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October 06, 2005
Challenge 1 prizes etc
We will announce the winners of the Challenge 1 part A lottery tonight or tomorrow (just to keep you wondering). How are you getting on with Challenge 2? Someone asked if they should leave the dashes in their solution. You can, it doesn't matter. Remember maximum points for solutions received tonight, then they go down by a point per day 'til next Wednesday. All the best,
Posted by Harry at October 6, 2005 06:26 PM
Comments
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yes, i did challenge 3,A on the first night it was reasonable easy but 3,B is a bit harder i will try to get it in by saturday though ;)
Posted by: Daniel Sales at October 13, 2005 10:16 PM
Looks much better to me! Yay!
Posted by: Jess at October 8, 2005 07:00 PM
do you need to put punctuation in part B? or do you just leave it as a string of words?
Posted by: chloe at October 8, 2005 04:38 PM
YAY - It works!!! :D:D:D
I can finally read the text and not have to blame it on my glasses playing up :)
Posted by: Andy at October 7, 2005 11:04 PM
yep its all good.
Posted by: tuna at October 7, 2005 11:00 PM
David, that's great, and it seems to work for my browser at least. Does it look OK for everyone else? Many thanks, Harry
Posted by: Harry at October 7, 2005 10:57 PM
Try replacing the body css with:
body
{
font: 8pt/16pt georgia;
background: url(/cipher2005/images/filldown2.jpg) repeat-y #666666;
}
And remove the background-image property from #pagebody.
This puts the y-fill image in the body tag so it'll repeat down the whole page. Hope this helps :)
Posted by: David at October 7, 2005 10:49 PM
The honours board looks fine to me, same as it did yesterday. Some other bits of the site look a little weird but it's all legible and usable for me.
Posted by: Ruth at October 7, 2005 10:29 PM
Harry, you said you were going to announce the prizes for Challenge 1A yesterday or today! You haven't got long left!
Posted by: Jess at October 7, 2005 10:20 PM
Ummm Harry... when will we get an email letting us know if our entries were correct? :-S
Posted by: Katie at October 7, 2005 09:23 PM
Wish we could fix it! We are having trouble with css and html. If anyone out there knows how to deal with filldown-y and setting box heights properly let me know!
Posted by: Harry at October 7, 2005 09:05 PM
hey harry, can you fix the honours board please?? we cant read it because the black column hides half of the text, and wat we can see is all overlapping and weird!!
thanks
Posted by: at October 7, 2005 08:46 PM
For B I just looked for re-occuring three letter words and things like that and seeing if I could get any words to come out, then I just fitted the rest of the letters.
Posted by: Katrina at October 7, 2005 08:11 PM
I stayed up until midnight and just about got it in. It took me a while, but keep on looking and a pattern will emerge!!!
Posted by: josh at October 7, 2005 07:48 PM
Claire - it might help to look at what kind of cipher is used to encrypt message B. It may look like a random cipher alphabet; but it isn't :)
There is method in the madness and you should be able to figure out what the letter is. Try looking for patterns in the ciphertext alphabet :)
Posted by: Andy at October 7, 2005 04:18 PM
Note to cecil:
From a biographical entry on Harry Schultz Vandiver:
"Born: 21 Oct 1882 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Died: 9 Jan 1973 in Austin, Texas, USA"
Yes, he is getting a little long in the tooth by now. But he was lively at any age.
"..developed an antagonism to public education and left school at an early age to work for his father's firm. In 1904 he collaborated with Birkhoff on a paper .." "..In 1952 Vandiver used a computer to study Fermat's Last Theorem.." "..Did not complete high school, published 174 papers, awarded the Cole prize in 1931, honorary degree at age 63.."
Agatha Highfield's age is anybody's guess.
John
Posted by: John at October 7, 2005 01:52 PM
well i got part B done but i wasnt too sure on one letter. the one in the weird german code word thing. it could have been 3 things i think. so i guessed and am hoping its right!!
Posted by: claire at October 7, 2005 10:48 AM
Has anyone worked part b out yet before 12am? i would like to know to see if anyone will get full points
tuna
Posted by: tuna at October 6, 2005 11:58 PM
David, ALWAYS submit the message as posted. DON'T correct mistakes.
Posted by: Harry at October 6, 2005 10:13 PM
Harry, they can do this one by hand if they have to!
Posted by: Harry at October 6, 2005 10:12 PM
Are we expected to correct spelling mistakes or submit exactly as deciphered?
Posted by: David at October 6, 2005 10:05 PM
Chloe - Frequency *should* work provided you stick at it...
Posted by: Andy at October 6, 2005 10:02 PM
frequency should work! look at three-letter strings for 'the'...you will need to find a computer frequency analysis program to do this, try google.
Posted by: harry de voil at October 6, 2005 10:00 PM
any clues as to how to work out part B? i have translated it from morse, but can't work out what to do from there, frequency didn't work.
Posted by: Chloe at October 6, 2005 09:53 PM
See the comment "Can't resubmit" on the boat's log. All the best,
Posted by: Harry at October 6, 2005 09:34 PM
I tried to post our answers to challenge 1 but it kept coming up that they had already been sent & to close browser and start again. I did this twice and it still would not work How do I overcome this?
Posted by: Timbo roselandcity at October 6, 2005 09:32 PM
A morse code translater would have saved me a lot of time. Just spent the last hour with Simon Singh's trusty "Code Book" and random dots and dashes. The story's just getting interesting.
Should we be expecting more morse code in the future?
I've just had a thought. I wonder how old harry must be if he was around in 1910 and now in 1959. Can we be expecting any more of aga?
Posted by: cecil at October 6, 2005 09:06 PM
Via google I found an internet morse translator which helped me save lots of time.
Posted by: dcr at October 6, 2005 08:40 PM
Amy, you don't need to include punctuation because they only count letters, I think.
Posted by: Jess at October 6, 2005 08:40 PM
Neel - you have translated it from morse code to obtain the cipher text I assume? Now treat that as a normal cipher; try cracking it! :)
Mimi - it said in message 1A that messages would use the standard 5 letter block. So you may notice that each space occurs every 5 letters; this makes it so you are unable to detect easily words like "I" "a" and "the"
Posted by: Andy at October 6, 2005 08:33 PM
do we need to include punctuation?
Posted by: Amy at October 6, 2005 08:23 PM
in Part B for challange 2, where are the gaps between the words? is it just where the normal gap are??
Posted by: mimi at October 6, 2005 07:54 PM
what are the prizes?
Posted by: Seano at October 6, 2005 07:48 PM
Is it drawn from everyone at random, or only the most accurate?
Posted by: Jon at October 6, 2005 07:22 PM
Challenge 2 was fun- we had thought that some of it might be in Morse Code. Can't wait until Challenge 3! By the way, how many times can you submit solutions in what length of time?
Jess
Posted by: Jess at October 6, 2005 07:20 PM
I can get the translation from morse code but what are we supposed to do after that????
Posted by: Neel at October 6, 2005 07:02 PM