Question

Crypto challenge 13: T T C E W R H I E N O O E R O O F P F

Asked by: KelvinY

S H C N S   O E E F E   C H K A M   P I T O E   O O E E R   O T D H A
P E G O T   N L I U M   H E S W T   I T E T H   E G S U T   U N I E A
O F H D I   U T I E B   W R O O L   H T C S I   I N G T P   I S L H M
H R A A Y   R E H N P   T E S G N   L T X M O   T S T H I   T F O T W
B M E U T   E H R E O   D I U H S   N E L S A   L E A C A   G O H V S
D O T I F   L Y S E E   O E W N A   A E S B T   T S O T E   N S V T E
T S P T L   T G E A O   T M S E I   A N T A I   G T R E O   S F W U I
L P H P F   C P S R L   E T O I T   C A L W H   H A E N F   T W L T O
B U U T H   T E I E E   O R S E S   I I N A P   O B L T I   I A V H N

1) J R R Y R   T V L E L   S V C P K   Y N R U R   Y K W R Y   Y H I Q Y
K G V C T   F K H E R   A C F V C   P K S E Q   I K P V S   S V N A Y
E D A Q L   E

2) E S B H S   G C C I X   C B C J D   R S P T K   A D N B H   T S W E I
K B R Y I   I N J N I   S H S N B   I J T K A   V K W E I

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Asked On
2006-10-13 at 07:43:13ID22023532
Topic

Puzzles & Riddles

Participating Experts
2
Points
250
Comments
18

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Answers

 

by: KelvinYPosted on 2006-10-16 at 08:52:52ID: 17739881

Hmm. I didn't think this one would last for so long without a nibble. Time for a clue I guess. Frequency analysis of the title and instructions should give you something close to plain English, implying that some kind of transposition has been used. More details on exactly which transposition was used if no more activity occurs in the next 24 hours.

 

by: maramomPosted on 2006-10-16 at 13:55:58ID: 17742350

Got the instructions already: it's the "two for the price of one" that's the difficult part. I suppose the 5 letter groupings make it more challenging to crack.

 

by: RobinDPosted on 2006-10-16 at 15:16:10ID: 17743099

Go for it maramom, I'll just sit back and wait for more clues. I did the frequency analysis, but haven't managed to unravel the instructions yet.

 

by: KelvinYPosted on 2006-10-17 at 01:43:56ID: 17745685

Well, at least one person has figured out that the title and instructions are a railfence cipher. There are no clues in the title and instructions as to the contents of the two ciphers, apart from the cipher type, which you can probably guess from the length of the text and the frequency distribution anyway.

 

by: KelvinYPosted on 2006-10-18 at 02:30:22ID: 17755296

Time for a final clue on the title and instructions before moving on to the ciphers themselves. The title and instructions are encoded using a railfence with four rails.

 

by: RobinDPosted on 2006-10-18 at 03:57:27ID: 17755594

When maramom has finished solving this, please could one of you give me a brief intro to railfence. It just isn't working for me at all.

 

by: KelvinYPosted on 2006-10-18 at 04:15:04ID: 17755703

RobinD,

I used Wilhelm M. Plotz's CipherClerk's applet ( http://members.aon.at/cipherclerk/CipherClerk.html ) to do the railfence encoding. There's a brief explanation of it at http://members.aon.at/cipherclerk/Doc/Railfence.html. The method that Wilhelm uses is different from that described by Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_Fence_Cipher ) and Simon Singh ( http://www.simonsingh.net/The_Black_Chamber/railfence.html ).

 

by: maramomPosted on 2006-10-18 at 04:25:14ID: 17755761

LOL: >>When maramom has finished solving this
I'm not quite so confident...what appears to be a very simple cipher (so far) has me stumped.

 

by: RobinDPosted on 2006-10-18 at 04:41:59ID: 17755834

I have complete confidence in you maramom :7)

>The method that Wilhelm uses is different from ...
Maybe that's where I'm going wrong, I'll have a bit of a read. Thanks.

