understandable why there's absolutely no hints without giving it away.. because the simplicity of it is frankly.. disappointing.
yup, got it finally after several hours of hair pulling. even the slightest knowledge of music to begin with will mess you up.. and even slight research might mess some people up too.
Easier for a child because children know just a little but think they know it all.
For this puzzle, you need to know a little about sheet music, but any more than that and it’s so easy to go down dead ends.
Even worse, if you know enough to know that you don’t know much about music (like me) then you think you need to research all the extra notation , which itself time consuming.
Counting is only easy if you have a proper index (mathematically speaking).
And I'm fairly certain mine is wrong.
Also, minor quibble on terminology here: working backwards from AR or 13AR - in this instance, at least - isn't "brute-forcing", it's a "known-plaintext attack".
(Of course, KPAs usually work best if you A: know what cipher is being used, and B: have a much longer string of known plaintext; a full sentence, such as 'If you value your lives, be somewhere else', would be ideal... what? It's a quote from Babylon 5!)
Finally got it. I have to say this is my least favorite puzzle in first five as it introduced a lot of red herrings. In cipher practice that might be good but in game it is not.
From reading the thread I find a lot of hints. As an agent who struggle 19 hours to crack it, I think "what shouldn't I do" is much more important than "what should I do". So I have the following hints for those who are still working on this:
Sharp and flat does not work as it should be in music. They are not relative to "semitone".
Do not combine two staffs at beginning.
Do not do a1z26 unless you have numbers from 1 to 26.
After finishing off some of the older decoding challenges just now (I only started last week, so I'm playing catch-up), I think I know why I was so irritated/frustrated with what was, if you ignored 99% of the musical aspects, a pretty simple puzzle.
In the other challenges I've done so far, experience in the "area" of the puzzle (information theory for Visionary, audio analysis/tools for Interpreter, logic puzzles for Skeptic) helps with figuring it out. Or at least figuring out how to figure it out. The rules of Kakuro, for instance, in Skeptic, are followed like they would normally be (incidentally, I got really into Kakuro puzzles after doing that challenge). With this puzzle, knowledge of musical theory really hurts you. Even ignoring the red notes, rests, tempo marking, etc, that people have noticed aren't important, solving this violates a couple of the most basic rules of music theory and the staff in a way that would be equivalent to 0 suddenly being equal to 1 in a math based puzzle. Which is 100% fair from a purely "this is a cryptography challenge" standpoint, but having knowledge of the subject making it difficult to solve is an about face from the other challenges so far. From a real life perspective, however, making a musical code that is 10 times harder to solve for musicians is genius.
My tips for musicians trying to solve would be:
1) Accidentals matter, but they don't work quite the way they normally would.
2) The staffs are separate. This is very important and tripped me up forever. Like, completely separate. Do not picture yourself playing it/actually play it. That will mess you up. Just look at them (separately) as a way to arrange black dots in space.
3) Solving for the AR was the only way I got it. Once the lightbulb went on for that, the rest took a few minutes. (The 13 was a tiny bit trickier, so just start with the AR.)
@Laslooo Thanks for the "fingers" hint, that assured me I was on the right track.
Those accidentals - it turns out that the uncommon ones in the beamed group (in bar 6) actually work correctly for solving this. It's all the other ones that need to be applied less strictly than the musical notation implies.
I had fun reading up on Solfa, Haydn, Honegger, Messiaen etc., just disappointing that none of that research was necessary for the solution.
Though I don't like this puzzle, I think there are reasons to design this way.
13AR has been a known pattern to verify if the decoding method is correct. In this one many agents include me have tried to bruce force with 13AR. That doesn't work in this puzzle and I believe will not work either in following 8 puzzles.
In this puzzle, I believe some distractions are designated for preventing specific decoding method. I would love to see how puzzles have been designed after this event. @ATR0P0S is that ok for you to share after event?
It was really not fun this challenge than the previous one, because didn't use real methodology to solve it, so I was lost for so long.
Tried to study some of the theories mentioned but was unable to solve them with it. Then try to understand the instructions here then fail, and try the others and fail again and replace my paper to write a new one, because I am not able to implement the instructions on my paper and still write the chords.
Instead of learning about music, it was instead solved by not considering this as music (musical notes / notes), but need to know with some symbols to facilitate calculations. Because this only needs to know where the number 1 is put to start it.
Thank you very much for all the instructions finally i got it which I realized very late. 😄✌️
I have to say, a couple of your points are true. Discard thoughts of intervals, chords, keys. But sharps and flats here work exactly as they do in music ~ they direct you one interval above or below.
