@BeastlyGerbil- Is it a single word or sequence of words pointing to a word ? :D

Single word

I'll probably make a community wiki like the last one

Hm. @BeastlyGerbil But the first three lines are connected? Kinda thought that was leaning toward them forming a single word. (Also, I saw someone quote you on that, but never saw the original statement nor found anything in the puzzle that suggested it)

Okay first line you've got - 2 and 3 give 3 letters, you have 4, 5 and 6 give 2 letters.

And the word is related to the puzzle

Well that was way more than I was looking for but thanks :)

Well @Deusovi stayed up half the night, went to sleep, woke up and it's still unsolved so I kinda owed it to him and the rest of you to give a hint

@BeastlyGerbil Nah, I just have a weird sleep schedule :P

I didn't stay up half the night just for this puzzle (though it definitely did contribute!)

TAKING ORDERS doesn't work, does it?

(TASER, KID, GORN)

No single word

For the cryptic? Rubio already confirmed that "following" and "directions" were separate.

Oh.

I think he's talking about Rubio's

And the first word is indeed imp

Oh ok

oh, following and directions are seperate? Never mind

Yep. We think it's ______ PERIOD.

Maybe something like IMP + ??? + BAD + ON + ED + ?? for BG's puzzle?

IMPRISONED? @BeastlyGerbil

Oooh.

Yes!

@BeastlyGerbil I call shenanigans. :) It's a 15 letter word? Starting with IMP?

Rubio confirmed that it's not DOUBLE PERIOD, I don't know what you're thinking exactly though

Well done @Techidiot

IMPOVERISHED!

oh. 2+3 is 3

Can you provide reasoning? @Techidiot

Deciphering the letters with Vignere gives...

go lkxwejpg folvh numoww sybpdvcc

Oh.

Right that's the bit you need, but I can tell you now some of the algebra is wrong so the next step won't work. Home soon and I can point out errors

Well that must be the answer! :P

Go ???????? ????? num(ber) ????????

Yeah there's another thing you need which is in the algebra but hasn't been transcribed properly

That's a start

@BeastlyGerbil - I deduced something like this

well, poo.

I'll tell the reasoning:

Merged with danger but things were not alright - RISK - K (OK)

bah. ok would have never got that.

@Techidiot Is your hint really a hint or not a hint just meant to annoy anyone who checks the hint?

And learning - education shortened to ED

ED makes more sense obviously.

Yeah said the danger but was hard

Yeah, I got ED. Wasn't sure if I would've gotten RIS, but it worked out well having the other clues.

starting to recheck algebra. whee!

I think the issue is just the N/S.

Oh @Deusovi - TechIdiot found the B in paragraph 4

@BeastlyGerbil- We could have never figured that out without the length of word and the letters to be borrowed from each. Atleast not me :D

apparently we're both blind. I read that thing 4 times and never saw it.

I found that paragraph online, copied it into another text document and used Ctrl+F!

@Rubio - I found it when I was looking looking for something else :D Lol

And I still didn't find it!

Yes the N/S is a bit of an issue with which letter is above/below depends on position

@Sid- I saw someone doing that.

Oh, I think I know one issue.

Its a little of this and that.

3E+1N isn't necessarily the same thing as 1N+3E.

But they're the same algebraically.

ohhh. true.

No it's different

spaces matter.

(Imagine a lot of skinny letters in one of the rows.)

No wonder. I grouped all those together.

Keep it in the order that the letters appear

There's our issue.

You're a very beastly gerbil, sir.

:D Haha

(*mutter*)

this is fun, though :) nice job.

:P

but now i REALLY want these equations as text. Punk :)

It's always satisfying as a puzzle maker when your puzzle gets talked about and discussed all day in chat :P

yeah, that would be helpful :P

@BeastlyGerbil And doesn't get solved in a day... That makes it all the more satisfying

I didn't want to put it as text because then it would be incredibly long

Could you copy-paste the text in here?

so I assume we can group (e.g.) 2P .... - P as they're nondirectionals, so I'm going to start doing that

@Sid yes very satisfyong ;)

You can pastebin it too

(In case if you have it) :D

I don't actually have the equations on me, they're on my laptop

But yes will include a link then

I have all of them

Let me paste it here.

