Hints for Solving a Cipher

[+geocyclist94]

Hi there

I came across a cache in my area that requires me to decrypt there following cipher :

 

ABBaAABBaA AABbAABBbA AAaAAABaAA AAbAABAaAB BaAAbAAABb ABAbAAAaABB aABBbAAABb ABbABaAAAa AAaAAAAbAA BAaABBaAAb AAABaAAaAA aAAAAbABaA AaAbAAaABA bAAAaABAbA BAbAAaAABA bAAaAAABaA BBaAAAAbAA aABABaAAAB bAAABaAAaA ABBaAABBbA AAaAAABaAA BBbAAAaAAA BaABAbAAaA ABAbAAaAAA BaAAABbABA bAAAaABBaA BBbAAaAABA bAAAaAAbAB BaAABBaAAA BbAAABaAAa AAaAAAAbAB aAAaAbAAA AbAABAaABB aAAbAAAAbAA BAaABBaAAb ABbAAABbAA AAbABBaABA b

 

I have spent endless hours tring to solve this and still have no idea. Can anyone who has seen this before please give me a hint for this but please do not give out the answer.

 

Any help would be apprieciated.

 

--mich5483

[+fegan]

I came across a cache in my area that requires me to decrypt there following cipher...

 

Sometimes the name, or description, may hold information that leads to the solution.

 

Can you share the GCID?

[+geocyclist94]

I came across a cache in my area that requires me to decrypt there following cipher...

 

Sometimes the name, or description, may hold information that leads to the solution.

 

Can you share the GCID?

 

GC1XFHQ

Edited September 15, 2009 by mich5483

[+flask]

that's a fairly common cipher type.

[+geocyclist94]

that's a fairly common cipher type.

really? Ive been caching for almost a year now and have seen nothing like this!

 

...anyone gonna give me one little hint pleeeease?

Edited September 15, 2009 by mich5483

[crawil]

Have you asked the cache owner? Since they went to the trouble to put the puzzle together, they may get a bit bent if you try and solve it "behind their back."

[+geocyclist94]

Have you asked the cache owner? Since they went to the trouble to put the puzzle together, they may get a bit bent if you try and solve it "behind their back."

I have but no reply within three weeks now

[+kunarion]

and have seen nothing like this!

Maybe it's unique. It is a 3.5 difficulty, tough one. Some Cache Owners won't provide additional hints. If I make a toughy, I may do the same.

 

I don't know what it is either. However, it's fair to assume that the CO wants you to dabble in ciphers, to solve this puzzle. So, you need to brush up on that topic.

Edited September 16, 2009 by kunarion

[+gatoller]

and have seen nothing like this!

At first this put me to mind of Bacon, then it doesn't pan out. Obviously it's not going to jump off the page, but it's got me curious, too.

 

Hey Kunarion, we oughta get together for some caching- you live something like 5 miles from me, from the look of things.

[+flask]

well, it's not a true cipher, but it's common enough that you see it on national geographic shows and cops shows and such.

 

when i said it was a common cipher type, i meant in general. i've only seen it on a couple of caches, but then again, i've only ever seen one playfair on caches and that's not terribly obscure.

 

come to think of it, i haven't seen more than two or three pigpen ciphers, even! and those are so, like, 1974.

 

not 1974 in particular, but third grade.

 

 

it's also easy enough to find with a simple search. google is your friend.

[+kunarion]

I have but no reply within three weeks now

How many times have you written? I'd swear some of my emails have evaporated around here.

Edited September 16, 2009 by kunarion

[+ncfinn]

 

it's also easy enough to find with a simple search. google is your friend.

 

I have been caching since 2002 and have no clue here. What search word would you use in Google?

[+geocyclist94]

 

it's also easy enough to find with a simple search. google is your friend.

 

I have been caching since 2002 and have no clue here. What search word would you use in Google?

 

Im pretty sure its the Baconian cipher. Googling it confuses me though.

[+ncfinn]

 

it's also easy enough to find with a simple search. google is your friend.

 

I have been caching since 2002 and have no clue here. What search word would you use in Google?

 

Im pretty sure its the Baconian cipher. Googling it confuses me though.

 

I don't think the regular Baconian Cipher uses lower/upper case. Could be some higher version of it.

 

I still would like to know how flask would Goggle something like that. Just searching "ciphers" seems much too broad.

