It turns out that Phlarx's suggestion essentially works
and I have the answer
but basically all I did was to notice that actually Phlarx's approach yields 27 not 26 symbols (which is good news since we know we have letters+space), to implement it in the obvious way with a short Python script, and to feed the output to quipqiup
well, I also noticed that space had to be one of {5,6,7} and tried each of those for space with the other two for 2-digit numbers
but only space=5 worked
("had to be" on frequency grounds)
and anyway my question, if anyone happens to be reading this, is: Should I (1) put the solution in my existing answer, (2) edit it into Phlarx's, (3) tell Phlarx and invite him/her to put the solution into his/her answer, or (4) something else?
because on the one hand, y'know, I've solved it
but on the other hand Phlarx's suggestion is essentially 100% correct
and on the other other hand it's not terribly different from the stuff I was already trying
but on the fourth hand it wasn't actually one of the specific things I'd tried
I guess one version of (4) is make it community wiki but it seems like someone should be getting rep for this :-)
(I don't particularly mind whether it's me or Phlarx or somehow both)
hmm, apparently no one is actually here in any useful sense so I guess I'll agonize over this on my own for a bit and do whatever seems reasonable :-)
For example, a riddle question has the main riddle in the post, and below the main riddle, in the same post, there's a spoiler-tagged solution.
Is this okay? What about posting the solution after x hours/days/etc?
There is much furor around the perceived question-quality of riddle and others. All such reactions and discussions that I have seen have relied on anecdotes and gut feelings, rather than hard data.
Of course, a regular puzzler's gut feeling might be a good estimate, but confirmation bias is a t...
@randal'thor Well done, Gareth and Phlarx. Awarding a bounty would be extraordinarily generous of Gareth when he and Phlarx both deserve to gain rep. No need to do that. Now, how should I award points? Have I recognised the contribution of each of you? ...
Is the site only about solving etc of puzzles?
I was going to ask a question about what easy to obtain lubricants are suitable to use on a speedcube that's getting a bit sticky.
Would that be on-topic here?
... Gareth did the frequency analysis (credit due for even thinking of counting bigrams). Phlarx thought of treating two digits as prefixes, found the correct two, and wrote a program to lex the ciphertext on that basis. It remains to decipher a substitution cipher. Gareth did that, and also arranged the key table's columns into the correct order, having found out the author-related reason for this order. ...
I'm inclined to award points like this: accept (but not UV) Gareth's answer, and upvote Phlarx's. What do you think?
This post relates to the brilliant suggestion by KeyboardWielder on opitoinally creating warp-up answers to solved puzzles. There is also a
sandbox for examples now.
One, I believe, important thing for this idea is to have some standardization of the answer post, or at least some template hea...
@RosieF I think you should accept Gareth's answer since it actually contains the final solution and Phlarx's doesn't. Especially since Gareth is being very gentlemanly and promised to award a bounty if Phlarx gets too big a disadvantage rep-wise.
@Randal'Thor I see your implication in your first sentence -- but it seems to me that that would mean the final solving-step must deserve more credit than the preceding steps.
In a way it does. If someone comes to look at that question in the future, and sees an accepted answer which doesn't include the final solution, they might assume it's something like this which hasn't been fully solved yet at all.
@MariaDeleva Graham identified it. (And even found out that I'd put title and author credit in a "coda" -- so that shows that he didn't just decipher the first few words.)
The decoded text isn't there because the questioner specifically said not to put it there.
PS. If in a few days' time it looks to anyone as if the rep for that puzzle is unfairly apportioned and I haven't done anything about it with a bounty, someone please remind me. I'm very good at forgetting things.
(and, for the avoidance of doubt, yes I did decipher the whole thing.)
The reverse-puzzling tag is for:
A question where you must identify a puzzle based on a reasoning to solve it.
The puzzle-identification tag is for:
A question inquiring about the name or nature of a specific puzzle, given its description.
From the tag wikis, there doesn't seem to be ...
I have never doubted you, Gareth. It is just that I am very bad at ciphers - even with all this information in both of the answers, I will still not be able to solve it on my own. :) goes hiding in some rabbit hole...
Once you find it, I'd like to add the 'ending' of this conversation in a comment to the answer (for the sake of the story/puzzle). Is it allowed? I remember having seen such a thing in an old post, but I can't find it now.
:-) It would be great if you could find an example on this site (I'm pretty darn sure I have already seen it), since you've been around for some considerable time
However... could it ruin the question for future viewers?
