Puzzle #5 - origami/tangram symbols

reply to post by Benevolent Heretic


Excellent point!! That makes sense.

Now, how to apply it.

Has anyone though of looking at the bottom portion as some type of hint. That maybe it's not the white part that is important, but the black part. On the negatives you see slight separations between each symbol and then a deffinitive space between the two "clue words". I'm thinking that the white part is just there to show for the black surrounding it. Just hard to look at it that way because of the black background. as for the very bottom part i'm not quite sure as to what it means, but somehow the dots represent either trianges or squares in some certain way, wether it be that 2 dots represents the base and a single the point. Just some food for thought.

Ok there is something weird I'd like to point out:

When you take the image and make it larger, the 5 grey boxes at the bottom don't pixelate.

I have it up to 1600% on Adobe and everything else is blurry, but these boxes are still clear as day.

Probably nothing to do with the puzzle, but just something I noticed.

Okay, I figured out the ABC's. How do you do the qwerty thing?

I will create an account soon.

I viewed the "What is the conspiracy ?" image at

files.abovetopsecret.com...

Deleted "-title"

and I got this



files.abovetopsecret.com...
( in case it doesn't embed. )

The plot thickens..

I think I have the alphabet figured out (mapped) to the triangular patterns. The first set of inverse characters I believe are sample characters A-B-C and X-Y-Z as someone else pointed out.

The reason I believe this is because the shapes follow a "cyclic" pattern - in other words if you take the shape for A and invert it vertically you wind up with the symbol for the letter B. The next step in the progression is the symbol for C and then it's inverse - so on and so forth.

Then, as Benevolent Heretic pointed out, there are four types of symbols in these triangular patterns - symbols that are missing 1, 2, 3 and 4 triangular shapes: 6 shapes missing 1; 12 shapes missing 2 (we don't have one of these shapes represented in the entire glyph); 2 shapes missing 3; and 6 shapes missing 4 (again we are missing one shape).

6 + 12 + 2 + 6 = 26

I believe:

A-F are in the 1st category (6 shapes missing 1)
G-R are in the 2nd category (12 shapes missing 2 with 1 shape not present)
S-T are in the 3rd category (2 shapes missing 3)
U-Z are in the 4th category (6 shapes missing 4 with 1 shape not present)

In the 6 inverse glyphs at the bottom of the page, I know some people call the 4th glyph (what I think is the "X" glyph) a 'bad' glyph. I think this is just showing us that there are glyphs which exist in this character set that are not used, hence the fact that we do not see the X glyph and 2 others in the puzzle.

At this point is where I'm stumped. I've plugged in the letters to WinDecrypto and I keep coming up with gibberish.

I've tried variations of glyphs like transposing the S and T glyphs, the U and V and W glyphs and so on. I've come up with some words consistently:

OLIVIA, CURARE, LUTHERAN (1 time only), SWEDEN (1 time only), TELEVISED, TELEVISION, BEDEVILED and a bunch of other non-common words.

The last part of solving this puzzle must be in the final 5 glyphs at the bottom, which people say are CKEEK or ENIIN - which I'm not sure what to do with.

I'm curious ...

to the various people who are also trying to map the alphabet to the glyphs, how different are your systems from what I'm working with?



And, be forewarned: you may get gibberish even if you have the right mapping. If I understood the explanation right, in the last puzzle there was still another step: to advance the key by one for each letter.

So, for example, a=a if it was the first letter, but a=s if it was the second letter, and a=d if it was the third letter ...

We may be dealing with something like that

Allright then I think this is the correct sequence.


rats i goofed up

[edit on 12-8-2008 by Deaf Alien]

My thought is that no matter what letters we assign to the glyphs, we're going to have a cryptogram that, when solved, would come out the same. For example, the last word is going to be a 6 letter word with one repeating letter and the rest of the letters will be unique in that word.

I have been scrabbling for 2 days now with various words to fit them together and I wonder... is it possible that we need to assign the proper letters and then unscramble each word?