You transcribed them? Nice!

I hope there are no errors

Paste them in the spreadsheet?

Oh wait

I copied half from the spreadsheet when I discovered there was spread sheet :p

Where's the spreadsheet again? Can't find it

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/…

You might want to put it in your answers, but someone could sabotage it

Why the edit @BeastlyGerbil? Check is perfectly fine

Hmm. It only made a difference in one equation. And I found one error, apparently I was in mid-simplification on #13 when I pasted it to the spreadsheet, sorry

So, got the final text?

We haven't resolvedwhich letter to use for #5

Are you up to no good Deus :)

:D

so that 13 seems wrong

Does that count as "no good"?

Yes, that definitely counts as no good :)

@Deusovi 4-11 are imgur fodder. we need to know uc/lc though

oooh

:33983326

26-33 unvig'd are also apparently imgur fodder but I can't find an image there. that'd be one heck of a coincidence though.

Time to check all possible caps/LC combos?

ugh.

i'm on it

:D

can you recheck those letters at least so i'm not burning time for nothing ;)

Sure, I'll do that

Yep, they seem good to me.

no uc/lc combo of lnxwe.jpg gives an image

Hm.

Is there really an image involved?

Well, considering the message ?????JPG appears, I'd say it's likely.

Twice even! Once in ciphertext, once in plaintext.

Can you give me the final encrypted text?

What we have right now:

OA AEFOSWTJ AAAMM FIZGAE ENSXVJPG

OA ALFOSWTJ AAAMM0FIZGAE ENSXVJPG

Ooh. Rubio, try with LUXWE?

Are we treating void as space as well? What if its a 0?

He said it was a space

also GAP and BLANK

Ohh

(Any luck with LUXWE, @Rubio?)

Can we have only alphabets in an imgur link? Never seen that before. Isn't it alphanumeric?

it's finishing

It can have numbers, but doesn't have to.

and no. nothing there either.

:(

Why L for 5?

We don't know if S goes to the U or the L in "bull".

that would make it B or E

...Shit, that's west, not east.

Or may be a blank

No, probably not a blank.

Otherwise JPG wouldn't work.

lkxwe.jpg is a thing.

it's not a HELPFUL thing but it's a thing.

Can someone smarter than me see if this image is hiding anythign?

A torn is all I can see

torn card sheet I mean

There's some non-white in the tear but it doesn't have anything interesting in it that I can see

I can only think of Luxembourg

With the plain text

Image was posted Dec 1 so it's highly likely it's part of this puzzle, just don't know what it means yet

WB @BeastlyGerbil

And that image is part of the puzzle

Oh no! :(

Zoomed 500% but no clues

I should still be able to get the equations though...

Wow, all lowercase. Huh.

Okay what message do you have so far?

Huh. Ok so @BeastlyGerbil - I've got "1B" for one of these, from "3B - 2B" - but there's more than one B in paragraph 1. are we intended to know how to resolve that, or do we just guess at it?

this is #22 btw

GO LKXWEJPG SOLVE NUMCXW SYBPDVCC

Hmm seems like an error on my part, let me check

Image seems like a flag as well

Not a flag.

Okay the message before it's changed

A path

@Deusovi #19-24 should be NUMBER, so there's 3 wrong in there. first one is #22 the ambiguous B. haven't looked at the rest. #22 looks like "F" was intended.

Yeah what's he message before you decide it?

OA ABFOSWTJ AAAMM FIZG[A/Z]E ENS[X/C]VJPG

The last one also looks like an Imgur URL.

that X/C is definitely X.

the C i think flags "capitalize", but it hasn't helped me any

Oooh, maybe.

Yep C means capital

So everything else is lowercase

good. i figured that out yesterday, but it didn't help :)

ensXv doesn't give a valid URL.

No that's weong

No

no sifting of ensXZv gives anything useful

er. yeah whatever

I can no longer type apparently :)

It should be fizfhze ansXv.jpg

Yep

ADD XXI I VI XXII XLI

that was quick

21 1 6 22 41

damn. that's a 4th root, not a square root.

Aaah there you go

Alright, now what do we add it to?

Hm...

Think @Deusovi think!!!

Maybe the ASCII codes of the imgur URL we already got?

