Midweek book puzzle 1

[McMurphy]

Spy on the Submarine

During the cold war a submarine captain received the following message in Morse code, which, when decoded read:


TOP SECRET
Captain Mitchell
We have a spy in our midst & we believe he
is giving information to the Russians. We
have recently made a breakthrough and have
been able to narrow down our list of suspects
to one of the 252 members of your crew. We
have no exact information and no physical
description. We are convinced that you are
not the spy and as such we entrust you to
perform some covert investigation to aid us
in our attempt to catch the rogue operator.
We wish you good luck in this endeavor but
we must remind you to keep this secret. We
needn't remind you a refusal to follow these
instructions exactly to the letter will
result in an immediate court-martial.
Instructions for arrest
1) If you fail to find the spy then, upon
docking you will ensure that none of your
crew can leave the ship.
2) If you do ascertain who the spy is then
you should arrest him, confine to the Brig
immediately & place him under 24 hour guard.
From this point on you should cease all
communications with us


Naturally the captain was purturbed by this message He was just about to destroy the message to ensure safety when he was presented with another message which read:



Addendum to previous message
D-C / T-H / A-A / O-H / C-A / X-K / W-A / O-F / X-D.




After the Captain read this message he was a little less perturbed than he was before and soon decided on an appropriate course of action. What was it?


Note: Nothing to do with the solution but for anyone wondering why this is called Midweek book puzzle 1 I didn't get this from a book and I did make it up myself but I am thinking of compiling my puzzles for a book so I was wondering if, when you've solved this, you could just say if you liked it and whether you thought it was too easy/hard etc...

Cheers

Neil.

[Biotop]

VOR

I spent a few hours on this puzzle last night and came up with nothing. That doesn't mean the puzzle is too hard, it may just mean I am dense.

I tried first, of course, doing simple letter subtraction assuming that the dash in the code was a minus sign. No luck there, especially with "A-A"=0 (unless 0 means 'space'--or possibly 'Z') but I couldn't get that to work. I did note that with the exception of "A-A" all the left side letters in the code were higher than the right side, making subtraction a liklihood. Could the numbers from the subtraction be some sort of military code of which I am unaware? Captain Mitchell certainly recognized the code quickly. Research here, but ultimately without result.

I couldn't come up with any word or words to fill in the blanks--assuming that a dash was a blank. There were too many X's.

Anagramming produced nothing.

I played around with cryptogramming, but there weren't enough letters to get anywhere there.

There are no X's in the wording of the first message for a letter substitution, and the text seemed to flow together too well for such chicanery.

I even suspected that the "-" between the letters in the code might be a Morse Code dash (as alluded to at the start of the puzzle), but replacing the given letters with Morse Code and adding a dash in the middle of each two-letter coded set proved an hourlong fruitless effort.

I tried to find a hint in the instruction to "follow to the letter" the directions received, but still nada.

"D-C" could refer to Roman numerals, especially with X's also in the puzzle, but no answer evolved.

"D-C" = Washington, "C-A" = California, "O-H" = Ohio and "W-A" = Washington can't be right.

Pronouncing the letters phonetically was quickly dismissed.

I worked backwards trying to tie the coded message to either response #1 or response #2 from the original message, but nothing jumped out, nor could I see how any of the coded message could give out a key word such as "spy" or "arrest" or "radioman" or "torpedo" or any other possible message that might implicate a submarine employee.

So I am currently stuck--maybe another idea will come today. All I ever ask of a puzzle is it to be fair. If it is I have a hard time giving it up.

So yes, I've enjoyed this puzzle, and whether I ultimately get the answer or not I think it's a good one---as long as the final answer turns out to be fair.

[McMurphy]

I'm gald to see you're enjoying this one Biotop. I deliberately made this one extra hard because I want the book to be a real head buster. Out of all the people I've given this to (about 15) the only person who's solved it is my dad (resident genius with a 167 IQ) and it took him nearly a week. It is fair, I think, although should any other dopers want to try this out you might want to pool together and umm...co-ordinate your efforts :)

[Munch]

Just curious, are there "&" and ")" in Morse code?

[Biotop]

Originally posted by Connor
Just curious, are there "&" and ")" in Morse code?

I dont know about ")", but & in Morse Code is ". ..."

[Balance]

According to this chart (http://freenet.msp.mn.us/people/calguire/morse.html), parentheses are included in the International Morse Code character set.

I'm fiddling with this, too, in between support calls.

