The Hunt For Theta Seven - You Could Win 750,000,000 Cr!

[CMDR Rabbit]

He's a giant floating ball of green hate, able to phase through matter.

Elite: Star Trek?

 

[CMDR Bloomingwind836]

Congratulations to the winner. I don't understand all the salt about the matrix maths though. Admittedly, I don't know about the schooling system in other countries, but matrix maths has been a part of the GSCE curriculum in England since at least the late 1980s. I realise that not everyone can remember their maths from school, but it was there for most of us. And pretty much all encryption methods use some kind of maths. I think so far Fdev have been right on the money with the level of difficulty of their puzzles. The main tricky part with this particular challenge was that the usual tricks of frequency analysis etc. don't help at all in working out what kind of encryption was used. So you kind of need to stumble across the right answer to get it.

I haven't had the time to try and work on the puzzle this time around, but have enjoyed reading the thread. As with many others, I think I would have been experimenting in the same kind of area. But being close to the answer in this instance is still nowhere near actually having it, because there are no hints that you are getting warmer, so noone should really feel bitter or think "it could have been me". In fact, I wouldn't have got it as I recall reading someone saying that the matrix formed from the ship counts had det 0, and I didn't think to check.

Despite all the people complaining (just as several predicted), I still think this forum is great. I am proud to be playing a game with so many CMDRs who consistently work together to solve these puzzles and make it community effort rather than jealously guard their own progress as happens so often elsewhere. I'm sure we are all eagerly looking forward to the next one. Perhaps a Christmas special or something. And if Fdev is looking for ideas of mixing it up a bit, how about a more visual puzzle, made up of "jigsaw" pieces collected in game. I have some ideas but don't want to spoil how it might work if they were used.

Right on Commander Therion Cygni!

Exactly. For all the folks who were salty about the difficulty of the puzzle, it still ONLY took a weekend for the community to solve!

Well done CMDR Therion Cygni! o7

 

[EdwardRex]

CODE BREAKER:

“HAVE_ARRIVED_AT_PANJABELL__WEAPONS_REMAIN_SECURE__I_NO_LONGER_TRUST_OUR_BENEFACTORS_OR_THEIR_NETWORK__WE_WILL_BECOME_INVISIBLE_UNTIL_THE_TIME_IS_RIGHT_TO_STRIKE_AGAIN__”

CMDR Therion Cygni

Congrats CMDR

 

[rOmiLaYu]

Mr. Cocken,

I am honored to have been able to provide information that will hopefully lead to the capture of Theta Seven, and I would like to recognize and thank all of my Pilot's Federation colleagues who helped in the effort.

I have always sympathized with the Marlinist cause and wish them well in their noble goal to restore the Republic of Achenar. However, the actions of Theta Seven and the NMLA only represent a perverse corruption of Marlinist ideals. The hateful and indiscriminate murders on 11 March 3307 are crimes for which humanity cries out for justice! Justice is why I assisted with this investigation, not the money.

If possible, I would like the entire reward to be used to establish a scholarship fund for the families of the victims of the 11 March terrorist attacks. Perhaps the scholarship program could also sponsor qualified candidates for Pilot's Federation commissions. Through education, people of all allegiances can rise above the ignorance and hatred embodied by the NMLA and work toward a brighter future for humanity.

o7,
CMDR Therion Cygni

__________
FDev, thanks the great game! CMDRs, thanks for being outstanding players! Let's keep making Elite Dangerous even better!

 

[Bantha]

Yeah well done Commander Therion Cygnil.

I have looked through all the explanations on how you solved this message, and I still have no ..ing idea what you are talking about. But then I am thick when it comes to maths.

Well done.

Lol I’m with you.

It’s all been very well explained, not just the winner but other CMDRs too have been very articulate in explaining their thought process.

And yet… I have no …ing idea what’s going on!

Cudos Cmdr Therion Cygni

And well done FDev for coming up with a code that was just the right amount of difficult to solve

 

[The Lawful]

Theta Seven does not need legs, interiors or anything to kill. He's a giant floating ball of green hate, able to phase through matter.

Bit like kale.

Bit like the forums before 8.01

There we have it.

O7,

 

[Ytterium]

Who has a position to be a benefactor?
Hadrian Duval

Who recently became untrustworthy to Neo-Marlinists by becoming complicit in the imperial regime?
Hadrian Duval

Who has a network of known imperial terrorists?
Hadrian Duval


Clearly Hadrian is the terrorist and we need to send him to Serene harbor now. Thank you for coming to my TED talk

 

[Adel]

To recreate those results quickly, one can use matrixes
X:

and
A:

on tools like https://matrixcalc.org/en/ as follows.

First invert X [result]. Let's call the result B.
View attachment 275272

Then multiply A (which is a 24x7 matrix) with B (which is a 7x7 matrix) [result].
View attachment 275273

The resulting 24x7 matrix

can now be translated such that a number x means the x-th letter in the English alphabet, e.g. 1 means 'A', 2 means 'B', etc., and 27 is a special character for a whitespace (we use '_').
One can do so by hand, but here is a simple C++ program to do that automated: http://cpp.sh/6tddj

As you can see after executing the program, the result is:

Thx for the explanations.
Do you know (or anyone else) why the 24x7 matrix has it's row with 61-76-126 and not 61-76-126 for its first column?
I was so close so learning from this will be benefit for me

 

[denispage]

You must be a journalist taking stuff out of context for your own agenda.

