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November 13, 2005
Comments and Challenge 6
Apologies to everyone whose comment on Challenge 6 has been blocked. There have been loads of hints but I don't want to give too much away too early so have decided not to publish many of them. If we get time later on we will go back and post them. Thanks for all your posts, we do read them all.
Posted by Harry at November 13, 2005 09:26 AM
Comments
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Obviously, the machine was designed for the 30 cyrillic letters. The machine could not be changed to 26 contacts without changing the wiring completely. So we can just assume (I hope) that the extra 4 letters are either not used (in the plaintext) or even punctuation of some kind. But how do the letters correspond? I'll let you think about it some more. Clue: you don't need the Internet.
Posted by: Jason at November 15, 2005 05:01 PM
Another thing, as far as I can make out, the Cyrillic alphabet is central to the whole machine; there are 30 contacts per rota. i can't see how a 26 letter alphabet can work inside the thing, without at least some cyrillic handling. (grumbles about unicode characters not being in the same order as the Fialka rotors)
[You have to remember this is just a game. We are quite happy to subordinate reality to the needs of the story. Harry]
Posted by: melkorme at November 14, 2005 09:30 PM
I'm interested to see that we won't get any cyrillic characters. As a warm up to Fialka I wrote an enigma simulator (from scratch) and that was enough of a challenge, I just haven't found enough information about Fialka to understand how the latin type keyboard works. Enigma is soooooooo unbelieveably much simpler. Also (not giving away too much here I hope) mark 1, is that an M-100, M-105, M-125MN etc etc. I've got a total headache. Also, is the Fialka heads up going to be as useful as the latin 5 thing or not?
Posted by: melkorme at November 14, 2005 09:27 PM
I've been working for so long on this and I just know I am working at a much higher level than needed. I just want to know, at any point as a vigenere-type cipher been used, and if not, what other ways are there of distorting frequency distribution?
Posted by: Captain Cool at November 14, 2005 07:39 PM
Re: The Fialka Machine
The rotor movement is actually the easy part, once you understand that there are 2 sets. The cyrillic alphabet should be ignored (unless you're Russian) as it plays no part in the workings of the machine. Yet the wiring still doesn't make sense to me. Hmmm.
Posted by: Jason at November 14, 2005 04:54 PM
when are hints harry??
[See the boat's log. Harry]
Posted by: martyn compton at November 14, 2005 04:37 PM
Harry is quite rightly not going to tell you if you're on the right track. The tactic I used to solve this was try everything and if it doesn't work, try something else.
If you have an idea, do it.
And yes it should be 1024 characters. Which is 2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2.
Posted by: Ian at November 14, 2005 04:36 PM
Hey, Harry, i thought you said you were going to post a few hints today and... where are they?
[On their way, Harry]
Posted by: lara at November 14, 2005 03:46 PM
Will we have to deal with Cyrillic letters?
[No, Harry]
Posted by: I don't know Russian at November 14, 2005 03:16 PM
Err I think somethings gone wrong for me because I have 1028 chracters not 1024!!! Help please!!!!!!
Posted by: Cara at November 14, 2005 11:46 AM
The fialka machine is so complicated!
I'm having trouble understanding all the rotors, advance blocking pins, cyrillic letters...
Posted by: Simon at November 14, 2005 11:26 AM
My inclines might be right but they're still too sketchy for me to DO anthing productive. I just keep thinking"32 is 4*8 there are 8 length-32 rows. hmmmm" then I stop and think "this helps me HOW?"
Posted by: cecil at November 14, 2005 07:27 AM
A word of advice: DO NOT GIVE UP - your ideas are probably right!!
I was on the verge of giving up, but after reading everyone's comments, I had a brainwave and it worked. The annoying thing was that I had thought of the right ways to crack part B, but hadn't used them together. There are two things that you need to do, but it ISN'T double encrypted. (Excel is very useful here.)
[Actually this is *SLIGHTLY* misleading. Harry]
Posted by: Margaret at November 13, 2005 10:04 PM
Harry, you told me to do a frequency analysis, but all i get is a load of gibberish no matter how i fiddle round with it. i've noticed that there are 1024 letters altogether and 32 in each group. so is it a 32 by 32 square or loads of small squares or am i on completely the wrong track?
