Puzzle #7 - little circles in squares

reply to post by Deaf Alien


Honoree.

Don't miss my post on page 3 about flipping.

[edit on 15-8-2008 by Benevolent Heretic]

reply to post by Benevolent Heretic


Gotcha

You might be on to something. I will check it out.

reply to post by americandingbat

I like that lettering system. One mistake I found:

Yours: cdFkBEb XmQTVaRO UXJHeRWJNl TRCTnkJJ kfBkdbfioW BWVfphh hSSJOUHcXm CAVAmOO
Mine: cdFkBEb XmQTVaRO UXJHeRWJNl TRCTnkJJ kfBkdbfioW BWVfPhh hSSJOUHcXm CAVAmOO

reply to post by americandingbat


Finally the -1 pixel offset I mentioned on page 1 makes sense (kind of):

cdFkBEb XmQTVaRO UXJHeRWJNl TRCTnkJJ kfBkdbfioW BWVfPhh hssJOUHcXm CAVAmOO
^one less pixel before glyph 'T'!

The ambiguous glyph, 'S' or 's', lies between 'Q' and 'T'. Maybe that's where the alphabet-break is?

However, the glyph 'R' is used (there's 3 of them), so further mystery....

Originally posted by Ian McLean
reply to post by americandingbat

 

I like that lettering system. One mistake I found:

Yours: cdFkBEb XmQTVaRO UXJHeRWJNl TRCTnkJJ kfBkdbfioW BWVfphh hSSJOUHcXm CAVAmOO
Mine: cdFkBEb XmQTVaRO UXJHeRWJNl TRCTnkJJ kfBkdbfioW BWVfPhh hSSJOUHcXm CAVAmOO

You are right. It should be P. I'd change it in the original post but I seem to have used up my post-editing privileges

While I'm at it, I just want to mention something that's been in the back of my mind but doesn't really fit in with the directions I've been trying. There are 31 unique glyphs used in the message. This is very close to 32, which is 16x2. 16 is important.

Just some random noise to get out of my head and onto the board

I meant to take a break today, but I found myself thinking about it still!

I went over every character, just trying to get it all straight in my mind and I came up with 32 characters used. Here's the picture I've got.



[edit on 16-8-2008 by Benevolent Heretic]

Uh-oh... I only count 31 glyphs used. Here is a layout of the actual pixels of each glyph, in a way that is symmetrical when flipped horizontally, vertically, and both (rotated 180). Eg, the pixel patterns exactly cancel one another out, when you overlay the flipped/rotated image as a subtractive layer.



I'm going to do a translation of the text using this key; let's see what glyph I missed!

PS: Thanks for the suggestion about flipping/rotating, BH

[edit on 16-8-2008 by Ian McLean]

reply to post by Ian McLean


Thanks. I found my mistake. 31 it is.

Originally posted by Ian McLean

Ian, notice that the diagonals are so different. One has all the places filled. The other only has 2 at the top (not counting the corner, which is part of the left column)... Almost like those 2 are purposely separated. Those 2 are only used one time each in the puzzle.

One is the next-to-the-last letter of the 5th word. (apostrophe?)
The other is the 5th letter of the 4th word. (dash?)

If you take the entire right column and rotate it on the vertical axis and slap it over the left column, like you said, it lines up perfectly. If you then count the symbols in the left column, plus the ones in the filled diagonal, you have 23 "letters" plus the 2 symbols that are used only once above.

Just some thoughts.

[edit on 16-8-2008 by Benevolent Heretic]

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
Thanks. I found my mistake. 31 it is.

Heh, actually, my mistake -- 32 it is. I forgot to count the extra glyph that only appears in the 'legend' or whatever the inverted text at the bottom is. Here's my currently key, using ADB's lettering system:



And here's the puzzle, with those glyphs overlaid, for verification:

(Click here for complete image)

I had an idea, what if the blocks represent a chunk of the keyboard? That way the clue could have letters, numbers and punctuation.

reply to post by DraconianKing


Yes, seems plausible. This is the first puzzle to use commas. Perhaps the fact that punctuation characters are present indicate that there is more than alpha characters. What about numbers?

reply to post by Ian McLean

Ian, you could remove the "Q" in your alphabet as that is often the letter removed when 25 letters are needed.

BCFKADA YMQVWZRO WYJHDRYJNL
TRBTNKJJ KEAKCBFINX AXWEOGG
GTTJOWIBYM BZXZMOO

What do you get from all of this?

Pretty sure the alphabet doesn't wrap A-Z,Z-A or repeat symbols.... think its a polyalphabet cipher, with a shift, like the second part of puzzle 4... the alphabet seems to change between words, though -- shuffling the grouping of the different segments of circle-glyphs.

Okay, let's get this puzzle out of the way, and on to another one.

The Thread ID is 302187

ATS Premium: Barksdale Missile Number Six: The Stolen Nuclear Weapon

The decoded text is:

cdFkBEb XmQTVaRO UXJHeRWJNl TRCTnkJJ, kfBkdbfioW BWVfPhh, hSSJOUHcXm CAVAmOO
nuclear warheads mistakenly departed, quintuplet arrives, conspiracy started

The encryption is similar to the last part of puzzle #4. I'm not exactly sure of the second word, "warheads". Unlike puzzle #4, the alphabet changes for different words. But the thread I found about the 'mistakenly loaded warheads' incidence last year is the correct one.

I've tried just about every combination of "barksdale", "minot", "b52", "nuclear", "north dakota", "louisiana", various names, part numbers, etc, etc, etc, as 'answer text', for the last two hours, but with no luck.

Have at it, folks!

Let Benevolent Heretic do the honor

Congratulations for solving the puzzle!

reply to post by Ian McLean


Well I guess I'll do it cause my curiosity is killing me

reply to post by Ian McLean


Are you sure about all the other words besides "warheads"?

Congrats, by the way!

Six nuclear weapons disappeared from Minot AFB in North Dakota.
Five nuclear weapons were discovered at Barksdale AFB in Louisiana.
Which leads to my chilling conclusion: Someone, operating under a special chain of command within the United States Air Force, just stole a nuclear weapon.

Perhaps

Nuclear warheads discovered ???, five (quintuplet) remains, conclusion stolen

[edit on 17-8-2008 by Deaf Alien]