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| On Tour (Posted on 2004-11-03) |
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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?
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Submitted by Jenny Turner
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Rating: 4.0000 (9 votes)
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Solution:
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(Hide)
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There are two killer clues here. First, the digit 9 is never used; you should surmise from this that the digits have been converted from a different base, to wit, base 3 (the highest decimal digit represented by a two-digit number in base 3 being 22 = 8, of course). Second, all the placenames are represented by 6, 9 or 12 digits; the reason for this is that each group of three digits represents two letters. A six-digit code number decodes to a four-letter word, nine digits to six letters, etc.
To decode, first convert the digits to base 3.
0 8 0 4 7 6
002200112120
Now take the resulting digits and divide them into groups of three:
002 200 112 120
And convert to letters, where 001=A, 002=B, 010=C ... 222=Z.
002=B
200=R
112=N
120=O
The tour starts in the Czech Republic and moves South through Austria and Italy:
BRNO
LINZ
SALZBURG
VERONA
MILANO
GENOVA
PISA
ROMA
NAPOLI.
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