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Cryptogram Corner; www.geocities.com/cryptogramcorner
Topic Started: Feb 13 2006, 11:11 PM (2,207 Views)
PulsarSL
Super member
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Hey. I'm trying to get good at cracking monosubstitution ciphers and using insecure's program, so I found this site, called Cryptogram Corner.

I'm having some trouble making any leeway on this one however. The challenge is here.



Code:
 
ILSLM UCBIZ UCHU DWN'J NLYHPJ HML DWN'J NLIBHYJ. CWYN WI. CWYN EHJU.


CWYN WTU. OHUBLIFL BJ DLIBTJ.


I'm sure rot, insecure, and donald will make quick work of it ;)

Can somebody please post how they went about cracking it? Nothing like learning something from somebody who's good at it.

The answer is on the next day's page. I have not looked at it, but I have looked at the clue, which, frankly, didn't help me much.

Thanks

Pulsar
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PulsarSL
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Here was my train of thought... (whited out)


DWN'J is obviously a contraction. Most likley "can't" or "don't". I thought it was pretty much safe to say J=T.

I guessed that dwn=can. This leaves us with a "A_" at the end of the second (short) sentence. I filled the _ (I) in with an N to make "an" because it was the only thing that lookup a? returned that looked any good. I guessed I=N.

Now. This is where I become confused. The last word is C_N__T. Lookup returns only 3 possibilities (none of which seem very possible): condit, confit, and canaut. Another problem though. Mapping I to N get's rid of all the contractions I had before. Neither "can't" nor "don't" work now. Stuck.
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rot13
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I used a program similar to Insecure's. I feed mine patterns and it gives me the words that match the set of patterns I give it. I try to pick out the words I think will help me narrow it down. In this case UCHU is a big one and it turns out to be the word that you should probably guess first when you see this pattern. The four words I ran through the pattern program were: nlyhpj nlibhyj cwyn uchu

Suggestion:
If I hadn't done that, I probably would have attacked the words with apostrophes first, as you did. I think I'd go after UCHU after that. In fact, if you don't make any headway with the apostrophes, try UCHU. Take a guess at the word before it. Then look at some of the two letter words and take some guesses on those. Hopefully that will lead you to a 3 letter word, and then maybe you can guess the last word. After that, I hope it would start to come apart fairly easily.
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rot13
Feb 14 2006, 03:12 AM
I used a program similar to Insecure's. I feed mine patterns and it gives me the words that match the set of patterns I give it. I try to pick out the words I think will help me narrow it down. In this case UCHU is a big one and it turns out to be the word that you should probably guess first when you see this pattern. The four words I ran through the pattern program were: nlyhpj nlibhyj cwyn uchu

Suggestion:
If I hadn't done that, I probably would have attacked the words with apostrophes first, as you did. I think I'd go after UCHU after that. In fact, if you don't make any headway with the apostrophes, try UCHU. Take a guess at the word before it. Then look at some of the two letter words and take some guesses on those. Hopefully that will lead you to a 3 letter word, and then maybe you can guess the last word. After that, I hope it would start to come apart fairly easily.

I think my problem is that my dictionary is a little too packed :(

I used /usr/share/dict/words.

whited out

match UCHU returns 475 hits, too many to sift through.

Anybody have a more conscise dictionary?

Thanks

Pulsar
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PulsarSL
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Gragh, that was me. Now you all get to see my spelling mistakes and typos because I can't edit. I really should proofread before posting. :)
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Donald
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for uchu, wander over to http://www.world-english.org/english500.htm and scan through the most common words in the english language.

THE most common four letter word in english has a very unique pattern that every cryptanalyst should learn to recognize immediatly.

<sigh> I'm quite ashamed of myself. I took a different approach to attacking this puzzle. Half way through I suddenly hit that word and started banging my head on the desk. I don't know what possesed me, I focused right in on the apostrophe and some other anomolies and didn't even really LOOK at UCHU. <sigh>

Anyway, on that apostraphy. Remember that there are TWO possible letters that come after an apostraphy. There are two problems with using T.

1: it creates some impossibilities further down in the encryption, as you discovered.
2: 't always follows N. so if DWN'J=**n't then N=n. Not impossible, but very unusual in a cryptogram.