I like what sos37 has come up with, especially since all the shapes added up to 26 (2 of which aren't being used - the X and one other - maybe Q?).
I have to leave for the evening soon but that's the line I'll be pursuing when I can.

[edit on 12-8-2008 by Benevolent Heretic]

Some thing slightly interesting to report.

I printed the symbols after I had opened the GIF in Adobe Photoshop CS3, and I had inverted the colors (to save on black ink), and discovered the following.

The top half of each symbol was black.

The bottom half has is divided into a green (top) and red (bottom) sections.

May be important, may be artifact, probably useless, but since I'm clueless about Photoshop, and not much better with cyptograms, I'll let my smarter colleagues decide.

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
My thought is that no matter what letters we assign to the glyphs, we're going to have a cryptogram that, when solved, would come out the same. For example, the last word is going to be a 6 letter word with one repeating letter and the rest of the letters will be unique in that word.

You are right so that means it's very likely that it's an anagram so we need to get the correct letters to solve the anagram.

reply to post by Deaf Alien


This isn't true if the key is sliding with each letter. Consider:

A: A B C D E F
B: B C D E F A
C: C D E F A B
D: D E F A B C
E: E F A B C D
F: F A B C D E

Using the first column to decode the first letter, the second column to decode the second letter, etc


DBCC becomes DCEA

and ECBD becomes EDDA

hey guys could we make one post with all the information we have so far as a reference point. Like who ever wants to do it, maybe you can collaborate together and make 1 big post via u2u. This is a hard puzzle, but I am lost in what everyone is thinking also, I know it takes a bit of time, but simple cut and paste is awesome, and than a conclusion or final statement on where everything stands at the moment.

thanks

This better work! MSPaint was giving me headache!





edit - fixed it

[edit on 12-8-2008 by Deaf Alien]

reply to post by Deaf Alien


Thanks for posting it! So the only overlaps between our systems are A B C D.

@ragster: it's a good idea, but I'm not sure we have enough settled to make such a post.

reply to post by americandingbat


You are right. I feel burned out

Originally posted by americandingbat
reply to post by Deaf Alien

 

Thanks for posting it! So the only overlaps between our systems are A B C D.

@ragster: it's a good idea, but I'm not sure we have enough settled to make such a post.

There is a repeat in it. I fixed it but hasn't posted it yet. Going to try out the letters now. I hope I dont make mistakes again!

O.K. I'm going to throw something out. Consider it if you want.

I'm staring at the logo change with the inverted ATS and the square & circle. If you look close the square/circle symbol only covers the letters 'A' in both ATS and 'abovetopsecret.com'.

In morse code, the letter "A" is represented by . - (dot dash)

What if what we are looking at is another way to represent morse code.

This alos goes along with the thread "square the circle". If you let the square = dashes, then it fits.

[edit on 12-8-2008 by Freenrgy2]

reply to post by Anonymous ATS


Hmm that's very interesting. I wonder if there are some images hidden like that?

There are 19 unique symbols used in the puzzle. Here's something I was working on.



GROUP 1 are the letters with 1 triangle blacked out
GROUP 2 are the letters with 2 triangles blacked out
GROUP 3 are the letters with 3 triangles blacked out
GROUP 4 are the letters with 4 triangles blacked out

The black symbols are the 19 that are used in the puzzle.
The RED symbols are ones that I thought were missing (to total 26). In other words, in group 1, the letter "C" doesn't have a mirror image in the puzzle, so I added it in as an unused letter.

I used the 6 symbols at the bottom as ABC and XYZ. Unfortunately, when I plugged some of these letters into the puzzle, it was gibberish.

One problem is that "E" would be in group 1 and there aren't very many of those in the puzzle. In fact, with this map, "W" is the most used letter... I think not...

I'm beginning to doubt the ABC XYZ assumption at the bottom of the page.

But I just wanted to put it out there to spark something.

I'm going to watch some TV with my husband now. Goodnight, all.

[edit on 12-8-2008 by Benevolent Heretic]