 

[denispage]

Lord God, Not that again.

It's amazing what rose tinted glasses can do.

That event caused so much salt there's still a bitter taste amongst some of the community. It was the cause of one of Drew's many 'I'm leaving the game / goodbye tours.'

I much preferred the Gnosis event, once they resolved the problems (i.e. screw up with the Galnet Article and the Megaship firing on their own defenders), I found that much more enjoyable!

It's so nice to have these events that we only read things.
Look on the bright side, Fdev is helping people do read more!
Jokes aside, it's better than nothing. I really hope they're fixing the game to release in consoles and add more REAL stuff.

Cheers and o7!

 

[The Lawful]

It's so nice to have these events that we only read things.
Look on the bright side, Fdev is helping people do read more!
Jokes aside, it's better than nothing. I really hope they're fixing the game to release in consoles and add more REAL stuff.

Cheers and o7!

Besides, it reminds me more of the Granger gang huntdown which led to the discovery of the cold moon where the ancient wreck was found. Maybe it leads to Thargoids on feet this time, who knows? X-Mas holidays are just around the corner. Ok, consoles are not with us yet.

Anyway, April 29th still marks the climax of ingame/Galnet storytelling in Elite for me, regardless of the outcome.

EDIT: https://canonn.science/codex/the-hunt/

O7,

 

[denispage]

Besides, it reminds me more of the Granger gang huntdown which led to the discovery of the cold moon where the ancient wreck was found. Maybe it leads to Thargoids on feet this time, who knows? X-Mas holidays are just around the corner. Ok, consoles are not with us yet.

Anyway, April 29th still marks the climax of ingame/Galnet storytelling in Elite for me, regardless of the outcome.

EDIT: https://canonn.science/codex/the-hunt/

O7,

Very nice!
Didn't know this one.

I do believe they have many things waiting the console release to implement.
Let's hope they fix that fast.

 

[Esteban]

CODE BREAKER:

“HAVE_ARRIVED_AT_PANJABELL__WEAPONS_REMAIN_SECURE__I_NO_LONGER_TRUST_OUR_BENEFACTORS_OR_THEIR_NETWORK__WE_WILL_BECOME_INVISIBLE_UNTIL_THE_TIME_IS_RIGHT_TO_STRIKE_AGAIN__”

CMDR Therion Cygni

FDev, thanks the great game! CMDRs, thanks for being outstanding players! Let's keep making Elite Dangerous even better!

@CMDR Therion Cygni :
Congratulations - and a wonderful acceptance speech as well! Here Here, I say! Let us indeed keep it fun and make it better!


Great puzzle, FDev. It was really fun to see the involvement and watch it go from release to solution. My only complaint: it sure was tough keeping up with so many posts! Kidding aside, that's what makes this game and place really cool, CMDRs!


Come out, come out wherever you are, Theta-7. Here kitty kitty... We're looking for you... You can't be invisible, only children think that... Your weapons stash isn't secure...

 

[Esteban]

btw:
I visited the Perdition megaship in Etain late last night (for me). It was very quiet there; not even NPC traffic as I experienced in Lodhary around the Testament megaship.

Now if only I could figure out how to gain access to the Mbooni System without a crash and loss of the permit in my stash...
(fyi: it doesn't even survive a "log." If I log out and back, the permit is gone. )

EDIT:
The bug as already been reported to the issue tracker; I added my voice to the report.

 

[Dragorion]

Thx for the explanations.
Do you know (or anyone else) why the 24x7 matrix has it's row with 61-76-126 and not 61-76-126 for its first column?
I was so close so learning from this will be benefit for me

It was a riddle, you could as well use it for the first column, but then the result is gibberish. There are infinitely many things that could be done with the input, but this particular way reveals the hidden message.

 

[MyMumIsAstronaut]

Removed.

 

[Iron Body]

Fantastic work CMDR Therion Cygni

Just to prove it to myself I wrote the following BBC Basic program to check it out.
There is a free version (or the SDL) version on the bbc basic web site
(I am a keen user, but not affiliated in any way)

 

[Leadfoot]

Clearly I'm not doing very well at keeping my involvement in the matter to myself. Hopefully Theta Group doesn't read this thread! I'm still interested in donating the proceeds to the scholarship charity if that's something FDev can help with. Or maybe I should just start saving up now if there are plans on the horizon (no pun intended) to add fleet carrier carriers to the game?

Also, ACT has kindly offered to place me in witness protection (jk), so I'll be off the grid for the next several days (for real).

Your next project should be figuring out, from all the clues left from earlier, the location of Raxxla.

 

[something]

Impressive in many ways, feeling motivated to share a full decoding app? in Cpp or other.

wolfram alpha is a nice online tool for quick checks - prime numbers/factors matrices and so forth

invert {{0,0,1,2,1,1, 2},{0,2,1,0,1,3,0},{2,0,0,1,2,0,2},{3,0,0,2,0,0,2},{0,2,3,0,1,1,0},{2,2,0,1,1,0,1},{0,1,2,1,1,2,0}} - Wolfram|Alpha

Wolfram|Alpha brings expert-level knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people—spanning all professions and education levels.

www.wolframalpha.com

 

[Felix DiCestria]

So we're looking for Acolyte (theta)7 of 9(martyrs)?