Caesar Cypher & The Substitutions have been on tour, and as tradition dictates, the souvenir tour T-shirt bears a list of the cities visited on the back. But of course, since we're talking about one of Europe's leading cryptographic jazz combos, the list is in code:
080476
410488
631428083607
735616461
440401478
235476731
540631
616431
461546410
The list contains no information apart from the city names. Can you work out their itinerary?
Question: Have we been given a ‘red herring’ in that there is the assumption that the tour was only Europe? Is that a valid supposition? Sure, the group has it’s origins in Europe, but …. it’s a question to be considered.
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Considering only the digits 0 to 8 limits us to 9 alpha characters; idea is therefore worthy of rejection.
That multiples of 3 may be significant could suggest 2 rows of 9 characters and 8 in the last; problem here is that the final position of the 3rd row is void. My intent would be to use row 1 for the 1st position in multiple, row 2 for the 2nd and row 3 for the 3rd. Even so, some trials of arranging characters in simple logical ways seemed invalid.
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Indices? X^n ! But I did try a little binary. Individual digits, considered from right to left, were cast as binary numbers with their rightmost digit in the same column as the decimal equivalent. Adding them, as decimals, yes I disregarded them as binary, I had the number 10 01 12 20; and in simple one to one correspondence that gave “JALT”! The next trial was worse.
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Further thoughts.
I recalled reading “The Code Book” by Simon Singh. In it he referenced a few instances of using numerals instead of alpha characters. The book is a great read on cryptography (his challenge has been met), but I doubt that it will offer direct help.
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Beale cipher (book cipher) pp82- 99 [tried this on Jenny’s intro text – couldn’t see a connection, not that there isn’t one – like the attempt to use latitude and longitude; ok, but how would the 9 and 12 digits be interpreted? ],
Linear B (Minoan civilisation – great insight – but unlikely with the problem posed at 3, that Jenny would be so cruel) pp217-242
Binary Encryption p245+. I’ve tried to consider some form of chart, but that makes little sense. I am feeling that there is some level of numeric encryption here that has reduced numeric pairs of digits to 6, 9 and 12 characters. Although I can’t see how, I am wondering if the smaller words might have a predominace of letters form A to I/J?
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Thoughts, just thoughts.
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Posted by brianjn
on 2004-11-08 02:13:43 |
Thoughts, just thoughts.
