Yet another 10B post

[Zgrb]

@ILL, it seems you have already “paired the triplets”, just need to order them within each other and order the 7. To order within each other, you can really narrow down the permutations by considering statistical analysis. Should any triplet give way more A than the others ? No !
Then to order them, look at the brick wall, if you can find some symmetry it can help…

[Moses]

I have a hint that might help quite a few people (would’ve helped me if I’d known it earlier):

The key could technically be of length 21, but it doesn’t have to be of length 21 in this case

[Olive-Tree3]

Hi Harry,

Do I need to make every set of three readable? Because there seem to be different possible combinations, resulting in different letters… For example, the first line could look something like the first or the second, resulting in different letters…

Does that mean there will be multiple answers for part B? If so, how…?

I know you will definitely censor this and not let it go through, but PLEASE let me know if I’m doing it right!

You are on the right lines, but there is just one consistent way to rearrange things throughout the message! Harry

[Master]

Referring to TheCipherCrackers and their invaluable information, what if the key to the ADFGVX cipher is 42 chars long?

[someone]

Everybody is saying exactly what to do – staggering the text to get correct groups of – but none of it is working for me, i have no idea how to do it. Solving this challenge at this point is basically pointless as i will get like no points.

If points were the only valuable aspect then you would still be wrong! There are 10 points available even as late as 11pm on 10th Jan. But in any case, it is the feeling you will get when you do crack it that is worth an awful lot more! Keep trying. Harry

[ILL]

I’ve given up, I’ll see how to solve it when the complete guide is released. To Harry: Great challenge and a huge thanks to everyone who took part in making the challenges before. I used to consider myself a good Decrypter however you are never proficient in every kind of cipher or character depiction. Good luck to everyone else.

-ILL

[Olive-Tree3]

Hi Harry,

You keep coming back to the term ‘staggering’… all I know about staggering is that it’s a verb which means to walk in a jolted way which doesn’t help with the cipher… can you give some more information on what you mean please??

Thanks

P.S. I’m surprised you let my last post through 😮

Staggered, as in staggered bricks. Harry

[Olive-Tree3]

Hi Harry,

Also for part B I have figured out that, once arranged in the correct way (not yet legible using figure 10.8), some of the rows still seem to work without rearranging ANY of the characters, which I think is quite special…

Do they hold any significance? I just think maybe it means something, relating to the bricks perhaps? Please let me know…

Thanks.

[Olive-Tree3]

Hi Harry,

Wait what do you mean by staggered bricks? Do you mean split them in groups or rows or columns? Or in individual characters, not groups? Or do you mean two rows, two columns, two groups??… I don’t really understand…

Thanks

Staggered, noun [in singular]
1 an unsteady walk or movement: she walked with a stagger.
2 an arrangement of things in a zigzag formation or so that they are not in line.
• the arrangement of the runners in lanes on a running track at the start of a race, so that the runner in the inside lane is positioned behind those in the next lane and so on until the outside lane: by the back straight, he had overtaken the stagger.

[someone]

How can you possibly stagger the text without ruining the rest of the text?????? Can someone please actually give a hint towards the key?

[Mrs-Robot]

I’m unsure if this’ll be allowed through, however, once you know keylength of the transposition , its a case of trial and error.
Pick a sample of the text that has the same length as a multiple of the keylength, and take note of which parts of the potential keywords work together, and which ones don’t.
Post #99465 by TheCipherCrackers has some very good analysis in this regard

(feel free to censor anything!)

All good advice, but it is not quite trial and error at that point. There is a more systematic way to narrow the options! Harry

[AdmiralArgon]

Before Christmas Day, I had managed to turn each block of 21 needles into 7 symbols each from an alphabet of 6. But since then I’ve managed to make no progress. Even with an existing ADFGVX implementation. I also can’t make sense of the bricks and their suggestion of blocks of 4 rows of 7 symbols. Most disappointing is that I don’t find the clues educational – there is nothing about them that helps me improve my learning of how to approach such problems.

[T-T]

i’ve solved 10b but till now i still didnt find any clue useful except 10.2 to 10.4 can anyone elaborate on it ?

Are you reading the news items outlining the attack? Harry

[robb]

Having finally got there, and solved 10B, I’m really glad I stuck with it through the maddening moments of utter befuddlement and hill-climbing repetition on a large number of combinations. I got to the transpose section quite quickly, including working out the correct trigrams pairings. It was working through the possible variations that took time. Looking back on the successful combination, I see how I could have made that stage much easier. I worked on a 21 column combination, but could have done it on a 7 column combination. My programming skills have definitely been sharpened as a result.

Thanks Harry, Jodie, and the team of elves! This year (as always) has been a really great challenge.

If I remember, the NCC started in 2001? That means this coming years challenge will be the 25th – a celebration is due. I will look forward (with some trepidation) to bigger, and tougher, challenges as a result.

Thank you, and well done! Next year (Autumn 2025) is technically the 24th challenge, so the big party will be 2026. (You can count this on https://www.cipherchallenge.org/boss-case-archive/ which does make it look like the party is the coming year, but there was a semi-official extra challenge in 2020 during lockdown). We will have to think how best to mark it, but things to do before we get there! Hope you will all still be taking part, even if you are too old to compete for prizes! Harry

[robb]

Ah! … I’d forgotten the 2001 challenge was a local schools pilot.

It wasn’t really a pilot, more a one-off to celebrate the University of Southampton Jubilee that year. Harry had the idea for the National Cipher Challenge following on from it. Jodie

[Author]

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