Originally posted by Freenrgy2
After all, the practice puzzle said "Solving this glyph provides advantage upon final puzzle". And this is the FINAL puzzle.
Hmm! I had forgotten about that. I'll have to go back and analyze that puzzle some more.
I've been trying various things, but with nothing that's leading to any 'ah-ha!' moments... so I've been looking at previous puzzles a little
closer, seeing if there's anything we've been missing.
A strange thing is that there seems to be a shift in the cipher alphabet in various puzzles that follow the same pattern, at different points in the
text. Maybe this is significant? For example, puzzle #8:
Input text: "d-w-w-v-j-z -h-s-x-b -e-m-g-x-o -e-l-e-y- o-n-r-f-t- h-x-u-q-s-"
Input alphabet "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
...
a-s-r-p-c-r -y-i-m-p -r-y-r-h-x -m-s-k-d- s-q-t-g-t- g-v-r-m-n- (mult=25, ofs=23)
government
b-t-s-q-d-s -z-j-n-q -s-z-s-i-y -n-t-l-e- t-r-u-h-u- h-w-s-n-o- (mult=25, ofs=24)
installed throughout
c-u-t-r-e-t -a-k-o-r -t-a-t-j-z -o-u-m-f- u-s-v-i-v- i-x-t-o-p- (mult=25, ofs=25)
counterfeit backdoor
The cipher alphabet shifted one extra position in the middle of the third word ('stealthily').
The same thing was true for puzzle #5; even though the first letters were given, the cipher followed a straight sequence, only shifting at two points
in the phrase.