Forgers! It's time for ciphering once again!

um, what would we be deciphering?

clockworkexposure.com as usual

ah, so we don't have to go look at a street or a building. good.

... on 2nd thought....

How do we decide what cipher key to use? I know nothing about cipher keys. And the alphabet key thing - I tried each of the options on the string of numbers, but none had any effect. 'course I had nothing in the cipher key box.

oh. the string of numbers isn't what we're decoding.

On the doc. Try http://rumkin.com/tools/cipher/

does anyone have a suggestion on how to use Excel on this code?

Hmmm. I've made the observation that there are seven numbers in the key, and each paragraph in the message appears to be deliberately divided into 7 lines. Not sure what to do with the numbers in relation to the lines, though.

Interesting observation, saphir23. That might explain why the last paragraphs in each letter have shorter lines.

I spent a while with the Gronsfeld cipher/decoder trying keywords like SPC, CRA, society, gears and more in the keyword box and then systematically varying the Alphabet key. Ugh.

I've decided to assume they've made it an easy code to decipher, maybe something along the lines of Sunday's scales - crossword puzzle connection.

I see a new achievement showing up on the Leader board - so far only 2 top leaders have it,

It's Mark of the Thirteenth - Narrative Achievement. 15 points.

Do all of the narrative achievements have a Watchmaker eye icon?

I notice that the lengths of the seven lines in most of the paragraphs follow a pattern:
(each line represents a paragraph's seven comma delimited line lengths, and line lengths that were different from the rest of the letter's paragraphs are bold)

first letter:
37,38,38,41,36,41,42
37,38,38,42,36,41,42
37,38,38,41,36,41,42
17,18,18,20,15,20,21

second letter:
37,38,38,41,36,41,42
38,38,38,41,36,41,42
37,40,38,41,36,41,42
37,38,38,43,36,41,42
37,38,38,41,36,41,42
37,38,38,41,36,41,42
16,17,17,20,15,20,21

third letter:
37,38,38,41,36,41,42
37,38,38,41,36,41,41
37,38,38,41,36,41,42
37,38,38,41,36,41,43
37,38,38,41,36,41,42
23,24,23,26,21,26,27

I'll add that the bolded items above are the lines where numbers appear. I cut and pasted the document, changed the font, and saw that what looked like a lower case L was a 1.

My guess is something that relates to the 13th amendment. Still working the cipher, but a few more got the achievement.

Forget what I said above- not quite accurate.

Do watch out for zeros that can be mistaken for the letter O. I did notice that the numbers in the puzzle go like this: 601951800

Now, what do I do with that?

"Your reward: The children's names by order of appearance are _____ and _____."

The pattern is interesting, but not sure what to do with the 55, 64, 47 and 52 stuff.

My hope for simplicity yielded gibberish; it appears we're no further ahead by looking for the 64th character, etc.

Argh, all of the achievements on the Recent Achievements list are Mark of the 13th.

Why is this a Narrative Achievement and not a SCP achievement?

ok, so I'm looking at the Gronsfeld cipher again. I was using the whole 7 number string as the cipher key.

It suddenly occurred to me that the code numbers correspond to the line in any given paragraph. e.g. 33 is used to decode the first line in each paragraph of each letter, 25 is used to decode the second line in each paragraph, etc.

I tried this with the rumkin.com Gronsfeld cipher - decrypt - but am getting hung up in the alphabet key. I go from leaving it blank to altering the alphabet via the "Keymaker" link to adding key words in the Keymaker box.

Am thinking it's not a Gronsfeld cipher. But what other cipher uses a number cipher key?

Did anyone else see this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og7HQdKz7xs

Edit: giving this one its own thread :)

Did anyone try any of the words as codes?

GOT IT! Easy One!

Cloin! Tell me how you got that, Mr. Code Guru!

EDIT: nevermind, I got it....code still intact tho!

Enlighten the people if you like. :)

@micci: which words???

