I was thinking more along the minutes/seconds idea. Is it possible that the Ws and Es have something to do with it, as place holders. That is, since there’s a lot of W’s, maybe those ones go together, then you drop the W, and calculate that as the Latitude West and then the rest of the Longitude?
Ok. Assuming this means lat/lon is the correct approach, I’m going to hop back to the beginning and think aloud (awritten?):
We have this:
sick lump hi phat phew narcon ail perk pro
To which we apply this:
a 20 b 15 c 1 d 7 e 18 f 16 g 24 h 3 i 23 j 13 k 25 l 5 m 19 n 2 o 4 p 10 q 17 r 21 s 6 t 11 u 26 v 14 w 8 x 12 y 9 z 22 (the letter is equal to the following number)
To get this:
6-23-1-25 5-26-19-10 3-23 10-3-20-11 10-3-18-8 2-20-21-1-4-2 20-23-5 10-18-21-25 10-21-4
Where to from here? There are 9 words. Perhaps 1 clue (N/S E/W as Blaster Master suggested?) with the sums of the remaining words giving us the degrees/minutes/seconds? For convenience, here are the sums of the words: 55 60 26 44 39 50 48 74 35.
So following that logic, is it possible this is the encoded message, or something very close to it?:
55° 60’ 44.39" W
50° 48’ 74.35" N
dnooman: Was the agent Russian?
The minutes (in the lat) and the seconds (in the long) seem wrong in that translation – I don’t think they should be 60 or greater. If that’s right, the placement of the 60 and the 74 in the sequence make me think something is off (i.e. 60 and 74 could either be degrees or hundredths of seconds, but not minutes or seconds).
Actually, I think I messed that up… Isn’t West designated as negative and East positive? If that’s the case, this would be the map: Map.
Curses! Last attempt: Map
The agent was not Russian. There is no math that needs to be applied to the string of numbers. Which numbers are meaningless? I made an error earlier that might actually help with figuring that out.
Hmm. I’ll assume that was your “p=0 and c=1” comment, about which you wrote, “I was looking at my final sequence when I wrote that.”
That was the one.
Well, there clearly looked to be too many p’s from the get go, but that’s where I wasted a lot of time trying to shift the letters around so that the p’s lined up with e’s, t’s, or another common letter in the decode string.
If we’re supposed to pick out letters that don’t belong… well, damn. And you thought that was easier IYO, dnooman? I’ll have to take another look at it later.
Pick out the numbers that are of no use. Keep it simple.
I can give another hint, or post the solution in a spoiler box. I can PM the final solution to anyone as well. Someone will figure it out sooner or later.
My problem is that no number appears any more useful or useless than any other number. You assigned “p” a value of 0 rather than 10. Is that meaningful? I’m not sure if 0 means “don’t count this number” or “don’t count the tens place digit of this number” or if it is derived by some other method.
Just so I know I’m not spinning my wheels, is this the string of numbers we should be working with?
6-23-1-25 5-26-19-10 3-23 10-3-20-11 10-3-18-8 2-20-21-1-4-2 20-23-5 10-18-21-25 10-21-4
Those numbers are correct.
True value of p:
The number 10 represents the letter p in the key,however, the letter p represents the digit zero in the final solution. It is the only number/letter that is treated this way. The others are straightforward, number=letter=number.
Small hint:
You found a luggage tag in the agent’s apartment that had the letters CMH on it.
You can PM me the solution. I’ve run up the white flag a while ago.
I’ve sent it.
Now that you know what the answer is, do you think it will be too difficult to figure out?
Not a chance.
You have broken my spirit.
The last step is: to reverse the sequence of numbers, that can be done at this point as well. Then you would be looking at the solution, only with some extra number is there. The numbers that are kept all have something very simple in common (except p being 0). That plus the CMH clue should get you the final string of numbers without much difficulty.
Is it near highway 224?