Puzzle Alpha. No2 - The Woods Mystery Cache
Avanclan: Time to say good bye
Puzzle Alpha. No2 - The Woods
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Cache is not at the listed coordinates
The "Puzzle" series of geocaches is designed to give
experience in solving simple Puzzles. All the caches will be
hidden in and around Abu Dhabi.
The initial series (Puzzle Alpha) will include Transposition Ciphers, Substitution Ciphers, clues hidden in photos and play on information given. The next series (Puzzle Beta) will be of increasing difficulty.
Transposition Ciphers
As their name suggests, in transposition ciphers, the letters of the message to be encoded -what cryptographers call the ‘plaintext’ - are simply rearranged (or ‘transposed’) forming an anagram or pattern. However, in order for this kind of cipher to be of practical use, this rearrangement must follow some kind of system, in order that the recipient may be able to decode it.
Example
Plaintext: Have you found the cache?
Step 1, rearrange into a rectangle:
h a v e y
o u f o u
n d t h e
c a c h e
Step 2, read off the cipher text in the opposite direction, in this case in columns from top to bottom:
h o n c a u d a v f t c e o h h y u e e
Step 3, put into blocks of 5 or 6:
honca udavf tceoh hyuee
Cracking transposition ciphers
The first stage is to count the length of the cipher text and determine the sizes of the rectangle used. In the above example we can count 20 letters. The non-trivial factors of 20 are 2,4,5 and 10 and so the square could have been 2x10 or 4x5. It is unlikely that a narrow rectangle has been used and so the most obvious size is 4x5. The cipher text can now be written out in this pattern and examined for any words.
Example
From the above cipher text we have (4x5):
h u t h
o d c y
n a e u
c v o e
a f h e
or (5x4)
h a v e y
o u f o u
n d t h e
c a c h e
The plain text can be clearly seen in the second choice.
The cipher for Puzzle Alpha is
tsenhr yrpgnt wenitt feohia ovpnsh oeitnb feoeif
ufnzec oniexi riteed utninf tverae retgot heiosf
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
1. Oevat lbhe bja crapvy
2. Lbh whfg xabj guvf frevrf vf tbvat gb trg uneqre qba'g lbh?
Treasures
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