Two years today. Remember Salome - Text Cyphers

Dan Sho

Dan Sho
mach10 said:
Drew gave it away with this:

“In quoting others, we cite ourselves.” — Julio Cortázar
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Thats just a hint, that his poem is a palimpest of or at least based on another poem. I figured this about a week ago. The original poem, called "The Cosmos' Inner Secrets", was released in July 2017. It can be found HERE.

The result of the diffchecker can be found HERE.
 
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freshkosose

F
mach10 said:
K, all done. Its a very elegant yet simple puzzle. Two thumbs up Drew, they were very obvious the clues. I'll be organizing with an Elite Dangerous streamer for the reveal live, make it a nice social gathering, answer questions and not a dry forum post. I'll update this and the original post for the date/time.

Please don't let this discourage you from continuing in your efforts, the process and solution are worth the time in my opinion and you learn something really cool along the way. I promise I won't spoil until the stream. I learned something new about a way of writing that I only once overheard, but after researching really liked it.

Once again, thanks to Drew for both my headaches and elation during the quest.
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Way to go, man! (grumble) (actually I wasn't even close)
 

freshkosose

F
mach10 said:
Drew gave it away with this:

“In quoting others, we cite ourselves.” — Julio Cortázar
Click to expand...
I'm tending here to Cortázar's Hopscotch and essentially, what that means, is that the cipher is half nonsense, out of order, intentionally misspelled and up to the opinion of the reader. ;)
If this is the case then I have an answer too but my Twitch stream is happening on Mother's Day because, "L.T.CODE.Does.your.mother.know.you.do.this?
 

g0mtn

G
Looking forward to seeing the solution presentation event. What would also be interesting to learn as well as the solution itself, is what drew Mach10 in that direction. What was the process. Reading back through the thread it seems that there quite a few of us with similar ideas, and we had found the same features within the text. We investigate some ideas and hunches, or the other clues from Drew, and then rule them out when no results appear, or we conclude that the shape or type of the data doesn't fit well with the model and approach we were using to decode or decipher the code, and then move onto something else. There are some standard tools and methods in use, and we know to look back at previous puzzles and remember what came before.

Mach10 seemed to be the only contributor who was sounding confident about a solution whilst his work was ongoing several days before it was solved. What are the clues that show you are on the right track when there is little (or no) evidence part way through? Pretty much everyone else, myself included, was sounding a lot more speculative. This may help us out for any future similar puzzles and events. :)
 

Ko Shiji

Ko Shiji
Well, I mean, the clues are that you decode a few words and you don't get gibberish.

I'm guessing the idea was something along the lines of a personal journal kept closed, with ink from one page staining the opposite page. So the decode method is to pivot every other line, like opening a book. Wild guess though.
 

Yagi Uda

Y
Ko Shiji said:
Well, I mean, the clues are that you decode a few words and you don't get gibberish.
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Yes, agreed. Everything I tried would have solved the message with a click / drag of a spreadsheet formula, or a copy / paste from an online deciphering resource. It would have been all or nothing. Presuming the solution was not found completely manually (pen and paper) I'd like to learn techniques whereby you can get part of a solution, which validates the next steps and further, perhaps quite different work to get to the end. Guess I'm not thinking laterally enough.
 
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