The Great SDMB Cipher Challenge

Well, I got a fake message that I understood, one that almost made sense (though something Peregrine said makes me think I should be reading more into it), and what I believe to be the message that counts, which doesn’t quite make sense either. I’ll be interested to see what I’m missing, since I can’t work on it any more. Exam tomorrow, you see. Great puzzle, Cal! I enjoyed working on it.

If the third fake message turns out to be that there’s only two fake messages, I will be pissed. That is all.

For some reason, I can’t get to any of your e-mails.

I believe the 3rd fake message has to do with the first word of each sentance. If you read the first word of each sentance, in order, you get another message.

Sorry for the spoiler, but again, I wasn’t able to find anyone’s e-mail… and since CalMeachum is going to reveal the answer soon, I figured it was ok.

The Answer Revealed!

First, though, I don’t know why you guys are having problems with my e-mail. I changed it over to the new one earlier this week, and when I click on “profile” or “e-mail” the right one pops right up.
On, to the solution.
As several of you have divined, the original base cipher is a simple substitution cipher. You ignore the italics and the bold printing, and treat every letter as if it’s in roman text. Note that lower case and upper case, however, are not identical. The message reads:
THIS IS CALMEACHAM’S SDMB CRYPTOGRAPHY CHALLENGE. IS IT CLEAR WHAT IS GOING ON? NOT ONLY IS THERE A SECRET MESSAGE HIDDEN IN THIS APPARENTLY HAPHAZARD JUMBLE OF LETTERS, THERE ARE ALSO SEVERAL FALSE MESSAGES. THE TEXT YOU ARE NOW READING, FOR EXAMPLE, IS EMPHATICALLY NOT THE REAL HIDDEN MESSAGE. HIDDEN WITHIN THIS TEXT , IN VARIETY OF WAYS, ARE THREE OTHER FALSE MESSAGES. MESSAGE THAT COUNTS IS ENCODED HOLOGRAPHICALLY, SO THAT EVEN A FEW TYPOS WON’T PREVENT YOUR FINDING IT.

This messahge constitutes the first false message, since it’s not the real solution to the cipher. As the odd syntax to the last sentence made clear to a lot of folks, there’s something odd there. Why the heck isn’t there a “The” at the start of it? The reason is that it had to be that way for one of the false messages. The other false messages are associated with the italicized letters and with the bold letters:

  1. False Message encoded in first word of each sentence. This one’s a piece of cake:

This is not the Hidden Message

  1. False Message hidden in Bold letters. This one’s pretty easy too. All you have to do is take allthe Bolded letters in the coded message, starting at the last one and reading backwards:

Message no here

  1. False message hidden in italics. A little more difficult. This message reads forwards, but you have to have translated the message into cleartext first (or else extract the letters, then use your code key to translate):

You Don’t Have It Yet

  1. The real hidden message. This is encoded in a way that’s sneaky and obscure, but not hopelessly complex. Write out the code key you generated when solving the initial cryptogram. In the following, the Code letter that appears in the message as posted is on the left. The “Clear” symbol that the coded letter stands for is on the right. Note that some letters are encoded as lower case, some as upper case:
    Code Clear

    q                           A
     n                          B
     k                           C
      j                           D
     f                            E
     c                            F
     H                            G
     G                            H
      U                           I
      O                           J
       B                          K
       D                          L
       R                          M
        o                          N
        W                         O
        S                           P
         s                           Q
         A                           R
         P                           S
         E                           T
         M                           U
          L                           V
          I                            W
          a                            X
          m                           Y
          e                            Z
    

Now read the Code column upwards from the bottom:

e-mail ME PASSWoRD BOUGH cfjknq

The password is “BOUGH”, although Peregrine thought it was “TOUGH”. I thought I covered all the ambiguities, but there’s not enough info in my message to distinguish the two. Sorry about that. The final sequence cfjknq are just “nulls” to fill out the alphabet. If I were more clever or more ambitious, I’d have stuck something in there, too.

It would be very easy to make this more complex or more difficult, or to encode more information still. But the idea here was to make a pleasant puzzle, not an unbreakable mind-bending frustration. The initial cryptogram was to lure people in with the promise of a quick payoff, the three false messages were top add interest and distraction, and to lay a false trail for the real message. I’d wanted to set up a code like this for a long time, but never found an excuse before. Then it hit me that the SDMB would be just the place.
I once posted a singles ad in code, with my real name encoded as above. I figured it would catch the eye of interested women. I’d get the intellectual types who like solving problems. Until that point, my singles ads had gotten almost no responses.

My first attempt to post it was rejected – the ad editor thought there was a problem with his equipment. They posted it the next week.

I got three responses.

All from puzzle-lovers, who had absolutely no interest in going out with me. They liked the puzzle, though.

But none of them found my name hidden in the Code Key.

  1. I could only find one italicized s. Are you sure it really spells “message no here”? I got “mesage no here”.

  2. Peregrine implied that he/she found 2 addresses in your message. How’s that? I just used the link on the board to email you.

  3. Is there an q in the translated message that I’m not seeing? I don’t know how you got s = q.

  4. Couldn’t the password also be COUGH, cOUGH, dOUGH, or rOUGH? That’s why I only emailed you “OUGH”. I had no idea. Peregrine said the italics somehow cleared this up, but how? Was that just a red herring?

  5. I can’t believe I missed the first words message. Ugh.

  6. Cool puzzle.

Excellent Puzzle.

I wrote something similar in a January puzzle with a Sherlock Holmes theme(now forever lost…sigh). That really frustrates me because I still took so long to solve this challenge. What tricked me for so days was the backward lettering in the decoded alphabet key. When I couldn’t spell anything out forwards, I went back to puzzling over the unused letters. Great fun.

CalMeacham: More puzzles please!

Here’s how I read the italicized false message: mes_age no_ here (i.e., “message not here” with two blanks in it).

And here’s how I read the real message: emaILMEPA_SWoRD_OUGHgfjknq
(i.e., “email me password” something, with two blanks in it).

“Ah,” I said. “Two blanks in each message. And the first blank is clearly the same letter in each. Very likely the second letter is also the same.” That’s how I came to use a T for the first letter of the password. I still don’t know where I was meant to find a B.

To email CalMeacham, I used the email icon under one of his posts. When I tried to send my solution, I got a flag that said something like “message could not be sent”. I tried again. My Sent Items box showed that both attempts went to an address which was different from the one that comes up with the email icon. So I did it again, making sure the address matched. And here we are.

Thanks, Cal–that was fun.

So where did you find the second address? And CalMeacham , how about a clue as to how we were to get “bough”?

And how about if I read your whole message next time, before I post? Disregard me, I am silly.

Sorry I’m late posting thi, but I’ve just had a chance to check my e-mail. Last night someone signing themselves A’am osted the correct Password. (Well, -OUGH, anyway. My fault.) So we have a Silver winner.

You may notice the “aka typo mna” on the last line. Thankyaverymuch.