Figuring out the alphabet

ASCII-only

Mar 11, 2018 23:24

@Deusovi :/ it's probably not an actual alphabet at all (or if it is one, it's very obscure)

Deusovi

I also considered that, but there's not enough information to decode as a cryptogram.

ASCII-only

Right, so it's probably some kind of obscure alphabet or transformed alphabet then?

Deusovi

That's what I'm thinking. I don't think it's transformed, though - there's no clear pattern that the characters follow.

diobuc eulb

Mar 11, 2018 23:48

sup xd

this stackexchange is great it's been so much fun having only posted one question

@Bass you're pretty damn good lol

ASCII-only

@Deusovi :| I've gone through basically all of this (+ fictional languages) and haven't found anything yet

Deusovi

yeah, I went through that entire site already

ASCII-only

:/ how fast do you read

Deusovi

I mean, I just had to look for something that looked similar, then filter those out by whether they had all the characters.

They did not.

ASCII-only

you've looked through all the conlang sections?

Deusovi

Mar 11, 2018 23:51

yep - not many that look similar

ASCII-only

:/

The alphabet Rubio's using can't be that obscure, right?

Deusovi

You'd think so.

ASCII-only

Also as4/wen may know but they haven't been here lately, maybe Doorknob?

Eric Tressler

the pointy B is in Etruscan, and I've seen it before too. I wonder if mapping each character to the languages it corresponds to would lead to anything

or else mapping them to the letter they correspond to in the language they're in, assuming there's a mapping to English characters

ASCII-only

@EricTressler Pretty sure we still don't have an alphabet for the last one though

I guess we could guess it based on the others, assuming mapping works

thecoder16

Mar 12, 2018 00:08

What if the middle just spells red herring in some very obscure language

ASCII-only

@thecoder16 definitely not

@EricTressler pointy B = B in English?

thecoder16

it was a joke :P spyfall this afternoon(morning? evening?) was filled with references to red herrings and i'm in that mindset lol

Gareth McCaughan

I think the word "marvelous" is interesting. I had a look to see whether there's anything like this in Marvel comics/movies. Didn't find anything, but I know nothing about that stuff and someone else might have more luck.

ASCII-only

@GarethMcCaughan Avengers, 44:06: "And you're doing a marvellous job with that."

Gareth McCaughan

We may be at cross purposes. I was just suggesting that "marvelous" might be meant to point us towards Marvel stuff, rather than literally meaning "marvelous" or being quoted from anywhere.

(That seems more likely to be an area of Rubio's expertise than e.g. ancient Etruscan)

(but I don't actually know much about what Rubio does and doesn't know)

thecoder16

Mar 12, 2018 00:14

of the 3 cypher languages i've looked at from Marvel (doot, the builder one, and demonic) i can't find any matching symbols.

ASCII-only

@GarethMcCaughan well what marvel stuff could the alphabet possibly clue though :/

Also, I'd say "invented" here would restrict it a lot

Gareth McCaughan

I don't know. I thought maybe the characters in the question might derive from some Marvel thing. I wasn't able to find any sign that they do, though.

ASCII-only

@GarethMcCaughan Apparently Marvel's version of Thor's hammer has some gibberish Futhark runes on it though :P

Also: transliterated from various alphabets, part of it is o?b?m??o?t?[ch]??bk??? (ch is chi)

Gareth McCaughan

Doesn't seem super-promising, does it?

ASCII-only

Mar 12, 2018 00:31

O and M are from Pigpen cipher so probably really wrong

Bass

Mar 12, 2018 00:59

Have we already noticed that with two exceptions, all the runes are mirror-symmetric, which would usually mean they aren't really runes at all?

ASCII-only

@Bass But most runes are mirror-symmetric?

@EricTressler Since when were any English words normal :P

Sphinx

0

Q: No Reception? No Forecast! A simple puzzle

This is my very first puzzle on this site. It's probably easy to solve looking at all the smart people here, but I wanted to dip my feet into the waters. Hope you enjoy! (This story is fictional) Today was a very cold and snowy day. I was texting my wierd friend, here's my log: <...

TrojanByAccident

Mar 12, 2018 01:30

@ASCII-only not sure where you’re getting those from

however, i would like to note that the pointy B, as others said, is almost definitely a mapping to “B”

the crooked X is a mapping to “G”

or X, actually, as that was an etruscan character

ASCII-only

@TrojanByAccident Etruscan, Phoenician(?), and Pigpen

TrojanByAccident

ah phoenician, haven’t gotten there yet

noteworthy that many of these chars are similar to runic though

i believe the set of two characters next to each other pointing upwards map together as “T”

or separately(ish) as “CL”

ASCII-only

@TrojanByAccident Runic says they map as ll though?