@IAmInPLS One example is the SErial Killer puzzle series by Joe. He left 'in-character' comments on each answer, either giving an indication that it was wrong or explaining what happens next. For instance:
While skiving during a tediously show morning's work, you start sleuthing away on an incredibly complicated problem. After a little while, you jump on to PSE and open this question. You instantly spot the anagram indicator, and unscramble "antimony" and connect half the dots (antimony translates as "not alone", killed sites are all math related to suggest the number of antimony). Confident that you're on to a winner, you head over to Area 51... — JoeNov 13 '14 at 19:59
Yes, this is what I was talking about. And this is indeed the post I saw containing something like this! Thanks.
I could also add it in the question in spoilers, once the answer has been found. I'm really not sure how to proceed, even though I think the puzzle is well-defined with or without this backstory.
@IAmInPLS Not really, if it's a comment on the answer. By the time a future viewer has got down that far, they've probably already read the answer and seen the solution anyway.
keep in mind that the blog post about shopping does not just say "all shopping questions are off topic". it's much more detailed than that.
i don't really speed either. but in taiwan it was easy to find a speedcube for $4 AUD and i wanted to get better at solving one handed
the cube is endorsed by Mats Valk and was super fast - too fast for me - when i bought it a couple of weeks ago
yep it is a good link but note that most of it is about specific products you can buy online. that's what i anticipated when i asked the question in the original form.
plus if cube lubes are anything like skate bearing lubes there's a lot of overpriced ripoffs that are sewing machine oil in a different bottle with a sticker of a cube (-:
@hippietrail I know, but it really looked like an off-topic question at the beginning; it's a bit better since you edited out, but I'm still convinced Google is a better place to find this type of information.
"Puzzling Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for those who create, solve, and study puzzles." In my mind this question falls under the study part.
@hippietrail It may be called something else there
A harbour once fashionable,
Coloured by dead lovers,
Loved by the young that later exude oriental smoothness,
And reportedly circled by the young that later either wash their faces,
Or occasionally observe mammalian explosion.
What am I?
Clue 1:
Clue 2:
@dcfyj I typed in "I like to make nice and hard puzzles" and after five iterations, it became "I have to upgrade than standard and troublesome issues."
it feels like there might be multiple closely related solutions, though it's a bit premature for me to say that since I haven't got anything quite fitting yet
if "how so?" applies to my unconvincedness by the last line: well, "only one friend" meaning every PC with a USB port seems a little dicey to me, and flash drives are still almost always connected to PCs rather than anything else. (I take it a Mac is just one more variety of PC in this context.)
@GarethMcCaughan One friend refers to pc's (as a whole not individual ones) as a friend, but now playstations and xbox can also communicate with them along with other devices.
Amusingly enough I sort of randomly picked those words after I wrote the riddle, and it turned out to be true, it is a set of unilaterally bickering soliloquies haha
might have guessed it anyway, but I would have been a bit slower, and less confident. Probably wouldn't have ended up posting because the other answer was similar enough
as it was, I didn't see that there was another answer until I was finishing up spoiler formatting, so I was committed
incidentally, the alternate answer I was thinking of was: any sort of storage device connected via a Thunderbolt/Lightning connector. A different sort of flash, and this time the first friend is presumably the Mac, but it seems like it fits almost as well.
finding anagrams of random odd-looking bits of the text is fun but I'm pretty sure we're going to need at least one more actual idea to solve the puzzle.
well, maybe "idea" is too generous but we've noticed it says [steganography] and [anagram] and tried anagramming bits of the messages which is probably at least part of what needs doing
@RosieF OK, I take it back. (I thought it was very vowel-heavy, but I realise now that I was looking at the end and not noticing how consonant-heavy the start is)
I believe 26 refers to the count of letters we need to extract - did someone mention there were 26 punctuation signs? perhaps we need to take every second letter after a punctuation sign? I don't really have the time to try this now though
Let's say a puzzle has a story that might seem real to some people. For example, a puzzle could have a story like "So my friend sent me a message". Do I, as the puzzle creator, have to clarify somewhere in the body of the question that the story is fictional? I'd like to list the pros and cons I'...
and in the comments: They meet on 5th september 2016. Because, according to Roman calendar Nones indicate 5th day of short months and 7th day of long months.. – Sathi Reddy
to which he replied: @SathiReddy you got one of the clues but they definitely can't meet in the past