So yes, consider sharps and flats. And absolutely read this as a duet. Those musical rules hold true. Discard any other musical refs - ie beat length, keys, etc.
And you can go straight to alpha, bypassing a numerical step.
Once you see the very appropriate keyword, you will decode it very quickly.
Try a few different ways of 'reading ' an alphabet into it.
The tempo is the pace at which the music is played (if I remember correctly, it's usually denoted by a pair of numbers, e.g. 2/4, 3/4, or 4/4; some faster-paced pieces might use 6/8 instead of 3/4 - this pair of numbers is the piece's "time signature"); if I'm understanding previous commentary in this thread correctly, however, the time signature - and, by extension, the tempo it represents - is irrelevant to solving this particular puzzle.
"Accidents" are symbols next to a given note that modify how that note is played; three common ones are the sharp (represented by ♯), the flat (represented by ♭), and the natural (represented by ♮), so a note written as - for example - C♯ would be read as "C sharp".
Lines are... just that: the lines on the score. Each line represents a given note (as do the spaces between them).
In the case of this particular puzzle, however, I get the feeling that the lines - and the spaces between each line - serve as counting steps, and the accidentals modify which number each line and/or space represents. (I may be mistaken about this, however, and I'm still trying to figure out how to index the count.)
Comments
Hint: suffix is made of the last 6 chars.
(Basically, If you are trying to brute force convert the last four chars to 13AR it will not work.)
I suggest figuring out the method to get R and A. If you can get that successfully you can get the rest of it pretty easily.
In music, middle c treble = middle c bass, but this is not music so don’t assume they are the same here for this cipher
not gonna lie.. not my favorite.
understandable why there's absolutely no hints without giving it away.. because the simplicity of it is frankly.. disappointing.
yup, got it finally after several hours of hair pulling. even the slightest knowledge of music to begin with will mess you up.. and even slight research might mess some people up too.
😂 I thought the same thing when I read that ... sadly Angus and Co won’t help you find the answer
Finally found a sequence that helped me with the keyword and the black keys got it 100%.
This helped me put it all together. Thanks for the subtle nudges.
I thought that might be the case. Sounds like any advice they might offer regarding this puzzle would put us on the Highway To Hell.
(Or the highway to frustration, at any rate.)
If you search the agent name in Telegram he is from Australia.
I did it!
This task was the simplest of all. And at the same time the most difficult, because simplicity was very hard to see.
Knowledge of musical notation really bothered me.
My hint for those still at a standstill:
Everything is simple as 1, 2, 3 ....
Sharp and flat are the only musical symbols that matter. Just ignore everything else.
Considering that I got something similar, this helped immensely!
Et est-ce que l'enfant trouvera le bon média ou il trouvera lui aussi the visionary au lieu du the listener?🙄
Easier for a child because children know just a little but think they know it all.
For this puzzle, you need to know a little about sheet music, but any more than that and it’s so easy to go down dead ends.
Even worse, if you know enough to know that you don’t know much about music (like me) then you think you need to research all the extra notation , which itself time consuming.
This was helpful, thank you!
There are folks here who have shared very useful hints which I found helpful. Just gonna summarise them:
Additional decoding is required before the 'AR' appears. By then, the entire passcode will be quite in your face. Good luck and keep at it everyone!
Side note: I have zero music background who had to read up on the music materials first. Afterwards it is pretty much back on the usual decoding path.
Counting is only easy if you have a proper index (mathematically speaking).
And I'm fairly certain mine is wrong.
Also, minor quibble on terminology here: working backwards from AR or 13AR - in this instance, at least - isn't "brute-forcing", it's a "known-plaintext attack".
(Of course, KPAs usually work best if you A: know what cipher is being used, and B: have a much longer string of known plaintext; a full sentence, such as 'If you value your lives, be somewhere else', would be ideal... what? It's a quote from Babylon 5!)
Lol Absolutely agree with you!
But this will only make sense to those that already went from bottom to the top!
Should I consider those accidentals? I confused.
A wikipedia search will mention the common accidentals. They matter for this challenge.
Finally got it. I have to say this is my least favorite puzzle in first five as it introduced a lot of red herrings. In cipher practice that might be good but in game it is not.
From reading the thread I find a lot of hints. As an agent who struggle 19 hours to crack it, I think "what shouldn't I do" is much more important than "what should I do". So I have the following hints for those who are still working on this:
After finishing off some of the older decoding challenges just now (I only started last week, so I'm playing catch-up), I think I know why I was so irritated/frustrated with what was, if you ignored 99% of the musical aspects, a pretty simple puzzle.
