As mentioned on previous pages, our favourite tool (which has been also useful in previous challenges) let us specify the alphabet, but complaints about a size limit of 36. Any hints on how to proceed?
Still, a few other things are unclear to me. Do I need to modify the 19 letters before decoding? Is the 5th letter of the 7-letter keyword 8 positions before the 2nd one?
For practical reasons, actually. If, let's say, you assume that both the key and the keyword consist of just the letters in the English alphabet, and that the key consists of 7 letters, and based on previous challenges you know the length of the keyword and potentially the end of the decoded string, a full dictionary search is a few lines on top of your code snippet and most likely won't have you review many different options because of the constraints in this puzzle.
There's a website that has historical examples of codes that were hidden in the Investigate Ingress website: http://ingress.codes
You can look there for examples of the types of codes that form the building blocks of the Decoding Challenges here. Afterwards, if you're still interested, I'd reach out to your local community for the website that your team uses to organize anomalies. Since decoders are needed for some anomalies, there may be a sub-community for people who have a passion for decoding that you can join.
Walkthroughs for these challenges will likely be shared by participants after the event is over. The competition is still on. Until then, here are some sites that can give you a general idea on how to get started. I hope you find decoding as fun and addicting as I do. 😊
Many people call this riddle bad. I thought so too. However, now that it has been resolved, I consider it excellent.
Yes, it’s very disappointing to realize that for a very long time I was just one step away from a simple and correct solution and could not see it :( But I have no one to blame except for myself :)
Thanks to the challenge creators for a fascinating acquaintance with the work of Alfons Mucha :)
And special thanks to @elRi0 for pointing in the right direction;)
Its never taken me THREE days (mind you... only about two hours each day) to complete one of these challenges. Even with the hints!
Thanks to @elRi0 leading me in the right direction.
First of all, that 5th painting's name! omg. I had seen that name associated with others of his prints (probably because of the type of company it was), so I was so obstinate in my head to use that name... instead... using the 3 other names associated with the same or very similar paintings. but yes, once I had all 7 initials from each for the passphrase, I was still a knuckle-head in figuring things out
On day one, I had the cypher text from the picture and the highlighted letters... but it took a hint from @elRiO to understand that the position of the highlighted letters (and all of our understandings of the usual suffix of these passcodes) to realize what I needed to do that cypher text before I could decode it. (there's hints in postings above).
That was the hardest part for me... decoding the numbers was relatively simple.... once you know they are suppose to be numbers, there is only a handful of things to do (and realize this is Czech) to get the numbers. And obviously, as people noted before, you have to drop two letters... but after all the other hints, its obvious which ones.
Yeah, I'm not sure I liked this one too much. Painting names wasn't consistent imho. dropping letters is a crazy step. and other piddly things. yeah, trickster I guess. but still. ugh.
I give up. I'm 99.5% confident I have the correct key (even the 'weird' 5th one which finally makes sense), but no matter what combination of letters I remove from the code, nothing sensible comes out.
Bah.
--5 minutes later....---
*Bonks head on table* Every time I post on this forum that I'm stuck, 5 minutes later I find the solution. why... WHY???
Okay I need some help I know I have the right names for the pictures and I’ve tried every seven letter key and still nothing. I know what letters need to be removed and some how cannot get a 13ar or quam. Anything at this point to get me from actually giving up on this one!
And you need to do something else to the 19 letters first before decoding them. What you need to do you can guess from the colours used in the 19 letters and thinking about the known passcode format
i think the problem that i mostly have about this decoding challenge, is it relies solely on that knowledge of prior solves.
in my opinion, each challenge should be self-contained and not require any external knowledge... such knowledge should be used more as a checkpoint for verification.. not as a step in the process towards the solution. in this case, it was a step towards the solution. as such, i was a bit disappointed in the solve and completed it a bit disappointed.
Now, in hindsight I think one of my main issues was the hints of what to do with the text might have actually hindered me for a day since I found myself cutting info from the CYPHERTEXT not the PLAINTEXT because I misunderstood the hint about "separating the artist" from code.
Besides for that, the only other thing that kept throwing me off was the titles since I found myself second guessing the titles because I didn't see anything usable appear in the cyphertext.... that is until I noticed that my czech alphabet was missing the "a" (which website I was using DID NOT NOTICE). So once I fixed that error everything clicked and I saw the keyword after remembering the my previous mistake.
