Current Case Files

Any idea what this might mean? It is hard to figure out with so little to go on, but the answer is the key to unlock the door to this adventure.

It looks like Ada scribbled a note on Kate’s letter suggesting a possible crib. If you are stuck getting started to decipher part B then maybe you could research her address and see if that gives a hint to the key for the cipher used by Kate.

Here is Ada’s crib sheet that she used to start deciphering Charles’s letter. You can use it to start working out the substitutions used in the cipher. It is always worth looking for a “crib”. Ada was expecting to see Charles’s signature at the end of the letter and the repeated MVMMV pattern in the last word matched the BABBA pattern in his name, so it was a likely she was on the right track.

This looks very promising to me as a source for cribs. I particularly like the pattern VUV in the first line and the fact that there is a repeated word in lines 2-3 (KZYPALN).

Together with the signature crib I think that is plenty enough to break the cipher. Good luck, Jodie.

I am not sure why it took so long for Ada and the gang to set up a secure communications system with Lord Palmerston, as their earlier adventures show that they were very aware of the need for one, but perhaps they had always dealt with officials in the secret services rather than the Foreign Secretary himself. In any case this is the first evidence I could find of such a system existing.

I don’t know how they agreed or exchanged keywords, but at least we know how they encrypted lower level messages. It is all laid out in this letter from Babbage to Palmerston. That gives us something to go on when trying to break the letter in Challenge 3 Part B.

Without knowing the keyword (or key phrase) it is still tricky, but suitable cribs may well help, and there are plenty of those here.

Good luck, Jodie.

It took me a little while to see what I did wrong with this, but once you see it you can figure out the message from Ada to Charles in part A. It looks like Ada has adopted the same style of cipher as the one she recommended the gang to use when communicating with Palmerston. Once you decipher that you will know who wrote part B and who they addressed it to, which gives you a pretty good crib to crack the substitution cipher they used in that part.

Here is the plan view of one of the crates, drawn by Kate. It won’t help you much with the decrypts for Challenge 5, but maybe it will suggest something!

Each of the crates contained 200 boxes of bullets in rectangular cardboard boxes stacked like this.

Ada has started to decipher Charles’s reply to her from Challenge 5B. If you deciphered 5A then you know this is encrypted by a Vigenere cipher, using Ada’s “personal key”. Perhaps this fragment of the decrypt will help you to work out what that might be!

Having trouble finding the key to Challenge 6B? Ada suggested using the chapter titles from “The Copperfield Disclosures for keys, so you need to work out what that could mean. A little research on that will lead you to Dickens, and here is a letter he wrote to his friend discussing possible titles. Can you work out which book he is referring to?

Found the book, but still confused about the key to the Vigenere cipher in Challenge 6B? Jodie set a clue in the challenge title. Perhaps that helps. If not maybe this will help. It is Charles’s personal copy of the book annotated with the roman numerals VII. Maybe that points to the key!

Charles has started to organise the text of Ada’s latest letter to make it easier to break. Notice how he has aligned the letters and numbers. Had you spotted that there were the same number of each?

Did you spot that the letters and numerals looked like chess coordinates? Charles has paired them up and started to decipher the message from Ada by using the fact that he expects it to start “My dearest”, in other words, he is using a crib. It might be that he and Ada have not yet got round to agreeing a key schedule, otherwise he wouldn’t need to do that. Though I suppose it is possible that he and Ada just enjoy the challenge of deciphering the message without the key. In any case the cipher here is fairly straightforward once you realise what is going on.

This is, at best, an elliptical clue, but given the discussion about Orthus in the forum, maybe you can make something of it in your solution to 8A. Once you have solved that you will get a hint for 8B in the reply. Good luck, Jodie

Remember, Charles, Kate and Ada are using the Polybius square to encrypt their messages, at least for now, and here Charles has started to construct the square used in the message shown in part B. Can you see where the numbers came from? And can you extend the crib to start reconstructing the square?

You might have got stuck if you assumed the crib was “My dearest”, which is how Ada starts all her letters. Charles knows better, but then he can see the handwriting in the letter he is decrypting, which you can’t. Can you make an educated guess at who the letter is from, and how it might end? That might help a little more with a crib. In any case this should give you enough to start deciphering the message in part B and maybe you can bootstrap from there. The professionals call it “depth reading”.

The sketch promised by Ada. Does it help?

This a sketch of the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph invented in the 1830s by English inventor William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone. As well as being a first class engineer, Wheatstone was a cryptographer and scientist, and this was the first telegraph system to be put into commercial service. The indicators are moved by electromagnetic coils to point to the transmitted letters allowing untrained (and therefore cheap!) users to read the messages as they were sent.

A slightly obscure hint for 10 A perhaps, though a Google search of the “say what you see” type will take you straight there. If you prefer to keep things interesting, we will allow more hints through on the forum as we get them.

Now to Challenge 10B – Like we always say, at least do something! Even if it isn’t obvious that it will work …

Looks familiar?

Spot the difference.

We did tell you to count!

Staggering how strong a pile of bricks can be, but in this case, is it a weakness?

The building blocks of the cipher.

Spot the difference.