I kept notes as I was working on this guy, so I can post the complete walkthrough later if you wan't to compare our approaches, but I think with looking at UCHU and the apostraphe you'll find the puzzle falls open before you.

But if you get stuck, let us know and we'll give you another gentle nudge!
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insecure
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Curious. I ignored UCHU completely, and focused on OHUBLIFL. My dictionary only has 71 words with this pattern (abcdefge), and solving it gives over a quarter of the key, so it's well worth churning through those 71 if you have the tools to do it. Your patience will be rewarded in due course.
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Revelation
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Well, I have cracked it. :)

This is the plaintext:
never think that god's delays are god's denials. hold on. hold fast.


hold out. patience is genius.

************************

This is how I have done it:
I started here: OHUBLIFL BJ. I saw a two letter word and looked up the first in the pattern dictionary. BJ is probably 'is'. This means the words you couldn't place don't end with a 't' but with an 's' indicating plural or possesion. Many possibilities for OHUBLIFL, but the one I thought it was most likely to be there was patience. Next: aMe. This is most likely 'are'. Then 'neSer'. 'never' sounds better ;) East = fast, and 'NeniaYs' is probably 'denials'. delaPs = delays,
tCat = that of course, thinZ = think and hWld = hold. Who is this guy: Dod's? First I thought it was an airline organisation looking at 'hold fast' and 'delays'. When I woke up I saw it meant 'God'. Now the last one: geniTs, this is genius.

And another one bites the dust ^_^

EDIT:

insecure said:"Your patience will be rewarded in due course."
- Yes, 'patience' is rewarding :rofl:
RRRREJMEEEEEPVKLWENFNVJKEEEEEAOLKAFKLXCFZAASDJXZTTTTTTTLSIOWJXMOKLAFJNNKFNXN
RAGRBAQEMHIGDJVDSEOXVIYCELFHWLELJFIENXLRATALSJFSLCYTKLASJDKMHGOVOKAJDNMNUITN
RRRRLJVEEEEECLYVYHNVPFTAEEEEEMWLMEIRNGLARWJAKJDFLWNTIERJMIPQWOTZEOCXKNUBNXCN
RJIRPOWEANFUSNCZVDVZNMSFEKLOEPZLDKDJWSAAAAAAAOERHJCTNCKFRIMVKSOFOMKMANREWNBN
RZUDRGXEEEEENFQIDVLQNCKNEEEEEDGLLLLLLAWIOSNCDARLODMTOEJXMILDFJROTKJSDNLVCZNN
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PulsarSL
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insecure
Feb 14 2006, 07:40 AM
Curious. I ignored UCHU completely, and focused on OHUBLIFL. My dictionary only has 71 words with this pattern (abcdefge), and solving it gives over a quarter of the key, so it's well worth churning through those 71 if you have the tools to do it. Your patience will be rewarded in due course.

ABCDEFGE gives me over 700 words. Too many to sort through. What dict are you using? I thought you were using /usr/share/dict/words...

I matched UCHU up with THAT but I can't seem to get anywhere else.

I can't figure out what letter other than T would come after an apostrophe. Wow. It just hit me as I was typing this. I feel very dumb :lmao:. Let me go plug that in.

WOW! All I needed was what came after the apostrophe. That basically solved it for me!

Whited out:

NEVER THINK THAT GOD'S DELAYS ARE GOD'S DENIALS. HOLD ON. HOLD FAST. HOLD OUT. PATIENCE IS GENIUS.

I'm so proud of myself :) Quite an appropriate quote too. Patience is genius.

Thanks

Pulsar
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Donald
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Congratulations! Great work!

Here is how I did it, just to give you an alternate approach:

(since you've already solved it, I'm not going to bother whiting out. Mainly because I can't use CODE bbcode AND white out. Anyway, consider this a spoiler warning, if you are still working on this challenge, skip this message!)


====================================================



I missed a MAJOR clue here, but I'll go ahead and take you through it the way I actually did it.

Code:
 
ILSLM UCBIZ UCHU DWN'J NLYHPJ HML DWN'J NLIBHYJ. CWYN WI. CWYN EHJU.

CWYN WTU. OHUBLIFL BJ DLIBTJ.