It turns out that the reason I couldn't make sense of it, was a couple of silly little mistakes on my end that made it impossible to solve.😆
Thank you @Laslooo for showing me that my Initial idea on how to get the key was correct. It showed me that that wasn't the problem.
It turns out my table had bad legs, once I adjusted them to the left and straightened up the process, I could see clearly. By reverse engineering the AR the 5th artworks name becomes obvious. Lesson learnt: double and triple check what you think you know and what you have so far.
Thank you to those who tried to help me and @tkh7 for checking on us.
For anyone who still doesn't know which name to choose for the 5th artwork, you just need to use the one direct from the printer. For the key use the Initial idea you probably had and if you use manual decoding methods them make sure everything is setup correctly. 😊
Comments
Quite a tricky challenge, I have to say.
As mentioned on previous pages, our favourite tool (which has been also useful in previous challenges) let us specify the alphabet, but complaints about a size limit of 36. Any hints on how to proceed?
Still, a few other things are unclear to me. Do I need to modify the 19 letters before decoding? Is the 5th letter of the 7-letter keyword 8 positions before the 2nd one?
There are other tools that work with more than 36 characters
I finally finished my very first challenge with a lot of help from the previous comments. Thanks to all agents.
On the final step, I had to remove a part of the code to make a readable keyword. Is there a rational reason for this?
Or is this common practice in the challenges?
Anyway, it was an exciting experience.
I wrote some code in python to compare the RGB values of each pixel of the image,
and also a decipher function to work this out. Here is the function I used.
(if this is considered a spoiler please let me know)
Thank you for the nice challenge.
in my opinion, it fits the title of the challenge, which is Trickster 😂
But why the specific letters? Do the removed characters mean something?
Think of the paintings and you'll see why they are chosen.
Who painted all these posters?
For practical reasons, actually. If, let's say, you assume that both the key and the keyword consist of just the letters in the English alphabet, and that the key consists of 7 letters, and based on previous challenges you know the length of the keyword and potentially the end of the decoded string, a full dictionary search is a few lines on top of your code snippet and most likely won't have you review many different options because of the constraints in this puzzle.
I'm still trying to find the key from 7 names.
I know the decoding method, but I can't make any sense from the decoding result.
I wonder if the 4 letters with different color is used before decoding or after decoding with the key from the 7 names?
Edit: Okay, turns out something looks like 13 is actually 13. Now I get 13ar and qamu.
I like how lithographs produce REVERSED prints.
Learning the Czech alphabet and numb3rs was interesting too! nula, jedna, tři...
But the best part had to be removing Alfonse Mucha!
Tricky, tricky!
Is there any place that I can be introduced to this Decoding Challenges? It sounds fun but I've never really understood it.
Thank you for your clarification. Now the whole thing makes sense to me!! 😀
There's a website that has historical examples of codes that were hidden in the Investigate Ingress website: http://ingress.codes
You can look there for examples of the types of codes that form the building blocks of the Decoding Challenges here. Afterwards, if you're still interested, I'd reach out to your local community for the website that your team uses to organize anomalies. Since decoders are needed for some anomalies, there may be a sub-community for people who have a passion for decoding that you can join.
Walkthroughs for these challenges will likely be shared by participants after the event is over. The competition is still on. Until then, here are some sites that can give you a general idea on how to get started. I hope you find decoding as fun and addicting as I do. 😊
Some resources:
https://niantic.schlarp.com/resources:websites:onlinetools
“Top Secret”: A handbook of codes, ciphers, and secret writing - Paul B. Janeczko
“The Book of Codes”: Understanding the World of Hidden Messages: an illustrated guide to signs, symbols, ciphers, and secret languages - Paul Lunde
“The Code Book" - Simon Singh
https://ingress.codes
Many people call this riddle bad. I thought so too. However, now that it has been resolved, I consider it excellent.
Yes, it’s very disappointing to realize that for a very long time I was just one step away from a simple and correct solution and could not see it :( But I have no one to blame except for myself :)
Thanks to the challenge creators for a fascinating acquaintance with the work of Alfons Mucha :)
And special thanks to @elRi0 for pointing in the right direction;)
Can someone please hint on how to get the key from the 7 artwork names?
Thank you for this awesome challenge!
Its never taken me THREE days (mind you... only about two hours each day) to complete one of these challenges. Even with the hints!
Thanks to @elRi0 leading me in the right direction.