Surely you can get this

Er not quite

Yeah, I tried A1Z26 but 41 stopped me.

Yeah but you have to add it

41 would be uc ?

Use the imgur you've already got and add the numbers

That gives rksbQ

(assuming the 41 clues capital, which is probably not a good assumption to make)

No not a good assumption

There's no caps

You are using he torn paper right?

Yeah

Good

Oh, hold on. I was subtracting. Didn't modify the autoVignere right.

yeah you got it!

:D

Community wiki?

Pheww.. She could have just killed herself :D

yeah durn it

um Rubio :P

yeah yeah. :)

Why 41 for the last one?

was scrolled up, didn't see :)

@Deusovi because I couldn't subtract as that would result in a longer sentence and many more algebraic equations

One question @Deusovi, reason being I am terrible at maths..how you got 21 1 6 22 41?

I am still there

Why not just 15 though?

:(

it's roman numerals

@Techidiot Roman numerals after converting letters to numbers from that message.

But if you do 5+41 and then - 26 you get 20

A1Z26 to letters, then interpret as roman numerals. yeah.

Wait hang on why did I do 41?

Yeah. Why not just 15?

We don't know. hehe

Oh, that was silly of me

Erm I have no idea... I'm questioning my own actions now...

Sorry. Didn't see you deduced ADD XXI I VI XXII XLI first

I'm curious - can you re-upload an image and keep the same url?

So how many uploads did it take you to get all those lowercase letters? :P

Well that's weird. Oh well you worked it out so :P

Nope.

Didn't think so. Oh... nevermind, I see

Dude. That's mad cool :)

@Deusovi I did some calculations and worked out it was almost exactly a 1 in 100 chance of getting all lowercase. One took me about 20 goes the other took about 150...

So if we look, we'll find IMGUR splattered with this image, huh

Haha :) Sensational!

@Rubio yep :P

@BeastlyGerbil Whoa! 150 uploads? Wow, that's dedication.

It'd be nice if you could mark them to be cleaned up. I left behind a handful when I was uploading my physics graphic a while back

@Deusovi it's sufffice to say that my finger had lost all its feeling and I was worried it would drop off

I would write the community wiki myself but it's hard on mobile, would someone mind?

Lol as soon as I write that it all goes quitw

That's ok I'll write it up later

so there still seem to be errors in the cipher text from the equations

Did you look that over?

I will later if nobody else has.

Ahh. I think you skipped an equation in the puzzle somehow

Or mis-ordered them or something

@BeastlyGerbil - You can add cipher tag to your question if required

I think so..

@Rubio I'll check when my computer begins to work

Until that community wiki is on hold ;)

The posted equations 22-24 don't give what you have for them, and I think the last two are off by one spot. Also you have 7 letters where we only have 6 equations. So yeah - something went amiss there, hope you can find it

Yeah the equations and what they are supposed to be don't match up on mine. I'll investigate

And I'll probably have to update the image

Don't forget that lowercase x in #5 then ;)

WIFI!!!!!!

Okay now I can right up a community wiki and check the problems

I did expect I may have made a mistake in the algebra, simply because there were so many of them

whee!

If @Techidiot makes his a community posting (can you do that after the fact? I assume so?) then half the work is done already

Or whatever. Hehe

I don't think you can. I can just copy it.

Yeah just pick it up.

I'll try to fix the errors first

Yeah. That will take a bit

@GarethMcCaughan Lol :)

it's OK, I feel stupid and ignorant most of the time

I actually did laugh out loud hehe

seriously, human brains are just Not Good Enough

surely we should be able to do better

but alas the Glorious Transhuman Future remains obstinately future

Okay apart from the oddity of 22, think I got the rest working. Worked out I was missing the e.

Rest is fine now... I think you didn't see one was a fourth root not a square as well...

I finally noticed that, yes

it's right in our spreadsheet now

this one -

Okay updating image...

Hang on I've made some other mistake here, I have 1 too many...

Oh yeah I have one that repeats itself....

don't forget #5 ;-)

Yeah I fixed all the little other mistakes too.

I'll add a google doc sheet as well

this one?