[bibliophage]

I’m convinced that the Morse code is an important part of the clue. I doubt the hypens between the letters represent M.c. dashes. There are special codes for hyphens and slashes. So (if it is safe to assume that we’re talking about International Morse code) D-C/T-H codes to D - C / T - H
–•• –••••– –•–• –••–• – –••••– ••••If we remove the spaces and put spaces elsewhere, a message might appear. I’ve been working that angle, but there are a lot of ways to divide it up. It could start "Net…" but then again it could start "Tits…" (indicating my frame of mind, I suppose). Maybe somebody more familiar with M.c. (or less horny) would have better luck.

I also notice that the original message is given in short lines with manual line breaks at the end of every line. The number of words or characters in each line may be a clue.

[Spritle]

Originally posted by bibliophage
I also notice that the original message is given in short lines with manual line breaks at the end of every line. The number of words or characters in each line may be a clue.


I've been working this angle. I'll let you know.

[Balance]

Well, I'm going to be out in the wilds with no computer access for a few days. I'll ponder this a bit while I'm gone. In the meantime, it might be profitable to consider whether or not the phrase ...follow these instructions exactly to the letter... carries any special significance. The addendum may define ranges of some sort...the idea's been nagging at me.

[UncleBill]

The first msg has 26 lines, 26 letters in alphabet. D'oh!

The key is based on the second msg, and I went with:
D is 4th letter, C is third

D-C is 4-3 = 1
T-H is 20-8 = 12
etc

Sequence is 1, 12, 0, 7, 2, 13, 22, 9, 8. I've looked at the lines corresponding to these numbers in this order:

TOP SECRET
in our attempt to catch the rogue operator.
(this space left blank)
to one of the 252 members of your crew. We
Captain Mitchell
We wish you good luck in this endeavor but
2) If you do ascertain who the spy is then
description. We are convinced that you are
have no exact information and no physical

And this is where it stopped. If this DOES lead to an answer, I will graciously share credit with whoever figures it out.

[Munch]

I too have been playing the 26 lines in the message angle. However, I haven't come up with anything. At all.

Of course, I took out all of the spaces, numbers, parentheses, and puncutation, per the line "exactly to the letter".

And I've used these "co-ordinates" (per VOR's second post) using the top left, top right, bottom left, and bottom right as the x,y intersection. No dice.

[McMurphy]

Ok, hint time:

Warning, danger of spoilage
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Firstly, you're way off with the morse code thing. I hadn't anticipated that development and will probably use it for another puzzle. Uncle Bill's observation that the first message has 26 lines for 26 letters of the alphabet is vital to solving this.

Connor is looking good with his co-ordinates idea but I think he's looking a little too closely at the first message.

Also, I think the words "To the letter" may have been unintentionally misleading. If you don't take them absolutely literally then the puzzle should be word perfect :)

[Tattva]

Tricky, VOR. But I wonder if the Captain would really figure it out so quickly. Without your hint, Connor, and UncleBill, at least. Or is it part of Navy training??

But really good puzzle. How long does it take you to write one of these??

-Tat

[Paul The Younger]

Originally posted by TheVoiceofReason
Firstly, you're way off with the morse code thing. I hadn't anticipated that development and will probably use it for another puzzle. Uncle Bill's observation that the first message has 26 lines for 26 letters of the alphabet is vital to solving this.

Connor is looking good with his co-ordinates idea but I think he's looking a little too closely at the first message.

Also, I think the words "To the letter" may have been unintentionally misleading. If you don't take them absolutely literally then the puzzle should be word perfect :)


I had wondered if the number of lines was significant, but dismissed it because I assumed there was no such thing as a carriage return in Morse code. Since the message was sent visiually, by code, and not written down for him, how would the Captain know the precise way to write out the message so that the puzzle could be solved?

Paul

[Munch]

Another quick question. Is the final answer going to have to be descrambled, or will it come out perfect when deciphered?

[McMurphy]

Tattva, thanks. I'm glad you liked it, they usually take me about an hour to do from start to finish.

Connor, when the message will come out perfect.

Paul,


how would the Captain know the precise way to write out the message so that the puzzle could be solved?


He wouldn't. It was a dumb oversight. My apologies.

[McMurphy]

Oops, that should be "When the message is deciphered it will come out perfect"

[Spritle]

Mrs. Spritle figured out the answer in 15 minutes. I gave her a copy of the OP, and that the word "coordinates" is important and that "word perfect" is important, though I have no idea how. I told her what I had tried (letter/word count per line) and that others had touched upon the Morse code thing, which was negated. Yup, 15 minutes later she had the answer.

I won't post the answer in case others wish to keep trying to solve this.

VoR a cracking puzzle. I toast your creativity - Bottoms Up!

[bibliophage]

Excellent puzzle, VOR. It took me a good deal more than 15 minutes, I'm afraid. I'm disappointed it wasn't the butler, though.

[McMurphy]

Thanks Spritle & bibliophage, I'm glad you liked it. New puzzle coming on wednesday!