Challenges from competitors

[Harry]

Hence “lacuna matata” = missing stuff worries.

[Cribbage]

Using :

Puzzle 1: 650E13386A80FDCB825882CF2666BB91
Puzzle 2: 1FD472ACC82C80AD59877176D05612A4
Puzzle 3: 44514C837D7B31E1126A4D7AD5AABF0A
Puzzle 4: 6D8368FCC68ABBD91FAB3DA2AFEF1AEE
Puzzle 5: FBC4F21B840806051F2891EBED8AC02B

[67105112104101114]

This is difficult madness, I’m pretty sure I’ve got it calculating the correct alphabets because if I run through the example and just output everything I can find the correct solution but it isn’t correctly discerning which of the many solutions it tests is correct, I’ll probably come back to it later, test some more possibilities

[Madness]

@Cribbage
You are welcome.
There are only 26 possibilities for each letter of the key, so a binary search is not necessary–just try all 26.
The key you found was so close, but Bellaso was not a fan of kippers.

[Madness]

@Cribbage wins this round. All correct.

@Cipher, maybe you need to develop a function that recognizes English text based on statistics.
Single-letter frequencies may or may not be enough, depending on how you break the ciphers.

[67105112104101114]

@Madness yeah I tried using a monoalphabetic fitness function I have once its split the text up and then converted it with the generated alphabets but it didn’t have enough accuracy to pick the correct solution so I need to combine all the permutations before testing so that I can test with bigrams or trigrams however I’m trying to do all my cipher code in rust rather than python this year and it makes some things difficult, I’ll try again tomorrow. Also, nice @ on my name

[Harry]

Heavy stuff! Fancy moving this into an experts topic? Would be good to have some more standard challenges for our newer competitors!

Harry

[Madness]

@Cipher, here are my algorithms:
https://2020.cipherchallenge.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Two-attacks-on-tableau-based-ciphers.pdf

@everyone, I should have said to take the MD5 sum of the key plus your username. Much simpler.

@Harry, sure, whatever.

[67105112104101114]

1) 285890b9b1e90c35262405a89c015688
2) c0282d326ab0a1014f03e696a1ffa977
3) 77ad7578de9baa7dd2c28f71a4948333
4) 4b57707d01a5ae0ca090ef125f6051c7
This is all except the last one with the key and then 67105112104101114
Using the dot product really helped with this, thanks for linking (and writing) that Madness, however the code I’ve been using is a mess and it didn’t quite get the right answer for the 5th one so rather than try and work around the code to get it to output multiple possibilities I’m going to rewrite the code into functions for cracking tableau-based ciphers in general before trying it again

[Madness]

@Cipher, 1-4 are correct, as you know. Number 5 is meant to be hard, and the algorithms I posted will only get you close.

[Bubble_sort]

I have been quite busy with school and other matters but here’s my (slightly late) solution. These are the keys with the string “BUBBLESORT” appended and then MD5 hashed:

1. 61a7cb22c26944093935f56cac69354d
2. 4e436f75d5815b7613ba091634d6e31a
3. 0221bd68145d15b85e6dcd3e7c1653dc
4. 3aacc3c755b93f8f883210df1340e5e1
5. 8bc123e27d359623876f5d14597b7186

Thanks for making these challenges Madness, I am very much enjoying them.

[Madness]

@Bubble_sort, Well done. All correct.

[Bubble_sort]

While I am here, if anyone doesn’t feel like installing an MD5 utility, the following python 3 code works quite nicely:
`
import hashlib
print(hashlib.md5(‘STRINGTOHASH’.encode(‘utf-8’)).hexdigest())
`

[I will let this one through, but in general we don’t post code on the forum as we don’t have the resources to check it and any libraries it loads for bugs etc. If you use this you do so at your own risk. Harry]

[The-letter-wriggler]

Here are some INSANE SUDOKU!!!

I could not solve them by pencil and paper and some apps fail to as well.
Can you solve them? Use any method you wish just let us know (see below).

