Agent "La Guillotine", known to her colleagues as the "Bye-Bye Girl", wrote her codes in much the same way as her victims met their demise.

Her favourite quip was: "I like the finale of my jobs gift wrapped in nothing, even the petite!"

From her superior came this message:

4 D ô ä õ E 4 U d U % t • D … D □ $ t U E ” U @

Translated to ascii that reads:

52, 68, 244, 228, 245, 69, 52, 85, 100, 85, 37, 116,
149, 68, 133, 68, 21, 36, 116, 85, 69, 148, 85, 67

With the potential of another victim what was she advised?

The Ascii 21 which is a 'control' character does not show and has been represented by a small square, unicode 25A1.

(In reply to solution by Charlie)

Charlie,
Firstly I offered this to Jer for his verification.  He did concede that a hint, should it be necessary after posting, did rate this at D5.

I am unsure if I conceded at that time that for a programmer versed in binary this was --- D3(?) ---  I believe I mentioned your name in the exchange.  If so, you didn't let me down, but I didn't quite expect that the title would hint so obviously since the ascii was a mix of 2 and 3 digits.

I read your last paragraph and wondered for a moment what you meant: "Initially there was a bug in the code that prevented recognition of the plaintext.."

At review there was indeed a problem with my plaintext, I had an ascii value of .. 288! ... Ascii goes to 255!  I had a typo, but that is not to which you refer - a bug in your code.

Caesar shift? Neat thought, but it didn't cross my mind, or did it?  Maybe I thought this was complex enough.

Congratulations Charlie on your quick mind.

The lady still wanders the catacombs of Perplexus but the challenges offered should her missions be accepted, then they should not be so challenging.

Oh!  Nearly forgot.  The hint I had for a programmer was that a 4 digit shift would be needed! 

Posted by brianjn on 2010-03-27 07:43:52