Re the code, I played around with it a little more today, and while I'm still not sure what to do with the numbers, my current theory is that rather than there being (in the first letter, for example) 4 paragraphs of 7 lines each, there are actually 7 paragraphs of 4 lines each: 1st paragraph formed from the first lines off the 7 blocks, 2nd from the second lines, etc. I reached that theory by observing that the last line block in each letter has much shorter lines than the others (which would be the case if those were the last lines of other paragraphs). That also means that, with the exception of the little quirks noted above, you get paragraph blocks where each line has the same length, and the last line is shorter.

But nothing sensible coming out of those line blocks yet...

Now that we know the code names from another egg's text, might those two strings make this cipher easier to solve?

Inure, I wasnt referring to the words from the ciphers, I dont get into those, lol, challenged that way, I was referring to another clue and another document, referenced in an earlier post. Micci

Lol, Micci, your words helped me get an achievement that had nothing to do with a document.

Yeah, I've gotten Thirteenth, Marquis, and Broken Gear, and I still haven't decoded the document.

inure, I'm thinking that first one you got may have a keyword in it that could be used to decipher the document. Not that I know this for sure.

is it just me, or is anita the rook?

OK - worked through all of the common ciphers on http://rumkin.com/tools/cipher/, but apparently missed one ... any thoughts?

@dtrabjohns, how did you do it all so quickly? I've been cranking through just the gronsfeld for more than two hours now & am not done.

Hmm, I made some assumptions for most of the ciphers (excluded the ones that didn't require a numeric key) and then tried the ciphers with the given key. Changed around some of the combinations, but like in the past ... didn't spend too much time delving deeply.

From my sister, the Tree, check out this website

http://www.h4.dion.ne.jp/~room4me/america/code/jeffers4.htm

code is based on this but not as complicated. Oh yeah, she says "you don't need scissors"

So we use that cipher key as a list of nulls? as in ignore the fist 33 letters of the first lines, the first 25 letters of the second? and then use Excel to line up each line, one letter per space, and read vertically as we did the last one?

Jfilion, did your sister crack the code?

oh wait, we gotta figure out how to get rid of the excess letters in the message part after eliminiating the nulls - before we do any lining up and reading vertically.

@delos:
No, read it carefully.
The two digit numbers are not the correct # of nulls.
They have to be rearranged.

yeah, I just realized. That 64 would've been impossible as a null.

I got it!!! Definitely simpler than the Jefferson cypher. The numbers do describe the nulls for each line. 7 pairs, 7 lines. Once your done removing nulls all lines are the same length. :o)

I got it too! It was a fun one, probably my favorite of all the codes and ciphers we've had to decode.

Got it. Cool.

how do you remove the null if the null number is greater than the length of the line? ... oh wait, is the first number (in a pair) the number of nulls at the start of a line, and the 2nd number in a pair is the number of nulls at the end of that line?

I'm finding mattandcassie's directions on how to use Excel to separate the lines into neat columns and rows very helpful in making the nulls easier to find.

mattandcassie's directions were:

"You can also put this into excel by utilizing the text to columns tool under data. cut from twitter, paste into excel, highlight entire selection if not still highlighted, select text to columns from data menu.

Select fixed width, NOT delimited, click next, then click in between each letter and you will see a vertical line with an arrow appear, keep going all the way across, click next, then next, and then finish.

They should all be in their own cell now."

ugh, it all fell apart for me in the middle of the 2nd paragraph in the first letter.

doesn't look as though shifting a line one space to the right will work this time.

any hints?

If right doesn't work, did you try left...

arg, I should have known - I had continued to decipher that ___ is an alias for __ of ___ clue and found I had to do a left shift.

double arg, I hate data jobs.

Ok, so I decoded it - and then went back to the Watchmaker post to see what additional achievement to look for. ... and the decoded message gives the same result as the new document for the Mark of the Thirteenth.

Did I miss something?

I'm not seeing new achievements on the top leaders' lists.

Did we do all that work for nothing? Triple arg, if we did.

I still don't understand why it was a Narrative Achievement and not a SCP Achievement.

I've been looking through the decoded letters to come up with some other children's names.

It's not gronsfield! It is a made up cipher for the game. I got it. Don't think too hard on it. The numb3rs are very important. It's not a keyed cipher. Put the message into columns on exel! A solution will come to you eventually.

Is that good for the one just posted, too, Cloin? :D

NOPE!