Cryptos

[Kuang]

Just the cipherclerk applet alone offers over 200 different combinations of settings for decrypting bifid ciphers. If only one variant of it will work and there's no way of telling which it is, I'm not sure how J Clark could have figured it out in a few minutes in an alleyway with no clues whilst being pursued by brazilin assassins...

[Kuang]

Oh, hang on - 'around the box'?.. It couldn't be that evil, could it?...

[Kuang]

No.

Ah well.

[Cryptos]

Extremely sorry- just found another error, this time in the text. RCBOOHG iis now RCBOHG.

[Kuang]

That'd only throw two characters wouldn't it?..

[Kuang]

Ahh no, gotcha - it's one less overall. I've been thinking too hard

[Kuang]

Run through various ways of deciphering this manually and still kep getting nonsense. I've also run it through some of the applets trying a straight alphabet and then a rotary pathed alphabet in the grid in case 'around the box' was a reference to the grid layout. I'm probably doing something stupid, but I've had enough of trying to work it out for one day. Back later.

[ender]

with a letter in less we have 64 letters , square 8x8

[Kuang]

Another manual attempt at bifid, this time with the v/w variant instead of i/j and still getting nowhere...

[Cunn]

Neither have I achieved anything. Good night to all, I'm back. Have been manually trying a few variations, helpless. But we have to crack it tonight

[Jase]

i go and have a sleep and come back to see you all have been busy ... good work cunn on unm.a ... lets meet this level head on now

[Cunn]

i go and have a sleep and come back to see you all have been busy ... good work cunn on unm.a ... lets meet this level head on now

Hello Jase, guess it is good morning for you. I still don't know if it has been a good work... we are all as stuck as before. But gotta make it, I hate having our private investigator waiting for us in the cab to Ponta Negra. The ride must be pretty expensive now...

[Cunn]

Nothing, nada, nothing at all... I have tried endless variations, i/j, v/w, k/q, upwards, downwards, horizontal... no use. Starting to be desperate. Thought the answer would reveal itself as soon as we knew what F.M.D'S UNM.A meant, but I am even more confused. Only one variation will work? And where is that variation, for god's sake??? Cryptos, are you around??? Do you want us to see the rest of the levels you've done or are you having fun knowing that the painting must be in Mars by now?

[Jase]

as have i cunn ... been writing them out ... trying online decryption methods ... but when you use bifid with an unmixed alphabet, dont you get a polybius square? ... *just a question, not a hint*

[Kuang]

Do we have to much about with the ciphertext before attempting to decode it? Is that where the 'think around the box' comment comes in? I've tried a spiral arrangement of the aphabet in the bifid grid already, but wonder if there's a transposition stage to be done beforehand. If so that'd be one level of obscurity too far, especially in context.