In the other challenges I've done so far, experience in the "area" of the puzzle (information theory for Visionary, audio analysis/tools for Interpreter, logic puzzles for Skeptic) helps with figuring it out. Or at least figuring out how to figure it out. The rules of Kakuro, for instance, in Skeptic, are followed like they would normally be (incidentally, I got really into Kakuro puzzles after doing that challenge). With this puzzle, knowledge of musical theory really hurts you. Even ignoring the red notes, rests, tempo marking, etc, that people have noticed aren't important, solving this violates a couple of the most basic rules of music theory and the staff in a way that would be equivalent to 0 suddenly being equal to 1 in a math based puzzle. Which is 100% fair from a purely "this is a cryptography challenge" standpoint, but having knowledge of the subject making it difficult to solve is an about face from the other challenges so far. From a real life perspective, however, making a musical code that is 10 times harder to solve for musicians is genius.
My tips for musicians trying to solve would be:
1) Accidentals matter, but they don't work quite the way they normally would.
2) The staffs are separate. This is very important and tripped me up forever. Like, completely separate. Do not picture yourself playing it/actually play it. That will mess you up. Just look at them (separately) as a way to arrange black dots in space.
3) Solving for the AR was the only way I got it. Once the lightbulb went on for that, the rest took a few minutes. (The 13 was a tiny bit trickier, so just start with the AR.)
Yes!
Thank you, kind souls, for all the hints.
@DrHydrosaur @GorillaSapiens Thank you both, you lovely people, you were my key to solving this.
@Laslooo Thanks for the "fingers" hint, that assured me I was on the right track.
Those accidentals - it turns out that the uncommon ones in the beamed group (in bar 6) actually work correctly for solving this. It's all the other ones that need to be applied less strictly than the musical notation implies.
I had fun reading up on Solfa, Haydn, Honegger, Messiaen etc., just disappointing that none of that research was necessary for the solution.
Though I don't like this puzzle, I think there are reasons to design this way.
13AR has been a known pattern to verify if the decoding method is correct. In this one many agents include me have tried to bruce force with 13AR. That doesn't work in this puzzle and I believe will not work either in following 8 puzzles.
In this puzzle, I believe some distractions are designated for preventing specific decoding method. I would love to see how puzzles have been designed after this event. @ATR0P0S is that ok for you to share after event?
It was really not fun this challenge than the previous one, because didn't use real methodology to solve it, so I was lost for so long.
Tried to study some of the theories mentioned but was unable to solve them with it. Then try to understand the instructions here then fail, and try the others and fail again and replace my paper to write a new one, because I am not able to implement the instructions on my paper and still write the chords.
Instead of learning about music, it was instead solved by not considering this as music (musical notes / notes), but need to know with some symbols to facilitate calculations. Because this only needs to know where the number 1 is put to start it.
Thank you very much for all the instructions finally i got it which I realized very late. 😄✌️
I have to say, a couple of your points are true. Discard thoughts of intervals, chords, keys. But sharps and flats here work exactly as they do in music ~ they direct you one interval above or below.
So yes, consider sharps and flats. And absolutely read this as a duet. Those musical rules hold true. Discard any other musical refs - ie beat length, keys, etc.
And you can go straight to alpha, bypassing a numerical step.
Once you see the very appropriate keyword, you will decode it very quickly.
Try a few different ways of 'reading ' an alphabet into it.
Start at middle c ;)
I still don't know what you guys are talking about.
I mean... tempo? accidents? lines? what are they lol
plus, frustrated with this challenge because the challenge doesn't give me inspiration.
yes, I love kakuro challenge because that was a puzzle, not like this.
are you saying that in the pentagram of G the center would be a?
Okay, let me see if I can help you out here.
The tempo is the pace at which the music is played (if I remember correctly, it's usually denoted by a pair of numbers, e.g. 2/4, 3/4, or 4/4; some faster-paced pieces might use 6/8 instead of 3/4 - this pair of numbers is the piece's "time signature"); if I'm understanding previous commentary in this thread correctly, however, the time signature - and, by extension, the tempo it represents - is irrelevant to solving this particular puzzle.
"Accidents" are symbols next to a given note that modify how that note is played; three common ones are the sharp (represented by ♯), the flat (represented by ♭), and the natural (represented by ♮), so a note written as - for example - C♯ would be read as "C sharp".
Lines are... just that: the lines on the score. Each line represents a given note (as do the spaces between them).
In the case of this particular puzzle, however, I get the feeling that the lines - and the spaces between each line - serve as counting steps, and the accidentals modify which number each line and/or space represents. (I may be mistaken about this, however, and I'm still trying to figure out how to index the count.)