ELITE?

[Mattyrat2027]

@F6exb

“Turn it sideways” could be interpreted as “turn what you are looking at 90°”

Hope that makes it clearer.

[F6exb]

Thank you.
As a ham radio, I’m a little frustrated by not finding the solution. I played with these teleprinters (Creed, Sagem, Olivetti) in the 80’s and made some contacts over the world.

[Madness]

Interesting…
I have been thinking of getting some radio equipment and using it to connect a network of computers.
The software already exists.

Another clue:
Work in blocks of 5 characters.

[Mattyrat2027]

@Madness, are there a load of red herring characters, and the squares are the only thing we need to look at?

[F6exb]

@ Madness
I read something about what you are talking about: there is a network used by amateur radio (a kind of
private internet) but it is not open publicly. You must register with a personal call sign. Perhaps you
speak of “HAMNet” or “AMPRNet”.

But I’m moving away from the challenge.
I hope not to spoil too much, because we are a few inches from the finish line. (Harry will validate this
message at 23:58’59 “). 🙂

I understand what you mean but unfortunately I do not have enough time to write a program. I have also to
deal with the six additional characters and I am a bad programmer.

I thought at first that you had left some traps because the first character of the encrypted text, the “-”
has no other character before that could be the “figures shift key”. It is on the same key as the “A”. I
wanted to replace all the “-” by “A”, “/” by “X”, but I did not know how to deal with “*” which is not in
the ITA2 alphabet.

After a while I thought that the six additional characters of the Baudot code have the same probability
and that “-“, “_”, “/”, “*”, the arrow and the white point are these extra characters.

I may be wrong but for me:
white point ===> space,
arrow ===> “SHIFT number key
“_” ===> “SHIFT Letters key”
“-” ===> Line Feed
“/” ===> Carriage Return
“*” ===> Null Character

If all that is correct and if I can help somebody in the final straight to be one of the ten extra super
mega elite cryptographers, I will be happy.
And if Harry pushes the dead line up to next Thursday, I’ll be more happy.

[No sooner asked than done (on the deadline). I enjoy watching you all struggle with it, so another week will be fun! Harry]

[Madness]

p.s. I didn’t write the final challenge. I may have had some influence over the way it was encrypted. Maybe not.

[Ace661]

If permitted…

I used the “letters” alphabet from the “UK” side of this table:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code#Baudot_code_(ITA1)

and also this table, which is the same:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code#Original_Baudot,_domestic_UK

It’s already got / and * (DEL) and –
The upwards pointing arrow is surely the “shift” to the figures alphabet
That just leaves _ and the white square to identify in the ciphertext; one being the blank space character and the other the null character

[Mattyrat2027]

@Ace661 – so…instructions, of a sort?

[F6exb]

Sometimes it is useful to read and re-read posts in the forum.
First Hint:
Madness
https://2020.cipherchallenge.org/forums/topic/53141/page/3/#post-53266 May be yes.
https://2020.cipherchallenge.org/forums/topic/53141/page/3/#post-53267 May be no.
And at last Ace661. Harry said before, that he enter Elite list. I would tend to believe him.

ELITE?

ITA1 is not ITA2.
I saw that I lose a lot of time struggling with ITA2.
But I wonder if I can trust the end of his post.

Second hint:
Cribbage
https://2020.cipherchallenge.org/forums/topic/53141/page/3/#post-53273. I couldn’t interpret at that time.
The-letter-wriggler
https://2020.cipherchallenge.org/forums/topic/53141/page/3/#post-53274 Finally, is it a joke or a half-hint?
The answer came to me by Madness and Mattyrat2027.
Today is the day of Ctrl-Alt-Del.

[Ace661]

@Mattyrat2027 I was only referring to the post of @F6exb (which I confess I had not read properly originally, and have now done so!)

I think they were referring to the ITA2 table, which lists the non-alpha characters as “carriage return”, “line feed”, “letters, “figures”, “space” and “null”. This is quite different to the Baudot table, and I don’t think there’s a clear way to match the non-alpha characters in that table to the non-alpha characters in the ciphertext.

By contrast, using the “letter set” of the “UK version” of the “original Baudot code” tables (in my previous links), I think there’s a clearer match between the non-alphabetic characters and the – / * _ █ ↑ characters in the ciphertext.

In summary, to me the Baudot alphabet looks more relevant to this ciphertext than the ITA2 alphabet.

[F6exb]

@Ace661
In https://2020.cipherchallenge.org/forums/topic/53141/page/3/#post-53261 Harry said:
“So far we have two complete and correct decrypts of the Elite Challenge (Cribbage and ace661).” It means that you know exactly how to decrypt.
May be I don’t understand very well but it seems to me that in your two last messages you write as if you were not very sure.

[F6exb]

I just realized that ITA1 prints on paper tape and not on paper page. So there is neither CR nor LF.

[Madness]

Not to mention the fact that BAUDOT was a keyword in part A.

[F6exb]

@Ace661
And what about the letter shift ?

[Madness]

First, NOT IN ITA2. The alphabet is mentioned earlier in the thread. Nevertheless, it should be irrelevant
what the alphabet is. There are 32 ciphertext symbols, and you want to decrypt to 32 plaintext symbols so
that there are letters and spaces and a few punctuation marks, and no nulls (the boxes) and no shifts (the arrows).
After applying all previous hints, what should remain is a substitution. If this is too much of a hint, Harry
can butcher it like he butchered the losers of last year’s competition. That last sentence will certainly be
censored, and should be blamed on too many horror films.

Regarding ham radio, I was thinking to simply connect MY computers that are located in distant lands and not all
able to use the usual internet. And if someone want to use my private network, they will have to register with
a call sign, a blood sample, and a million pounds sterling.

[No advertising! Especially not for some dubious dark net. Harry]

[Author]

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