Cryptos

[millie]

cool thanks Kuang! Now im just on that **** Column thing bah, looked on wikipedia and what people have said on here, still makes no sense whatsoever, oh well.....ill have another look later

[kuang]

I've written up three graded hints for you - only go as far in as you need to avoid ruining the puzzle

What you have are a series of 4 letter 'words', each one of which makes a column when you write it going down the page. Once you lay all the columns out next to each other you'll end up with 4 rows of text. The trick is to get them in the right order so that reading across makes sense.

This is your second if you don't have any luck with the first..

There's a keyword that you use to work out which order the columns go in. This is written along the top of the columns with one letter over each column. How can you use this keyword to work out the order to write the columns down?

And here's your last if THAT doesn't ring any bells.

If you turn each keyword letter into a number based on how far into the alphabet it is, you'll know which order to write the 'words' downwards in.

You'll still have to guess the keyword yourself though

[pkticker]

The End.......? (so far)

how about if I said 'walking out onto a battlefield with a target painted on your shirt'?

Or like we're standing in a field on top of a bull's-eye, waiting for the Martians from "War of the Worlds" to zap us...

Wow Elise, thanks for the hint. Man... I get back on this evening and y'all got the thing solved for me...

I feel like I need a decoder ring or something... maybe that would help for the later levels?

[kuang]

There have been a few decoder rings in the past given away to the public for use with TV shows, in boxes of cereals, etc. Most were used by aligning a given letter on the inner disc with A the outer and reading off the new letters so they were effectively just caesar shift machines. However you could realign successive letters of a keyword on the inner ring with A on the outer ring and then read off the cipher equivalent to each plaintext letter, giving an instant pocket Vignere machine

[ender]

nothing new?

Thank's Kuang sniff and Pkticker! Finally sniff I think that I see sniff the clarity of this kind of situation sniff !!!!! Let me try sniff : It's like to be sniff a stripper in afghanistan!!!!( sniff perhap' s not very funny)!

Nothing new with cryptos???

[kuang]

Heh - that's an interesting image. I'm not sure what made you think of that, and I don't think I want to find out

[pkticker]

Ready for more!

Thank's Kuang sniff and Pkticker! Finally sniff I think that I see sniff the clarity of this kind of situation sniff !!!!! Let me try sniff : It's like to be sniff a stripper in afghanistan!!!!( sniff perhap' s not very funny)!

Nothing new with cryptos???

Gee... a stripper in Afghanistan... that WOULD be a deadly situation, Ender.

I am waiting with bated breath for the next installment... I have my "A=1, B=2" list all made and my Playfair and Bifid grids all written up... which means none of that will be of any use to me, most likely.

[kuang]

I'm intrigued about the next levels too - 40+ stages each with a different challenge is a serious undertaking, so I can imagine it getting particularly evil towards the end. Fortunately there seem to be a good variety of people here with different abilities so it'll be interesting to see how far we get.

Incidentally Bletchley Park here in the UK used to have a massive variety of people in the codebreaking huts, from mathematicians to crossword puzzle experts. The idea was that a different perspective on a problem could often reveal something new, so problems were passed around until somebody had a revelation. Seems to be a good way to work

[ender]

It's a team work!

I'm totally conscious that, without you, I would have arrived there never!!!!!!!!!!!!
First riddle for me! first ciphers!!! You gave me the impression to be a sort of big boss with ciphers!!

[Jase]

i am glad that i have the rest of you to "mesh with" ... as a group we can almost conquer anything ... i did say ANYTHING!

[Ferris Bueller]

Hello everyone. I'm a noob at puzzle games. My sister has urged me to play Cryptos.
So here I am. I'll see if I'm as good at ciphers as Geomag !

[kuang]

Hiya Ferris

Start at the beginning, and try not to use the spoilers unless you're *really* stuck - you learn a certain way of thinking that'll help you out later on if you figure the puzzles out as far as possible yourself

[jack]

Is there any word when the next level might be up?

[Cryptos]

The next levels should be up fairly soon.The main delay is that we have to plot out the entire stage before we write the levels.

[kuang]

..and you're waiting for the fresh supply of *evil* to be delivered