Puzzle #5 - origami/tangram symbols

reply to post by Benevolent Heretic


That helped alot!!! Thanks! Working on it.

Okay, I'm snapping. Begin rant:

Why do I get the feeling that no one is going to be able to solve this puzzle either? (with out a partial solution from ATS)

I've been looking at the last double cipher puzzle and no one has a CLUE as to how the colors got decoded to read the answer they gave us (which subsequently also had to be deciphered). Sure, someone was able to figure out the second part, but only because ATS gave us the first part.

My point is, they've made these puzzles mathematically and statistically almost impossible to figure out. A double cipher? Fine, but a double cipher where we can't even figure out how the first cipher was coded even AFTER we are given the answer!?

There's a word for that: impossible. If this 5th puzzle is a double cipher, then I'm predicting now that no one will solve this until ATS tells us what the first cipher is.

The reason I say this are the numbers. Unless the first cipher is some very simple conversion, you'll never know which deciphering you are getting wrong - the first one or the second one.

Don't get me wrong, these cryptograms are great if you seriously don't want people to decipher them, but this is supposed be at least possible, right?

For example, if this origami thing is a double cipher (which it could quite possibley be), with some very tricky/obscure way of encoding it (like the first part of the last double cipher), then there are literally thousands of different ways we could play games with rotating/splitting/shifting/cycling these triangles. But we will NEVER know if we get the first part right because you would have to then compare each candidate solution with again, dozens or hundreds of other possible second part deciphers. When you multiply both possibilities, we are talking about many many weeks of testing.

This shouldn't be about brute force deciphering, this should be about logic and clues that make sense. It shouldn't be easy, but certainly, by no means should it be impossible.

Sorry I'm ranting, but this game is getting un-fun, quick. Someone had to say it.

reply to post by harrytuttle


Hey, I understand your frustration. An anonymous poster just bumped this thread again so this IS a clue. Read it and tell me it's not a clue. www.abovetopsecret.com...

Also, the ATS logo above changed. Notice the word logo in this thread.

I'm tired right now. I'll just figure this out in the morning.

Exact quote here www.guardian.co.uk...

Keep digging for clues.

Evening fella's and ladies!

Some very good points have been made (and If I get time this evening or tomorrow I will collate all the clues and points into one post) and I'm liking the idea of the 'square the circle' thread.

I had a dream last night that I used a scrabble board to solve the answer. A long shot I know, but here I sit with a scrabble board in front of me now

reply to post by Deaf Alien


Stairways, huh? Interesting! Quite a coincidence... I was just playing with this, trying to figure out the '6 gets ya 5' enigma:

1) Take glyphs from the 'sample' (or whatever it is):



2) Arrange them in a 'stair-step' pattern:



3) Make them into a grid:



And you could read five 'diagonally true' lines. However, in this particular example, there's no commonality between lines 2+5 and 3+4, like in the 'translated sample' text. So, maybe some kind of 'cycle', then a 'diagonally true' like this?

Welp, time to try to sum up what I've been doing for two days.

I drew up a chart of the possible 12 X 12 glyphs and isolated the rows and columns that are created by the pictured glyphs. Using the six glyph legend inverted, there are four extra glyphs which I denoted as STUV to continue the existing series. Mapping the 22 glyphs gives you the following:

columns:

SM
HPORLKAU
TQ
EV
JCG

rows:

HINEJB
LTV
SK
MAQFDG
RC

I then subtracted the glyphs in the six glyph legend, removing all the MHSTUV's that occur.

What remains is a 26 character alphabet as follows;
PORLKA
QEJCG
INEJB
L
K
MAQFDG
RC
The following letters are used twice C, K G, E, R, L, A, Q, J - meaning they each can be two letters.

(I think the clue NIINE refers to nine sets of double letters.)

I subtracted the H's and M's from the original series which leaves:

ABCDEFG BIJDFKE LFNODCPANN LFGFIQQRJ PAKAF

I put that in a crypto solve and came up with two words CROWLEY and BEHEADING which works because the G can represent two letters - Y and H in this case.

But now, I've been trying to decode the other three words all night and have gotten stuck. I, of course, tried entering thread numbers related to Louis XVI and Alistair Crowley with no success. I'm so tired that I think I might be totally on the wrong track. It feels right, but the answer is not coming and I need to sleep.