First of all, that 5th painting's name! omg. I had seen that name associated with others of his prints (probably because of the type of company it was), so I was so obstinate in my head to use that name... instead... using the 3 other names associated with the same or very similar paintings. but yes, once I had all 7 initials from each for the passphrase, I was still a knuckle-head in figuring things out
On day one, I had the cypher text from the picture and the highlighted letters... but it took a hint from @elRiO to understand that the position of the highlighted letters (and all of our understandings of the usual suffix of these passcodes) to realize what I needed to do that cypher text before I could decode it. (there's hints in postings above).
That was the hardest part for me... decoding the numbers was relatively simple.... once you know they are suppose to be numbers, there is only a handful of things to do (and realize this is Czech) to get the numbers. And obviously, as people noted before, you have to drop two letters... but after all the other hints, its obvious which ones.
Yeah, I'm not sure I liked this one too much. Painting names wasn't consistent imho. dropping letters is a crazy step. and other piddly things. yeah, trickster I guess. but still. ugh.
I give up. I'm 99.5% confident I have the correct key (even the 'weird' 5th one which finally makes sense), but no matter what combination of letters I remove from the code, nothing sensible comes out.
Bah.
--5 minutes later....---
*Bonks head on table* Every time I post on this forum that I'm stuck, 5 minutes later I find the solution. why... WHY???
[insert random giphy here :P]
Gah. And in case you're wondering what was wrong... it was that last 0.5%.
Definitely the worst decode challenge so far. Thanks to all the people that gave plenty of hints.
Okay I need some help I know I have the right names for the pictures and I’ve tried every seven letter key and still nothing. I know what letters need to be removed and some how cannot get a 13ar or quam. Anything at this point to get me from actually giving up on this one!
i can only speak for myself, but try to get 'ar' at the end first. that's how i got to the solution.
And you need to do something else to the 19 letters first before decoding them. What you need to do you can guess from the colours used in the 19 letters and thinking about the known passcode format
Once you find the 19 letters, do what Missy Elliott says.
Come on, is it worth it? Let me work it,
I put my thang down, flip it and reverse it
Ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gnaht ym tup i
Ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gnaht ym tup i
i think the problem that i mostly have about this decoding challenge, is it relies solely on that knowledge of prior solves.
in my opinion, each challenge should be self-contained and not require any external knowledge... such knowledge should be used more as a checkpoint for verification.. not as a step in the process towards the solution. in this case, it was a step towards the solution. as such, i was a bit disappointed in the solve and completed it a bit disappointed.
The key has 7 letters and there are 7 pieces of artwork, so maybe you need one thing from each piece of artwork.
Now, in hindsight I think one of my main issues was the hints of what to do with the text might have actually hindered me for a day since I found myself cutting info from the CYPHERTEXT not the PLAINTEXT because I misunderstood the hint about "separating the artist" from code.
Besides for that, the only other thing that kept throwing me off was the titles since I found myself second guessing the titles because I didn't see anything usable appear in the cyphertext.... that is until I noticed that my czech alphabet was missing the "a" (which website I was using DID NOT NOTICE). So once I fixed that error everything clicked and I saw the keyword after remembering the my previous mistake.
@GuidoCraftGame @wikkedimp @RedAgent14 @RiktigFeil @RDFA @F9b @Klingew did you manage to solve it?
@DB4GAMING there are a plethora of hints in this thread. did you manage to solve it?
@mahlernim you mentioned solving the challenge, however your name doesn't appear on the Results page. did you successfully acquire the media?
At the final stage (with 13ar found), I had a hard time finding the right keyword.
Turns out I was just stupid and made an incorrect assumption of where the keyword starts.
Tips: Keyword does not come right after a digit.
The leaderboard was updated about 5 hours ago (22.03 UTC) maybe he finished after that, so it hasn't displayed his name yet
Yay...finally...
It turns out that the reason I couldn't make sense of it, was a couple of silly little mistakes on my end that made it impossible to solve.😆
Thank you @Laslooo for showing me that my Initial idea on how to get the key was correct. It showed me that that wasn't the problem.
It turns out my table had bad legs, once I adjusted them to the left and straightened up the process, I could see clearly. By reverse engineering the AR the 5th artworks name becomes obvious. Lesson learnt: double and triple check what you think you know and what you have so far.
Thank you to those who tried to help me and @tkh7 for checking on us.
For anyone who still doesn't know which name to choose for the 5th artwork, you just need to use the one direct from the printer. For the key use the Initial idea you probably had and if you use manual decoding methods them make sure everything is setup correctly. 😊