Dunno if this helps … the first few things of the hint are the number keys without a shift. The whole string is: 12343578=6|`/8.4+15+2/=8.4+{/=]8|9/2~
Not sure if that helps. On the other hand, to continue the binary thought, take a look at this binary and ascii table http://www.prepressure.com/library/binhex.htm
to see if there is a pattern to it. I couldn’t find one. Is there a known solution?
Four groups of 26, each followed by an anomolous four letter group. The twenty-six group strings along with the second hint suggest there’s four substitutions for the alphabet.
That’s what I get for posting without proofreading. Obviously the last 26 character string isn’t followed by a four character group. If we split the anomolous groups, we get the following:
I’m not sure who thinks this is a riddle? or where it came from?
I would like a link to this cite before I proceed. Never mind…
It appears to be links to individuals websites via their provider. Perhaps some e-theft going on? Try cutting the message into strings of data and do a search on them. They all come back to profiles of members of www.hostobserver.com
Mods. not sure on the ethics and/or legal issues this may bring about. Perhaps I’m just wrong and this is a coincidence. Either way, delete this post if it’s problematic.
Yes, these are definitely the ISP for hostobservers clients. Go to the top link in my first post and check out the new client list. Load a few of them and check their addresses. String all of them together and the “riddle” is found.
I really think the base64 thing is a red herring. Base64 generally comes up with high-entropy results, and these puzzle values are clearly very low entropy. Each 4 byte group has 4x7=28 bits = 268million possible values. And there seem to be only 8 actual values (perhaps 10 if you include the ending MA and MQ).
Yes, t-keela is clearly on to something, and perhaps this is the only answer. But there must’ve been some reason Host Observer picked these values, and it’s certainly not intuitive. They could’ve used simple unique integers for each company ID. There are many benefits to using an integer in their back-end coding. But they didn’t. There must be a reason.
Also, there’s this whole neat layout of 4 rows x 26 entries per line. I think there’s more to this, but I haven’t got it.
Pavlos, I’m skeptical about the accuracy of your OP as the forum discussions don’t match what you posted. In particular, there are references to "MDENCjAx, DQox, MQ0KMTEx, MDENCjEx
". Also, it apparently was posted not broken up as you posted here.
Please go to the page where the riddle appears, right click, choose “Properties”, where it says "address (URL), select the url with your mouse, type ctrl-c to copy. Then come here and paste the result here, so others can see the original. (I’m assuming you use Internet Explorer). It should look something like this:
It lokos like, having followed the thread through on riddleplanet, the riddle was actually changed at a certain point, so earlier discussion was related to a different sequence than was posted for this thread. fwiw, here are the original and subsequent versions, according to that message board:
Original: (apologies for formatting)
MTAwMDExMTEwMTAxMDExMTEwMDExMTEwMDAxMDExMDAxMTEwMDEwMTAxMTExMTAxMDAxMTEwMTEwMTAxMDAxMTAwMDEwMDAxMTAwMTAxMTAxMDEN
CjAxMTExMDAxMTEwMTExMTExMTAxMDAxMTExMDAxMTExMDExMDEwMTAxMTExMTAwMDExMDExMDEwMTEwMTEwMTExMDEwMTEwMDEwMTAxMDAxMTEx
DQoxMTAxMTEwMTEwMTEwMTAxMDExMTEwMDExMTEwMDAxMDExMDAxMTEwMTAwMTAxMTExMDExMDEwMTExMTAwMDExMDAxMDExMDExMTExMDExMDEw
MQ0KMTExMTAwMTEwMTAwMTEwMDAxMTEwMDAxMTAwMDEwMDEwMTAxMDAxMTExMDAxMTExMTAxMDEwMDEwMDAxMTAxMTExMDAwMTAwMTAxMDExMDEw
MDENCjExMTAxMTExMDExMTEwMTAwMTAwMTAxMTAxMDExMDAxMDExMDAwMTExMTAxMTAwMDExMDAwMTAxMTAxMDExMTEwMTAwMTAxMDExMTAwMDEwMTAx