So, I'm throwing this out there.

[edit on 13-8-2008 by msdesertrat]

reply to post by harrytuttle


Hey man i feel your pain and frustration! It is difficult, and there are times where ive felt it is impossible and lost hope. But i felt the same for the previous puzzle, and it was solved in the end.

I am sure we will get there eventually, even if we need another hint from the powers that be Dont give up, just have more breaks and come back to the puzzle when you feel you will enjoy tackling it again

I don't believe that these glyphs directly translate to letters. There has to be some manipulation involved. I still can't shake the morse code angle. Squares (dashes) and circles (dots) fit perfect. Ans it could be that the top half is very different from the bottom half.

reply to post by Freenrgy2


I agree. I think Ive been taking the wrong approach when attempting to assign letters to symbols in some form of order to form words. I think that its a double cipher, we need to decode the symbols first into random letters then decode that via a different cipher.

Eh or maybe Im just going around in circles now......

reply to post by Kryties


Just don't forget to square the circle....bwah ha ha

reply to post by Freenrgy2


AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH


*****runs around in circles uttering jibberish and drooling wildly*****

reply to post by harrytuttle


It is frustrating, but it's just not true that it's impossible. We got the last puzzle after only 2 days; they were prepared to give us 12! Maybe we're getting clues we just haven't put together yet ...

And we know exactly how the first half of deciphering the last puzzle was done. It was the green values from the brightest line in the puzzle (line 7, if I remember right) assigned to the letters a-z where least green was a and most green was z. We should have been more prepared to look at a QWERTY-keyboard based cipher key too, since we had one in the warmups.

Don't give up, just take a breather and come back to the puzzle with a fresh mind

EDIT to add response to msdesertrat:

The following letters are used twice C, K G, E, R, L, A, Q, J - meaning they each can be two letters.

(I think the clue NIINE refers to nine sets of double letters.)

This is the most convincing explanation of the ENIIN that I've seen yet. I think you're on to something here!

[edit on 13-8-2008 by americandingbat]

I think I've figured out the ENIIN

And it's been staring us in the face the whole time. Unless it's a bit of misdirection, I think it must be the first letter of each word. Now I'm going to go revise my key to account for that

reply to post by americandingbat


Oh gawd, could it be that simple?

If it is thats it, Im walking in front of a bus

reply to post by americandingbat


By George I think you're right! Good eye! Hope it helps in gettting the reast of the letters.

You can get a god chunk of the first word just from the key if it is correct.

ECZY_ _ _

Disregard..........


Double Tapped

[edit on 13-8-2008 by Kellter]

reply to post by Kellter


If each word is unique in the pattern used to generate it, using the ENIIN code as the first letter, then if it is double encrypted we are going to have a nightmare trying to decrypt the second phase as you would need to put each word through a decrypter application separately. This would yield hundreds of results per word....

We can only hope it is not double encrypted, or if it is, that it is a method we can easily work out.

Good Morning! Look at the LOGO! ENIIN might be right! Good job!

I just want to throw this out there. Are the "spaces" shown in the cryptogram real spaces and could there be a letter that actually represents a space instead? It's possible the spaces we see are meaningless and instead, D (for example) represents a space between words?

Or maybe each group of letters is actually 2 words...

ABCDEFG HBIJDFKE LFMNODCPANN LFGFIQMQRS HPAKAF

ALSO some were saying it wasn't ENIIN, but CKEEK instead... Which is right? I wasn't here for the other puzzle.

[edit on 13-8-2008 by Benevolent Heretic]

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
Good Morning! Look at the LOGO! ENIIN might be right! Good job!

ALSO some were saying it wasn't ENIIN, but CKEEK instead... Which is right? I wasn't here for the other puzzle.

[edit on 13-8-2008 by Benevolent Heretic]

Good Morning! The logo had already turned right-side-up when I logged on this morning, so I don't think it's related to the ENIIN. But I am feeling new hope this morning.

It is ENIIN, not CKEEK. The confusion is probably my fault, because early in this thread, using Ian McLean's preliminary correspondences from that puzzle, I put CKEEK. But those are just the random letters he used to work with the puzzle, not the final translation. Kind of like writing the first word in this puzzle as "ABCDEFG"