?

I think it might be too short for a frequency-based thingy, so I'm just going to go off intuition and trial-and-error it. For example the pattern "mtpmc" in "cmtpmc" reminds me of the "-otion" fragment, so if I plug that in it's "notion" and I get "TIsaornzorbIsx! oIn wolO NOTION eo [or e?] xOTdOr zosanoaO! qor ?IndxOzi [or oIndxOzi] Is rwO koTy." Not a massive breakthrough, but not discouragingly improbable.

Now I'm going to do the frequency thing anyway for the legendarily common "E", which might not work due to the small sample size... but let's see, looks like the character represented by "o" appears most frequently (closely followed by that represented by "m", which I'm currently translating to "O", so that's promising). Let's plug "E" in for "o", yielding "TIsaErnzErbIsx! EIn wElO NOTION eE [e?] xOTdOr zEsanEaO! qEr ?IndxOzi [EIndxOzi] Is rwO kETy."

"Ei_" is highly unlikely to be an English word. The only one I can think of that fits the profile is "eir", which is not in common usage. So unless this person is speaking German.... back to the drawing board.

Alternatively: what is a thirteen-letter word that could conceivably be used as a standalone exclamation? "Salutations" is too short and repeats many more letters. Using this list of 13-letter words... I can eliminate anything with adjacent repeated letters. Other disallowed sequences: anything with two identical letters separated only by one other letter (e.g., non-, -olo-). After wrestling a bit with regular expressions, this produces.... nearly 3000 words, which is significantly less than half the original number, but fuck this I have work to be doing.

TO BE CONTINUED???

From:

hebethen

Ahhh I didn't distinguish between the two of them at all! You can't spoiler-cut comments. You can, however, use a site like pastebin.com and link it for the curious /eyebrow wiggle.

From:

hebethen

IT'S BEEN SOLVED and now I want to leave secret messages in library books?????? Probably not on the pages themselves idk but at least a post-it or something.

From:

vass

GOT it. Thank you: $ as E would have been the first one I tried if I felt up to continuing.

Except (unless I'm just still sleep-deprived) isn't there also a missing letter in the second-last word on the second row?

From:

dorothean

Ooh, of course. I shall use rot13 (paste the cyphered text below into the box at the link, click "cypher").

The translated message, when re-cyphered into rot13, says:

PBAT[E]NGHYNGVBAF! LBH UNIR QRPB[Q]RQ ZL FRPERG YNATHNTR! CNG LBHEFRYS BA GUR ONPX.

I have supplied omitted letters in brackets.

I think this is exactly what I would have written in a secret code in the back of a library book when I was 12.

From:

dorothean

Yes, there is -- that one didn't puzzle me so much, though, because by the time I tried to guess it the answer was already clear.

From:

hebethen

AHAHAHA YES

From:

vass

If you're still bored and want more basic substitution cyphers, I sent this one to my niece on a postcard.

YCV GECRC,
ED VHQ RZG OEPQKC NYEM HGC, VHQ PCN Z FZKM AZK.
ZIIDV NH IZIZ OHK NYC KCTZKX.
DHSC,
CDCGZ.

(Yeah, I left out a whole freaking word, and I only noticed that now, despite having written and sent this back in February. Suddenly I sympathise with the Terry Pratchett cipherer very strongly.

From:

sdelmonte

Wow. The Internet group mind at work.

Next up: solving the unbroken Zodiac codes?

From:

vass

Me too.

From:

happydork

Suddenly I sympathise with the Terry Pratchett cipherer very strongly.

Hahaha, yes! I just decoded the message in the book, with a slightly grumpy "Dude, y u miss out letters?" and then remembered that when my friends and I wrote each other postcards in ROT13, we almost always failed to ROT one or two of the letters... It's much harder than it looks.

Edited (Clarity, can haz) Date: 2013-08-13 09:01 pm (UTC)