I will post the answers at a later date.

I have given them in both grid and string format.

===================== INSANE 1 [25 digits given]
. . . | 2 . 9 | . . .
. . 7 | . . . | . . 3
3 . . | . . . | . 5 6
——+——-+——
. 5 . | . . . | . . .
. 9 . | . . . | 3 6 5
. 4 . | . . 6 | 7 8 .
——+——-+——
. . . | 6 . . | . 4 .
. . 4 | . 2 5 | 8 . 7
9 . . | . 8 . | . . .

===================== INSANE 2 [25 digits given]
. . . | . . 2 | . . .
. . 1 | . 5 6 | . . .
4 5 6 | 3 . . | . . .
——+——-+——
3 . . | 7 . 9 | . 4 5
. . . | . . . | 6 . .
. . . | . . . | 9 . .
——+——-+——
5 . . | . . 8 | 7 . 2
. 3 . | . . . | . . 4
8 . 2 | 5 4 . | . . .

===================== INSANE 3 [24 digits given]
. . . | . . . | . . 2
. . . | . . 5 | . 3 .
. 5 8 | . . 7 | . . .
——+——-+——
3 2 6 | . . . | . 1 5
8 . . | . . . | . . .
. . . | 3 6 2 | . . 8
——+——-+——
. . 7 | . . . | 4 . .
. . . | 5 1 . | . . .
6 . . | . 8 4 | 1 . .

===================== INSANE 4 [22 digits given]
. . . | 4 . . | . . 5
. . . | . . 1 | 6 . 9
7 . . | . . 3 | . . .
——+——-+——
. . . | . 6 . | 2 . 1
4 . 5 | . . . | 7 3 .
. 7 . | . . . | . . .
——+——-+——
. . . | 3 7 2 | . . .
. . . | . . . | . 1 .
3 . . | . 4 . | 9 . .

===================== INSANE 5 [23 digits given]*
. . 4 | . . . | . 5 6
5 . . | . 7 2 | . . .
. . 1 | . . . | 8 . .
——+——-+——
. . . | . . . | . . .
. . . | 6 9 3 | . . 5
. . . | . . . | 7 3 4
——+——-+——
. 5 . | 2 . 1 | 4 . 8
3 . . | . . . | . . .
. . . | . . . | . 6 1

In string format.
=================
INSANE 1:
000209000007000003300000056050000000090000365040006780000600040004025807900080000

INSANE 2:
000002000001056000456300000300709045000000600000000900500008702030000004802540000

INSANE 3:
000000002000005030058007000326000015800000000000362008007000400000510000600084100

INSANE 4:
000400005000001609700003000000060201405000730070000000000372000000000010300040900

INSANE 5:
004000056500072000001000800000000000000693005000000734050201408300000000000000061

=========================================================================
Want to prove you solved all 5 of them?
Take the Top Left Three digits from each sudoku to form a 3 digit number.
Add the numbers together to obtain a sum.
Append your name in UPPERCASE, obtain a MD5 and post that.

Exaple:
123+456+789+987+654 = 3009
3009TLW MD5 = e9f96265fa03c6700ddae5e1b15ad3fd
=========================================================================

[The-letter-wriggler]

@jbrintcrypt
I have been having a look at your crypto and I quote,
“isn’t intended to be very difficult”, well it’s proving otherwise
considering we only have to find ONE FIVE LETTER WORD from all the
73 words made up of 314 letters!

I notice that only the letters I, T and L are used as capital ‘markers’ maybe.
Here they are in the order of the text.

I T I L I T I L I L T I L T I T I L I I I I T T L T T T L I T I L T I
I I T I L T T T L I T I T I T T L I T L I T I L T I L I I T L I I I L

I have tried many alignments and other things but nothing gives.

For me there seems to be too much text to extract just 5 letters.

Can you give any clues without actually giving it away?

And please, if no one solves it, can you give the answer before the forum shuts down.
All too often someone posts a cipher and leaves it in limbo.
Best TLW.

[Author]

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