 

by: KelvinYPosted on 2006-10-19 at 03:15:53ID: 17764398

OK, we'll start with the obvious clues for the ciphers. The two messages are monoalphabetic substitutions. They have different, loosely related, keys. If there is no progress on them by tomorrow, then I'll repost them with the correct spacing, as I think the five letter groups are hiding a lot of information.

 

by: RobinDPosted on 2006-10-19 at 04:50:47ID: 17764761

I'm still stuck on the instructions :7)

I've got the title to make sense now, but can't find a way to get the length of a rail - is this designed to be a 'pencil and paper' cipher?

 

by: KelvinYPosted on 2006-10-19 at 05:27:53ID: 17764974

RobinD,

It is a tricky one to decode. A four rail cipher would result in the 1st, 7th, 13th, 19th, ... character appearing in the top rail. Similarly the 4th, 10th, 16th, ... characters go to the bottom rail. The message is 270 characters long, so you can work out that the top rail ends at the 265th character from the plaintext and contains 45 characters. Similarly, the bottom rail ends at the 268th character and also contains 45 characters. The remaining 180 characters are divided equally betwen the two middle rails, which must each contain 90 characters. So split the message into strings of 45, 90, 90 and 45 characters, then space them out so you get the zig zag path and read the plain text.

 

by: RobinDPosted on 2006-10-19 at 06:32:23ID: 17765519

45,90,90,45 - aarg! I was so close. right idea + wrong numbers. I worked out the 1:2:2:1 ratio but foolishly decided it wouldn't be exact. I've got the instructions now, but I suppose it doesn't really count as breaking the cypher...

 

by: KelvinYPosted on 2006-10-20 at 02:20:02ID: 17772288

Clue time. Here are the cryptograms with the correct spacing between words.

1) JRRYRTVLEL SVCP KYNRURY K WRYYH IQYKGVCT FKH ER ACFVCP KSEQI K PVSSVNAYE DAQLE

2) ESBHSGCCI XC BCJ DRSP TKADNBH TSWEI KBRYII NJ NI SHSNBIJ TKAVKWEI

 

by: maramomPosted on 2006-10-20 at 06:22:27ID: 17773417

2) KANGAROOS DO NOT PLAY JUMPING JACKS UNLESS IT IS AGAINST JUMBUCKS

 

by: KelvinYPosted on 2006-10-20 at 07:14:54ID: 17773857

One down, one to go. Nice one, maramom. I think giving away the spacing has been a big help, but we have still managed to break the one week barrier for the first time and this week's challenge is now out.

 

by: maramomPosted on 2006-10-21 at 20:23:40ID: 17782571

..and finally...
1) ZOOLOGISTS FIND ALCOHOL A JOLLY RELAXING WAY TO UNWIND AFTER A DIFFICULT QUEST                     ..........sounds like a good idea :)

Real tough one, KelvinY! I thought this one would be 'cake' after reading in the instructions it was a monoalphabetic substitution. The j's q's z's and x's made it especially challenging. Your word seperations clue definitely helped.
On to the next one!

 

by: KelvinYPosted on 2006-10-22 at 07:49:16ID: 17783905

Great work, maramom. This week's ciphers were monoalphabetic substitutions, with tricky frequency profiles.

The full messages were

Crypto challenge 13: Two for the price of one

Since the last challenge was such a tough one, I have eased off on the difficulty this week. Below are two monoalphabetic substitutions. To get the points solve them, either separately, or together, and post the messages in plaintext. I am going to start the points off low, but I will bump them up if the ciphers are solved without hints.

1) ZOOLOGISTS FIND ALCOHOL A JOLLY RELAXING WAY TO UNWIND AFTER A DIFFICULT QUEST

2) KANGAROOS DO NOT PLAY JUMPING JACKS UNLESS IT IS AGAINST JUMBUCKS


The keys were 1) CROCODILE (offset to K) and 2) HUNTER (offset to S). The full encoding schemes were:
1)
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
KMNPQSTUVWXYZCRODILEABFGHJ
2)
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
SVWXYZHUNTERABCDFGIJKLMOPQ

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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