Ok, we've got the obviously interesting repeat of CWYN in 3 short sentences, but that's probably not going to be a lot of use to us yet. Also the VERY interesting patterns, NLYHPJ and NLIBHYJ. Obviously these words are very similiar, but no obvious match is leaping to my mind, so we will move on to other things. I'm not even going to bother with a frequency analysis because with the length and the cwyn repeat it doesn't look like it would be very fruitful.

DWN'J That apostrophe is going to be very useful here. J has got to be S or T. Now I really don't like the T option, because if J=t, then N=n, and having a letter equal itself is not impossible, but its unusual. So lets assume J=s.

I did try dwn'j=who's, since it seemed a very likely possibility, but that lead to impossibilites. So for now, we move away from dwn'j and take a look for interesting pattern words. Obviously, as mentioned before, we have NLYHPJ and NLIBHYJ. They aren't much use in a simple pattern dictionary search. I could write a simple routine to look for a match, but I don't think we need to do anything like that, lets stick to simple things and look for another pattern word. OHUBLIFL should do, its pattern is abcdefge

Fiziwigs pattern dictionary has LOTS of matches, but only around 20 that are plausible. And almost half of those have the repeated letter being e. So lets just try L=e and see where we get.
Code:
 
*e*e* ***** **** ***'s *e***s **e ***'s *e****s. **** **. **** **s*.
ILSLM UCBIZ UCHU DWN'J NLYHPJ HML DWN'J NLIBHYJ. CWYN WI. CWYN EHJU.

**** ***. ****e**e *s *e***s.
CWYN WTU. OHUBLIFL BJ DLIBTJ.


this looks promising. BJ=*s must be as or is. AND we have HML=**e, most common three letter word in the english language is the, so lets try H=t and m=h.

Code:
 
*e*eh ***** **t* ***'s *e*t*s the ***'s *e**t*s. **** **. **** *ts*.
ILSLM UCBIZ UCHU DWN'J NLYHPJ HML DWN'J NLIBHYJ. CWYN WI. CWYN EHJU.

**** ***. *t**e**e *s *e***s.
CWYN WTU. OHUBLIFL BJ DLIBTJ.

Oooh, that is not good. EHJU=*ts*. No such word with ts in the middle. try again with HML=are

Code:
 
*e*er ***** **a* ***'s *e*a*s are ***'s *e**a*s. **** **. **** *as*.
ILSLM UCBIZ UCHU DWN'J NLYHPJ HML DWN'J NLIBHYJ. CWYN WI. CWYN EHJU.

**** ***. *a**e**e *s *e***s.
CWYN WTU. OHUBLIFL BJ DLIBTJ.


Looks promising, no obvious immpossibilites. Also, since we have h=a, that forces B=i to give BJ=is

Code:
 
*e*er **i** **a* ***'s *e*a*s are ***'s *e*ia*s. **** **. **** *as*.
ILSLM UCBIZ UCHU DWN'J NLYHPJ HML DWN'J NLIBHYJ. CWYN WI. CWYN EHJU.

**** ***. *a*ie**e is *e*i*s.
CWYN WTU. OHUBLIFL BJ DLIBTJ.


lets go back to our pattern word OHUBLIFL=*a*ie**e. From our list of rational possibilities, only one still fits. OHUBLIFL=patience which gives us: o=p u=t i=n f=c

Code:
 
ne*er t*in* t*at ***'s *e*a*s are ***'s *enia*s. **** *n. **** *ast.
ILSLM UCBIZ UCHU DWN'J NLYHPJ HML DWN'J NLIBHYJ. CWYN WI. CWYN EHJU.

**** **t. patience is *eni*s.
CWYN WTU. OHUBLIFL BJ DLIBTJ.


at this point it simply starts to falls apart in front of our eyes.
NE*ER is never so S=V, T*IN* is think so C=H, Z=K which makes T*AT=that DUH!!!! Four letter word that starts and ends with the same letter!!!! Dang I'm a moron. I should have recognized that pattern immediatly!, would have saved us some time and effort, but, never mind, we got there anyway.

Code:
 
never think that ***'s *e*a*s are ***'s *enia*s. h*** *n. h*** *ast.
ILSLM UCBIZ UCHU DWN'J NLYHPJ HML DWN'J NLIBHYJ. CWYN WI. CWYN EHJU.

h*** **t. patience is *eni*s.
CWYN WTU. OHUBLIFL BJ DLIBTJ.