[+gatoller]

Im pretty sure its the Baconian cipher. Googling it confuses me though.

It could be some derivative, but Bacon was a binary (each digit could be one of two possibles) code cipher, where this one is quadrary (each digit could be one of four possibles) because of the case changes. Hard to say.. I'm thinking it's some straightforward substitution, but until you can parse it for character length, it'll be tough.

[+flask]

the reason i'm not telling what it is is because the owner can give hints if s/he wants to.

 

it was not hard to google.

[+AbMagFab]

Could this just be a twist on the Bacon cipher, with upper case letters being an A and lower case letters being a B? Or vice-versa?

 

It sure looks like a binary/Bacon cipher. If I get a chance to spend like 5 minutes on it, I could see what starts to decode into the words of the local coords.

[+ncfinn]

the reason i'm not telling what it is is because the owner can give hints if s/he wants to.

 

it was not hard to google.

 

I am not really trying to solve this particular cypher, I don't even know where it is.

 

My question still is: What search-word do you use? How did you come up with it?

 

Anything you know is easy to you. "Obviously" this is not easy for all.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

the reason i'm not telling what it is is because the owner can give hints if s/he wants to.

 

it was not hard to google.

 

It's much easier to google if you now what term to enter. When approaching a puzzle like this I just google everything you can find on the page.

 

I haven't solved the puzzle, nor do I know what kind of cipher that this is. A couple of others mentioned that it might be a Bacon Cipher. It sort of looks like a bacon cipher (where a sequence of letters is used to represent a letter).

 

One of the most interesting ciphers that I've come across a couple of times lately is a "text semagram". A text semagram uses the formatting or font variations of text the hide a message in plain site. For example, a easily detectable version of a semagram would be where certain letters are italicized. Take those letters, convert them to their numeric position in the alphabet and you can produce a sequence of numbers. A good text semagram is a lot more subtle (extra whitespace added to a paragraph in between words or sentences).

[+flask]

 

It's much easier to google if you now what term to enter.

 

see, that's the thing. when i googled it, although i recognized HOW it was done, i couldn't remember what it or its type were called. so i googled using ONLY WHAT WAS IN THE OP.

 

if i tell you what search term i used, i might as well come right out and give you the solution.

[+geocyclist94]

...still working on it. I think I have some idea now but still cannot get it.

[+AlohaGang]

interesting, I will be following this discussion

[+smstext]

@OP have you tried contacting other cachers who have solved it for pointers?

[+fizzymagic]

although i recognized HOW it was done, i couldn't remember what it or its type were called. so i googled using ONLY WHAT WAS IN THE OP.

I'm going to go ahead and call BS on this. I don't believe flask has solved the puzzle and I don't believe she Googled the cipher type.

 

I don't recognize it, and I have played around a bit with it and run it by a few ACA types and they don't recognize it, either.

 

You certainly get an answer by Googling stuff from the description. You just don't get the right answer.

[+flask]

although i recognized HOW it was done, i couldn't remember what it or its type were called. so i googled using ONLY WHAT WAS IN THE OP.

I'm going to go ahead and call BS on this. I don't believe flask has solved the puzzle and I don't believe she Googled the cipher type.

 

I don't recognize it, and I have played around a bit with it and run it by a few ACA types and they don't recognize it, either.

 

You certainly get an answer by Googling stuff from the description. You just don't get the right answer.

 

go ahead and call BS on it.

 

then go look it up on national geographic's gangland series. they explain it very well.

 

 

i didn't bother to solve it any more than i would have to solve a pigpen or a playfair when i saw one; you can tell what it is by looking at it.

[+Sol seaker]

I've had a lot more luck getting responses from other cache finders than cache owners in general.

If I need a hint even on a regular cache, to see if I'm headed in the right direction, I've often contacted recent finders of that cache. They've usually replied, when cache owners don't seem to reply much. (atlhough I must say, there have been some very kind and helpful cache owners out there too!!)

 

That being said, one thing that I've found helpful was this puzzle cache solving series of caches.

the caches are 2700 miles from me, but I've been working the puzzles anyway.

Great series. Very helpful.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/bookmarks/view.a...ef-901807ba9c98

 

Also thecachingplace.com has cyper info. I don't know if they've got that one in particular, but they do have some info.

 

Good luck.