The U.S. Central Security Service has come upon a coded message that may present grave danger. Afraid to trust their country’ own codebreakers, they turn to the British MI6. But MI6’s master cryptologist, Sir Lionel M. Drake, is adrift in the South Seas with his latest girlfriend and has thrown away his GPS.
Can you fill in for Sir Lionel and read the secret message? All you have to go on is a list of 16 peculiar words.
(WARNING: I like to err on the side of “too difficult.” I can always provide hints as needed.)
Sorry. Let me repeat the word list with a font that better distinguishes Upper-case I from lower-case L.
ARc
astuTe
clEAnner
DUELiSST
Giantist
HECtOR
itcHIer
LeAGUE
lEEWAARD
meOw
nautCH
NEcK
PHONEY
sigNage
sKIp
vIvant
With the Anglophone intelligence services in disarray, due to Brexit on one side of the Pond and Drumpfgak on the other, the agent who found the messages just passed them on to Wikileaks in desperation; so I’m doing a public service by reposting here.
And yes, Sir Lionel has an understudy, Wing Commander T. Bascombe, but that voluptuary was last seen chained up in a dungeon at the Poseidon Complex on Ratchadamri Road and won’t resurface for weeks. The matter is very urgent.
Ok, I’ll dig out my ovaltine decoder ring that has been blessed by the ghost of red ryder to +3. That, and my crytography skill of 12, I 'll roll the dice and…
That suggests to me we are not looking for letter substitution. These more obscure letters (well B and F are not really all that uncommon, but they are not Scrabble 1-point letters either) would show up in any code based on counting or adding/subtracting letters.
My count shows exactly 48 lower case letters, and 48 upper case letters. That cannot be coincidence.
The alphabetical listing of words seems likely to be the wrong order.
This might be a red herring, but I wonder if the misspellings are somehow “forced” by the need to fill in letters according to some rule akin to anagrams?
I agree that the misspellings are forced. I doubt red herring.
If the whole message is an anagram, where upper and lower case letters somehow alternate, then a pattern of “xXxXxXxX…x” would yield a result with exactly one less upper case letter than lower.
septimus, can we conclude that the intended receiver of the message would know how the code works and would be able to solve it easily?
The code has some strong similarities to hammos1’ Codebreaking puzzle- Breach at Whitehall, but will be [del]somewhat[/del] significantly more difficult to decipher whether you know the method or not. The first task is to put the words into proper order. To do that, think “major sort / minor sort.”
Those sending the messages really are evil. Wikileaks is sending me another coded message right now, with a a secret message so scandalous that I ask solvers to be careful about displaying its solution in cleartext. SDMB doesn’t need U.S. law enforcement breathing down its neck.
These evil-doers have yet another nefarious plot in progress! The next message was found with a handwritten note: “They caught on to the lack of X’s so I added some. Ignore them when reading the message.”
Other than that, the message consisted solely of another typewritten list of words:
aftERburm
aGreed
xaphID
APRONLy
xARMPIT
xxbOGUS
boURBON
xCAHIL
deniaL
dIANa
xeARLY
xeaRTH
xECHO
ECLAirs
xxxFLOOR
GLItch
glOria
ximpAINED
xkniT
knOPF
xxXXNEED
negAtion
nuKE
PAin
xxpaRCEL
xpraiRIES
xxxxpSYCHO
xxstoOLS
STORMier
vEAl
When
wherEAT
xxwhiRL
I suddenly realized that hammos1’ code-breaking puzzle may have been much easier for me NOT due to any code-breaking skill, but simply due to my work habits. A similar (but weaker) effect may apply to the code-breaking in this thread.
I hardly use paper and pencil anymore, preferring text editor. This makes many tasks simple that would be very tedious with paper and pencil. And I use vi, which facilitates many tasks that would be tedious in a text editor like MSWord. (Is it convenient to sort a set of lines in Word? Or to separate words into lines, or combine them?) While exploring hammos1’ puzzle, I even used the editor to manipulate the words so I could sort them on a different field.
And, like most old hackers, I’m happy to do my text editing in a fixed-pitch font. Reading out the secret message in hammos1’ puzzle would be a little more difficult with variable-pitch fonts, let alone handwriting.
My puzzle may be somewhat less dependent on such “work habits” than hammos1’ puzzle. But in forgetting that a preference for an environment like vi or emacs is not universal, I may have underestimated the difficulty of these puzzles.
It has been almost a year. I was reminded of this puzzle in the 53 Bicycles thread (posts starting at #2458). So can anyone help shed light on this assuming the “grave danger” can still be avoided? I am lost.
I notice that the message in #12 has six words with 1 capitalized letter, six words with 2 capitalized letters, six words with 3 capitalized letters, six words with 4 capitalized letters, and six words with 5 capitalized letters — the remaining words each have 6 capitalized letters.
But the message in #2 doesn’t conform to this, nor does the message in “53 bicycles.” I think the capitalization is being used for the same purpose in each message, but the specifics vary.
Based on the puzzle poem thread, I have come up with the following arrangement of message #1 that yields something coherent - I don’t understand the method fully, though (how is the ‘sorting’ order determined?):
[SPOILER]Reorder words and read alternate letters:
Giantist init
vIvant iat
sigNage ing
astuTe att
ARc ac
sKIp kp
lEAnner lanr
itcHIer the
nautCH nuc
lEEWAARD lear
LeAGUE lau
NEcK nc
HECtOR hco
DUELiSST deis
PHONEY poe
meOw mo
Sort words by:
1- number of capital letters
2- position of first capital letter
Then read alternate letters (ignore Xs in message 2).
When We
aGreed are
glOria goi
negAtion ngto
xkniT ki
deniaL dna
PAin pi
vEAl va
nuKE nk
aftERburm atrum
xaphID pI
xxwhiRL wil
GLItch lth
dIANa in
knOPF kof
xeaRTH at
wherEAT weet
xxstoOLS tos
ECLAirs car
xECHO eh
xeARLY ery
xxbOGUS ou
xxpaRCEL pre
xpraiRIES pare
STORMier some
xCAHIL chl
boURBON oro
xxxFLOOR for
ximpAINED mand
xxxxpSYCHO sco
APRONLy pol
xARMPIT ami
xxXXNEED ne
I can always provide hints as needed.)