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Author Topic: The Doctor's Cipher.  (Read 34862 times)

Hapah

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Re: The Doctor's Cipher.
« Reply #90 on: July 30, 2015, 11:41:26 am »

Right. But what I'm saying is, how do you write it if a single-symbol letter is repeated? In your latest example, how do you determine if a sequence is Letter1Letter1 or Letter6?
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I can't be expected to remember the names of everyone I've tried to stab.

Bored? Go read the EVE Chronicles.

Kriellya

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Re: The Doctor's Cipher.
« Reply #91 on: July 30, 2015, 11:44:12 am »

Yeah, there are quite a few things I know about this cipher that I haven't been saying and haven't seen mentioned :P

No, you can't know what they are. How else am I supposed to stall until I actually have time to work on this XD
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Hapah

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Re: The Doctor's Cipher.
« Reply #92 on: July 30, 2015, 11:45:40 am »

Yeah, there are quite a few things I know about this cipher that I haven't been saying and haven't seen mentioned :P

No, you can't know what they are. How else am I supposed to stall until I actually have time to work on this XD
I'm kinda in the same boat, but I'm starting to come to the conclusion that getting part of something is better than getting all of nothing, lol. Not out yet though!
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I can't be expected to remember the names of everyone I've tried to stab.

Bored? Go read the EVE Chronicles.

Kriellya

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Re: The Doctor's Cipher.
« Reply #93 on: July 30, 2015, 12:00:05 pm »

Eh. I don't care too terribly about the prize, I just don't really know where to go with my information. If the cipher is what I think it is, it's kind of a pain in the ass to decode by hand without a full key. Which means I'd prefer to try and setup something to brute-force it, which is always !!fun!! :P

(I also don't have the patience to setup the proper statistical estimation for automated brute-force, though I could borrow someone else's...)
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NJW2000

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Re: The Doctor's Cipher.
« Reply #94 on: July 30, 2015, 03:17:12 pm »

Right. But what I'm saying is, how do you write it if a single-symbol letter is repeated? In your latest example, how do you determine if a sequence is Letter1Letter1 or Letter6?

You wish that PW was a kinder, better person. But if it wasn't that way, it wouldn't be fun at all.

Btw, @ Piecewise, can we ask if there's spaces in the code, or if you removed them?
« Last Edit: July 30, 2015, 03:21:14 pm by NJW2000 »
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Kriellya

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Re: The Doctor's Cipher.
« Reply #95 on: July 30, 2015, 03:59:50 pm »

Btw, @ Piecewise, can we ask if there's spaces in the code, or if you removed them?
I'll answer for him. 'No.' :P

Seriously, if it isn't asking him if something is wrong with the cipher, he probably won't answer.
Honestly, if you think something is wrong with the ciphertext, you are probably wrong. The most likely thing to be wrong would be a typo of some kind, in which case you *should* still be able to get it mostly correct, just with the 'typo' being something weird. And I think it will be incredibly obvious that you have the correct answer, because you won't have garbled kinda-English, you'll have words and phrases that only make sense in the context of ER.

If anything, PW gave away a bit more than he thought with his response to the last time someone wanted to know if the cipher was wrong. Though I don't think it was new information so much as confirming assumptions already made :P
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NJW2000

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Re: The Doctor's Cipher.
« Reply #96 on: July 30, 2015, 04:07:42 pm »

Aaah shit Hephaestus has an ae in it. Was the doctor at all related to Hephaestus?
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Toaster

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Re: The Doctor's Cipher.
« Reply #97 on: July 30, 2015, 04:22:16 pm »

IIRC there's been no direct link (prior to current events.)  Heph is a factory world and his work has been biotech.
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NJW2000

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Re: The Doctor's Cipher.
« Reply #98 on: July 30, 2015, 04:37:25 pm »

Hmmm. 24 letters in the greek alphabet. Wonder if that's important, with the 25s thing going on with bigrams and repeats.

EDIT: pretty damn sure my way wasn't working. And it looked to be shaping up so well, too. Wonder if I should transcribe the rest of the text for better analysis?
« Last Edit: July 30, 2015, 04:46:23 pm by NJW2000 »
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Nikitian

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Re: The Doctor's Cipher.
« Reply #99 on: July 30, 2015, 05:10:31 pm »

Well, the classical Latin alphabet contained 23 characters, actually (J, U and W as distinct letters were added quite later, in Middle ages and Renaissance), so that might also help.

(Whee! I can contribute something here! :P)
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NJW2000

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Re: The Doctor's Cipher.
« Reply #100 on: July 30, 2015, 05:36:56 pm »

I'm getting sick of reading past posts over and over, so just checking, someone has just broken them up into digrams, and let each unique digram be a letter already?

I guess you'd miss a letter, though.

EDIT: Here's what all but one letter of the first line gets you:
BHSPGRNAACQXHFCNPMXOAGWXMUNUEHSDOYGEYISOPXQEIOQBDCO

..oh, it's past twelve. Damn you, Piecewise!
« Last Edit: July 30, 2015, 06:05:20 pm by NJW2000 »
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piecewise

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Re: The Doctor's Cipher.
« Reply #101 on: July 30, 2015, 09:02:09 pm »

Eventually I can give you a hint, but every hint will reduce the prize money.

Hapah

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Re: The Doctor's Cipher.
« Reply #102 on: July 30, 2015, 09:05:15 pm »

Eventually I can give you a hint, but every hint will reduce the prize money.
Let us give up before we get a hint, lol. If I can't get anywhere in another week or so I'll share my thoughts. I feel like I still have a couple of decent leads.
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I can't be expected to remember the names of everyone I've tried to stab.

Bored? Go read the EVE Chronicles.

Ozarck

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Re: The Doctor's Cipher.
« Reply #103 on: July 30, 2015, 09:07:23 pm »

Eventually I can give you a hint, but every hint will reduce the prize money.
No! no hints. not or at least like, three more months. Or a year. yeah, a year. I'd rather split the full prize with one or two others than take lose all of a reduced prize to someone who took a hint prematurely. It's cryptography, it's supposed to be hard.

Kriellya

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Re: The Doctor's Cipher.
« Reply #104 on: July 30, 2015, 11:11:00 pm »

Eventually I can give you a hint, but every hint will reduce the prize money.
Let us give up before we get a hint, lol. If I can't get anywhere in another week or so I'll share my thoughts. I feel like I still have a couple of decent leads.

Ditto. I have leads, just no time to work on them :P
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