I was gonna update it when you post the new equations

Heh, it occurs to me I'm the only one who didn't post an answer, so I get no rep for this hehe

No I created a new one with just the equations for users who want to have a go at solving it.

Now for that community wiki

Ah

The one we were working in is now updated

Not that you need it, but yeah - how we solved it is in there

So mainly you, deusovi and techidiot solved this. That is all isn't it? Don't want to miss anyone

Mainly, yes. @Volatility was helping as well, I think, for a while last night while we were filling in the spreadsheet. Not positive.

OK will add him

I think @Techidiot found the "b" we were too blind and stupid to see, and solved the riddle; I simplified most of the equations and Deus filled in most of their letters; I found the imgur fodders, figured out C for capital; Deus did the spreadsheet and added the vigenere coding, solved the 2nd image, and found the final image. a minute before I did, I think, lol. Volatility helped fill in letters and equations. Tech posted updates along the way in his answer.

I think that's largely accurate. It was a nice group effort.

Yeah I'm just going to say at the start 'solved mainly in chat by xxxxxxxx....'

@Rubio have you updated the doc sheet?

Yes

It's updated with the new equations and corrections

Oops. I forgot one minor minor thing.

ok fixed. It should be good now :)

Thanks I'll provide a ink in the community wiki. Don't want to write it all out.

I'm assuming you were 'anonymous lemur'

:P

Probably.

You are "Anonymous Aurochs"

Oh :P

I changed the link sharing to 'can view' instead of 'can edit'. Its finished now, so no edits necessary and we don't want anyone to sabotage it.

I'm pretty sure Anonymous Gerbil is a thing

what about Anonymous Kangaroo? hehe

Nice answer on the scrabble dice btw @Sconibulus. +1 from me.

Anydice was a pain to work with for that, it took me hours

but it ends up with pretty charts and such, so I guess it was worth it

I'm curious: I've heard that a code can be thought of as a function on whole words, and a cipher as a function on individual letters (only dependant in some cases on past values, not future ones). So what is the correct terminology for a transposition code/cipher/what's-it-called?

Neither of those. :)

@boboquack "Anagram"? :P

Rail fence Cipher is a transportation cipher I guess

@GentlePurpleRain Don't think anagram really fits when you're turning whole passages of text into seemingly random gloop.

@boboquack Hence the ":P"

@Techidiot Its not really a cipher though-that's just a misnomer it has adopted.

@Techidiot Your riddle, I'm just gonna ask - when it says "One of us reside in each line", is that literally so - exactly one occurrence of the "us" of the riddle can be found in each line of the riddle? Someone in a comment sort of asked that and didn't get a meaningful answer.

Posted the final answer with a short epilogue as well

Now working on a wrap-up for both FYW and SYW

Thanks @Rubio

Yah

I've visited for 123 consecutive days :P

nice

next aim 1234 days! :P

I'm at 53 consecutive

visited 67 days, 53 consecutive

Halfway to fanatic badge then

I'd have got it ages ago but I went on holiday and had no wifi so lost my streak

I've visited 268 days total

There should be a gold badge for visiting a site on 365 days

Consecutive? that's a bit excessive :S

@dcfyj I just check in after school.

Sometimes I just look for 1 minute and that counts as being active that day

Its annoying how you can't upvote your own community wiki...

Or accept it for 2 days...

I upvoted it. Doesn't that make you warm and fuzzy?

The problem from my perspective is that its not at the top of the answers. So people who see the puzzle won't see it's solved or what the answer is.

hmmm 3000 views...?

Ah that makes more sense, its on HNQ...

whoops

(AK....) :P

I KNEW he was secretly a marsupial.

:P

Good morning everybody, and nice solve!

@Volatility it took all day but people finally got it..

Dang, used up my daily votes.

Gotta wait 2 hours and then go and upvote all the good stuff that's been posted today.

I see you lot have been busy in here today.

Oh god yeah :P

@BeastlyGerbil Even when you accept it, it won't automatically float to the top, because it's technically a self-answer.

@BeastlyGerbil 365? Pffft.

Wow!

I'm working on a long geography puzzle and a short riddle. Just trying to work out which to do first ...

@Randal'Thor 2048 days visited, consecutively? that's.... words fail.

I honestly don't know if I should be more impressed or appalled. :)