TrojanByAccident

@ASCII-only push them together and they map as T

also, only the second part of it is runic (not pushed together)

the first is etruscan

ASCII-only

@TrojanByAccident It's in the runic alphabet image I linked though?

TrojanByAccident

Mar 12, 2018 01:39

mm gimme a sec

ASCII-only

Also the image says it maps as th/thorn. Plus, I'm sure it's intentionally apart (and also one character so it's not LL anyway)

TrojanByAccident

ah yes in camunic it would be an L

i was more using raetic

ASCII-only

Oh that doesn't have futhark (see here)

TrojanByAccident

yeah important to note that in some forms of futhark, that would actually be “TL”

specifically younger futhark

of course, we could be going down the completely wrong track

many of the characters are similar to latin ones

could be something like

“CH?TOY?CHY?XTEB?AYD”

granted, that makes no sense

i’m thinking it’s a blend of etruscan, runic, and probably a third language

ASCII-only

@TrojanByAccident yeah but we haven't been able to find an alphabet with the last letter

TrojanByAccident

Mar 12, 2018 01:52

that’s the missing one then

i have reason to believe the fifth letter is “N”

Eric Tressler

What is your reason

TrojanByAccident

ancient hungarian

unless it’s just asking when writing was invented

in which case, 3200 BC

ASCII-only

Mar 12, 2018 02:08

@TrojanByAccident well you'd need to solve the cipher first to find out the actual invention

IIRawCodeII

Heyo guys.

I recently got the reputation to chat here.

TrojanByAccident

nice

quick question - are you sure your math is right?

i thought it was at first glance, but after checking, i’m not sure

@iiraw

@ASCII-only I’m saying what if writing is the invention

ASCII-only

@TrojanByAccident probably not

TrojanByAccident

true

caesar cipher perhaps?

Alconja

It's clearly a straight up substitution cipher: "ER ANOTHER THING MUST B"

TrojanByAccident

Mar 12, 2018 02:20

substitution i meant kms

ASCII-only

@Alconja "When was this marvelouser another thing must bthing first invented?" :P

also "first invented" - wat

Eric Tressler

True, "first invented" is apparently redundant, which probably means it's significant. Of course, writing was invented multiple times independently, I think?

ASCII-only

Yeah, it was

TrojanByAccident

i just realized that we could include the new word in the sentence

ASCII-only

Hmm there might be more hidden in the image. possibly.

Alconja

Mar 12, 2018 02:26

interestingly the image alt text doesn't include the word "first"

TrojanByAccident

goddammit

Rubio

@Alconja That wasn't intentional. Don't read into it

(and fixed)

Alconja

I assumed not, but good to have clarity

ASCII-only

@Rubio There's no other hidden things right?

Rubio

@ASCII-only The steganography part has been fully found, yes.

ASCII-only

Mar 12, 2018 02:29

:/ the steganography part is very hard

If even Puzzling's own god can't figure it out immediately then this is basically guaranteed to be unsolved for ~~a decade~~ maybe a week at least

Rubio

Hehee

TrojanByAccident

Mmm maybe unimportant but I’d like to note that deus’s edited version is actually smaller than the original

ASCII-only

Oh while we're on the topic of steganography: I should totally hide some images in my avatar

@TrojanByAccident mith?

Rubio

Deusovi's, you mean?

TrojanByAccident

yeah that one sorry i’m tired

ASCII-only

Mar 12, 2018 02:35

@TrojanByAccident It's the same size

TrojanByAccident

by over 3,000 bytes it’s smaller

ASCII-only

@TrojanByAccident yeah probably either better compression or Rubio's text was antialiased

Rubio

mine is a "8 bit/color RGB" and Deus's is "8 bit colormap"

presumably the colormap is more compact

ASCII-only

@Rubio Sounds like the colormap is using a palette, IDK though

Rubio

the text in mine is antialiased for sure so if Deus brutally filtered it to fewer colors that'd make the colormap more efficient.

But yeah, there's no non-image data in mine, so the 3k diff is not relevant

TrojanByAccident

Mar 12, 2018 02:39

interesting

ASCII-only

@Rubio I mean he probably reduced the number of areas (for the PNG to define) because he converted all the brush strokes to just red instead of off-white and a few other off-whites

Rubio

@ASCII-only Yah

TrojanByAccident

that’s some impressive steganography btw @rubio

ASCII-only

@TrojanByAccident :/ that's like steganography 101

To anyone that's still bothering to try and solve it: the trivia tag seems important

We just have to figure out where the trivia is from

TrojanByAccident

@ASCII-only i didn’t mean his idea, i more meant the implementation

Rubio

Mar 12, 2018 02:41

@ASCII-only +1

I posted that in a rush and forgot to set the trivia/knowledge tags up front; they were supposed to be there from the get-go.

ASCII-only

looks at question

Oh >_>

@everyone it appears to be Wakandan

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