Cipher Clock

is there another puzzle hidden inside the solution to 7B? or is this really the end?

TOCK TOCK TOCK TOCK

AGH!!!! HOW DO YOU DO IT???!!! There are 28! ciphertext alphabets you could make, or 304,888,344,611,713,860,501,504,000,000. That means I can’t even brute force it! The cipher has to be solveable, or it wouldn’t have been a part of the challenge, though I will be incredibly surprised if someone manages to finish before 11pm tonight.

Madness, once again I admire your cunning, and how you can laugh in the face of the ticking clock that will now haunt my dreams and nightmares. Over 2 hours of work total and minor progress. Still, better than most years.

I am conceding defeat in this challenge, as I do not believe I can decipher the puzzle by the time the first deadline has passed. What I don’t understand is that the puzzle doesn’t seem entirely consistent with the way it is laid out in the case files. Regardless of the manner I try to solve it or how certain I am that a crib must be correct, the letters don’t line up on a 28-letter wheel. I would therefore like to ask the following: is the way to solve the puzzle not entirely as shown in the case file report on the spyclist’s clock, am I merely an incompetent, or is there a very devious puzzle setter with a weird sense of humour who likes to construct puzzles that have pretend cribs deliberately designed to look like they could be partially decoded? (I’ve probably spent an hour just trying to make sure my hunch about one of the last words- I won’t say which due to spoilers- is correct but I have been unable to prove anything.)

[We will be publishing more reports on the clock, so do not despair! Harry]

Tick Tock Tick Tock Tick Tock

I’ve put all the characters in their places but I can’t seam to find a website a website to do the actual deciphering for me. I assume I’m meant to find a website cus I’m manually doing 6000 characters???!

[You are supposed to not find a website! If you don’t know how to programme, which a lot of people don’t, then ry using your cunning and a spreadsheet together with a text editor to automate the steps for that! (I checked this before we published and it is quite doable) Harry]