DWN'J=***'s can't be man's, since we already have an n (and n=n would be odd anyway), but it could certainly fit as God's in this context, feels VERY good, lets try it.

Code:
 
never think that god's de*a*s are god's denia*s. ho*d on. ho*d *ast.
ILSLM UCBIZ UCHU DWN'J NLYHPJ HML DWN'J NLIBHYJ. CWYN WI. CWYN EHJU.

ho*d o*t. patience is geni*s.
CWYN WTU. OHUBLIFL BJ DLIBTJ.


And that about does it.
DENIA*S=denials, so Y=L. which gives us the other part of that strange pair, DE*A*S is now obviously delays, so p=y. *AST=fast so E=f. O*T=out so T=u. and we have:

Code:
 
never think that god's delays are god's denials. hold on. hold fast.
ILSLM UCBIZ UCHU DWN'J NLYHPJ HML DWN'J NLIBHYJ. CWYN WI. CWYN EHJU.

hold out. patience is genius.
CWYN WTU. OHUBLIFL BJ DLIBTJ.


Tada! Of course, woulda gone faster if I had noticed that glaringly obvious THAT. <sigh>
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PulsarSL
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How do you get the output of the program into your message? I assume you're running it under Linux where you can copy and paste from the terminal?

Stupid windows command box :angry:
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insecure
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In a Windows console, click the top left-hand box (or press Alt-Space), and then choose Edit (I think - this is from memory, as I'm on Linux), and then Mark from the submenu. Now click-and-drag the text you want to select, and press Enter to copy it to the clipboard. (I presume you know how to paste.)
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insecure
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PulsarSL
Feb 14 2006, 08:19 PM
insecure
Feb 14 2006, 07:40 AM
Curious. I ignored UCHU completely, and focused on OHUBLIFL. My dictionary only has 71 words with this pattern (abcdefge), and solving it gives over a quarter of the key, so it's well worth churning through those 71 if you have the tools to do it. Your patience will be rewarded in due course.

ABCDEFGE gives me over 700 words. Too many to sort through. What dict are you using? I thought you were using /usr/share/dict/words...

I am indeed using /usr/share/dict/words - so presumably we have different versions.

Personally, I find a smaller dictionary more useful! Smaller dictionaries tend to have the more common words in them - larger dictionaries get that way by including obscure words that are rarely used. As it is, my 45000+ word dictionary has its fair share of obscure words in it.

I'm tempted to start off my own dictionary, starting it off with 0 words, and adding only those words I actually use. (I did this once, a long time ago, but I lost the dictionary!)
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PulsarSL
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insecure
Feb 14 2006, 10:32 PM
In a Windows console, click the top left-hand box (or press Alt-Space), and then choose Edit (I think - this is from memory, as I'm on Linux), and then Mark from the submenu. Now click-and-drag the text you want to select, and press Enter to copy it to the clipboard. (I presume you know how to paste.)

WOW! I NEVER knew that. I'm in shock. How could I have gone this long without knowing that!? I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to copy and paste from the console!

I'm going to make an entire website dedicated to this! How does www.didyouknowyoucouldcopyandpastefromthewindowscommandprompt.com sound?

THANKS

Pulsar
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rot13
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PulsarSL
Feb 15 2006, 01:58 AM
insecure
Feb 14 2006, 10:32 PM
In a Windows console, click the top left-hand box (or press Alt-Space), and then choose Edit (I think - this is from memory, as I'm on Linux), and then Mark from the submenu. Now click-and-drag the text you want to select, and press Enter to copy it to the clipboard. (I presume you know how to paste.)

WOW! I NEVER knew that. I'm in shock. How could I have gone this long without knowing that!? I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to copy and paste from the console!

I'm going to make an entire website dedicated to this! How does www.didyouknowyoucouldcopyandpastefromthewindowscommandprompt.com sound?

THANKS

Pulsar

If you modify your window properties you can turn "Quick Edit" mode on. Then you don't have to go to the menu for "Mark" any more. You just highlight something with the mouse and press enter. Also, right-click in the command-prompt pastes.
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