The Sphinx's Lair

6:03 AM

Just noticed that "Gamow=Aw, OMG". Precisely my expression when I looked at Gamow's rep points some months back.

That echoes my reaction when I saw Gamow's rep. But that was not months back, it was last week.

7:02 AM

Rand al'thor is getting a good headstart now after his suspension. f'' doesn't seem to be active anymore and Gamow got suspended until October 25 :P

I think there's a clear conspiracy going on, this just seems too suspicious.

I see what you mean about a head-start, @LukasRotter. Rand is 1st by rep over the last month, with a lead of 21% over the 2nd-placed greenturtle3141, despite being suspended for most of that month!

@RosieF Exactly. Looking at his reputation graph it also seems like he's trying extra hard right now :P His old answers / questions will also bring him a decent amount of rep per day, so I don't think Gamow will stand a chance to stay the "true" leader during his suspension. (Even though I think you can also get reputation from older post during a suspension)

By the way, has anyone made progress on this question? I had a quick look at it and the obvious answer was to shift the letters by 2^n, where n is the number next to the letter... But then again, that would obviously be too easy anyway.

7:25 AM

I had a look at it, too. I note that the top line has 4 numbers >=16, but after that the highest number = 14. So, if all those numbers are relevant, what is the encoding scheme? I don't know.

The first sequence, each number is multiplied by 2. The second sequence, I am pretty sure the letters could be an anagram of something, and then perhaps we should solve the cipher for the rearranged numbers?

although Lukas suggestion sounds better to me.

Perhaps the numbers are to be combined in some way to make indexes into an array containing a couple of hundred thousand elements?

Since the plaintext seems to be very short, it's unfortunately hard to analyze the ciphertext. Frequency analysis maybe just backs up the assumption that the letters may just have to be rearranged, since it contains many vowels. (although v,w and y seem wrong IMO)

Sorry for the wrong percentages, it also counted the numbers etc.

IYOARUVMDASUEJEAMIAFIOWSYAUSPAE - these are the letters only

Thanks

7:39 AM

What might be the significance of say W1? We can't be meant to combine the numbers that are paired with the same letter -- W1 is our only W.

I'll just post the link to the image now in order to not flood the chat :P i.stack.imgur.com/Ih94T.png

Puzzling — BOUNTY!

15

Q: What Road and What Story?

Professor O'Brien is missing from his laboratory. So is the elaborate contraption he has been working on for months. Paranoid about security, Professor O'Brien has not confided the nature of his experiments to anyone. It is known that he has been consuming vast amounts of electricity. Inspector...

Thank you for the analysis and image, @LukasRotter. All those vowels and no T or N. 31 letter-number pairs. Whenever the letter is a consonant the number <=4, but we have 10 cases of vowel with number >4.

No problem. I didn't notice that! I'm also never sure how much the story influences the solution. The last 4 letters could be rearranged to "peas", but that may just be a coincidence or a red herring.

I've racked my brains but nothing useful's come out of the bag.

7:55 AM

I tried using this site for anagrams, but I am stuck - there are too many vowels.

boulter.com/anagram/…

It might be a clue or a red herring, but Nigel is rather a British (as opposed to American) name -- a hint that he and Richard are in Britain, not America?

Peas might be a red herring. Perhaps they're just a narrative device to explain "pods".

Hello

Hello, @IAmInPLS

Hi!

@RosieF and @LukasRotter Seems you're working on a puzzle, but which one?

Q: An encoded message for Nigel

8:00 AM

8

Nigel came inside from his back garden carrying the peas he'd harvested, and dumped them onto the table to be sorted according to which were edible and which weren't. Just as he did so, he noticed a letter lying on the table, now mostly buried by the peas, in what looked like the handwriting of h...

cipher story

Oh, right ^^

Let's get to work :p

This one puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/42015/…

I'm very disappointed in myself in this puzzle :P Usually I'm not that bad at cipher puzzles, but I don't seem to have any clue on this one...

The peas made me think to him : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel

It tantalises me. I feel as if I have the codebook but don't know how to extract the pertinent words from it.

8:04 AM

But it doesn't seem to be related

Maybe it has something to do with the letter "P"...

31 letters seems about a reasonable length, so perhaps each letter-number pair enciphers a letter? But then which two letters could "I1, Y1" be? The message can't possibly begin IY.

P for power? Powers of two...

@Ankoganit Yes, reminds me of this puzzle

ease/peas

@Lukas, have you tried your idea - shifting the letters by 2^n?

8:08 AM

I tried to read it: "I won. Why won? Oh, wait."....

Lol, @Ankoganit

Except that we have only one P, @IAmInPLS.

Actually, it could begin with IY if it was "I yesterday...". Still, perhaps an unlikely start.

@RosieF Maybe, maybe not? :p

@MariaDeleva I've tried with the first 3 letters, it would be either "kaw" or "gwg", so after that I immediately forgot about that idea :P

Anyone tried converting to binary? The powers of two are suspicious...

@Ankoganit Only counting the letters that would be "01001001 01011001 01001111 01000001 01010010 01010101 01010110 01001101 01000100 01000001 01010011 01010101 01000101 01001010 01000101 01000001 01001101 01001001 01000001 01000110 01001001 01001111 01010111 01010011 01011001 01000001 01010101 01010011 01010000 01000001 01000101"

8:14 AM

gg now I can't even read it

When rand al'thor will read this transcript, he'll probably laugh his head off at how far off we are :P

@MOehm Hello!

Yes -- it is entirely possible that I have swallowed a load of ruddy fish.

Perhaps "garden" (instead of "yard" -- after all, we're not talking Versailles here) is another hint that the scene is set in Britain.

I have things to do now so I'll leave you to it. Hope to be back in a few hours.

@RosieF See you :)

8:43 AM

@IAmInPLS You probably already noticed it, but concerning the question you just put a bounty on: I'm pretty sure it has something to to with the square dance "Do-Si-Do" because of the title of the envelope. So you may have to add letters in a circular motion to a string, using a square of letters made up of the hints given... Not sure, though.

Yes, I thought it had something to do with the dance. I'm not familiar with it though!

Well, I know the term dos à dos since I am French but that's it c:

@Mithrandir Hello!

Mithrandir

@IAmInPLS Hello!

GUYS! I think I'm onto something for this one

Nigel Richards is the world's highest rated scrabble player. We can see the word scrabbled in the question, so I think this is relevant. Plus, the numbers after the letters can be points. So, it can suggest that we have to arrange the letters on a Scrabble board in a certain way. But I'm not sure what to do with the powers of two...

M Oehm

8:59 AM

Wow! That's a good find.

@MOehm Thank me later :p

Maybe the score of each word on the board has to be a power of two?

@LukasRotter Yes, that could be it :). But how to reach a score of 1 only?

@IAmInPLS I don't necessarily think it has to be 8 words with unique scores that are in the array "1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128". I think that's just a hint.

So there may be no word with a score of 1