{Hmmmmmm. Harry]
Posted by: lara at November 13, 2005 09:52 PM
ive got it into plaintext, done frequency analysis, but i hav noooooooooooooooooooo idea what to do now help
[I think you mean you've put into characters rather than numbers (plain text is what you get once it is fully deciphered). Harry]
Posted by: F at November 13, 2005 09:48 PM
You're getting there - there's something you have to do first though!
Posted by: Bryn at November 13, 2005 09:29 PM
Thanks, does it refer to a space, ie a gap or / to distinguish letters. This is what I've done, but I do not get a monoalphabetic cipher - is it therefore a viginere type cipher? - or another polyalphabetic cipher? - please let me know if I'm going down the wrong track!!!
[Hmmmmm. Harry]
Posted by: Stephen Harris at November 13, 2005 08:54 PM
Harry, pls dont block this cause it's unfair if you do:
For people who haven't got digital fortress (the book previously mentioned) the code mentioned and used in there is a ceaser square, which incidently a cipher that ceaser used and if im not mistaked, that was his number five cipher, latin five?
I won't tell you how the ceaser square works even though it says in the book.
I think it's only fair that people without the book don't loss out on the hint about digital fortress previuosly given.
Julian Bhardwaj
Posted by: Julian Bhardwaj at November 13, 2005 08:01 PM
Was this cipher used last time? The website isn'tv. helpful but thanx anyway. I couldn't get to the section I wanted!!
Posted by: Cara at November 13, 2005 07:59 PM
Sorry Stephen - it's neither!
Posted by: Bryn at November 13, 2005 06:43 PM
Please could you give me a link to last years cipher challenge or has the link been destroyed.
[Last year's site still exists but the links in it are broken. You can look at it on www.maths.soton.ac.uk/cipher2004. Harry]
Posted by: Cara at November 13, 2005 04:21 PM
Time = 15:23:37 on Sunday afternoon.
Yes finally I did it. Dont' know how many points I got but I did at least finish it.
I am probably going to get half of this deleted but I try any way.
Firstly, the cipher is done in two parts.
Secondly, I am sure that almost anyone who has got this far will now the name of the more complicated of the two parts.
Thirdly, I may have done it in an odd order or something, but when I got the keyword for for the part mentioned above, it was an anagram of a VERY relevant phrase, so dont ignore a certain route because the keyword doesn't make sense.
Fouthly, contrary to what some are saying, I think that the "Latin Square" clue is extremely relevant to the code, though having not read Digital Fortress, I can't comment on that.
Finally: don't give up and wait for more clues, you will feel great if you get it on your own.
Have fun.
PS. Harry, would you like me to resubit the comments that you delete, or will you reveal them when you think it is okay?
Posted by: Clever Code Cracker at November 13, 2005 03:31 PM
well, i've done part a, like most people. it's just that there were so many different things that eople said before, i can't link anything up.
please harry, just a tiny little hint?
Posted by: laura at November 13, 2005 02:20 PM
Harry,
Just wanted to agree with you. The sense of satisfaction from solving 6b without any help was immense! The phrase "99% perspiration and 1% inspiration" was never more true. Once I did have the blinding flash of realisation everything fell into place. So to everyone still doing the cipher...keep going. Remember that if others have cracked it, so can you. Keep thinking, keep trying different things. Keep reading what you already know. Keep looking for new ideas from the information available. I felt like giving up at 8:30pm on Saturday night. By 9pm I was "on top of the world".
Posted by: eleven1 at November 13, 2005 02:01 PM
Just wondering, roughly how many people have submitted a fully correct entry for B so far (my team has)? We did on Saturday night so wondering how much of a disadvantage that might give us for the next challenges.
[You have to wait for the results. Sorry, Harry.]
Posted by: Richard at November 13, 2005 12:19 PM
How many people have got it so far?
[Can't keep checking that I'm afraid. Harry]
Posted by: Ruth at November 13, 2005 11:40 AM
If it suppose to be morse code - does the 2 correspond to a dash or a dot??
Posted by: Stephen Harris at November 13, 2005 09:35 AM