Sadly there were no winners for this blog’s crypto analysis competition. Therefore I will choose what charity will get my tenner and it’s going to be to the Hatzalah organisation both for the costs of replacing the ambulances torched by alleged Iranian agents and their other valuable work.
As I promised when I set this puzzle I would tell you what the cipertext means and how the ciphertext was developed. To refresh your memory here is the ciphertext:
Ciphertext March 2026
231314 / 2707216 / 354527 / 358727 / 1775211 / 449527 / 51512
342718 / 3110210 / 1115925 / 11145312 / 3950213 / 57024 / 452129 / 347511 / 158313 / 2660220 / 1668312 / 5535 / 451923 /
1993218 / 19911 / 1115925 / 226828 / 2648220 / 271513 / 442112 / 326111 / 4415114 / 1114817 / 1125223 / 333913 / 11261114 / 2660220 / 396013 / 4510220 / 328214 / 318521 / 241229 / 247741 / 24624 / 388224 / 446429 / 19911 / 4499117 / 4371220 /
264729 / 514923 / 39171213 / 3281210 / 21818 / 235628 / 449527 / 4346227 / 11252223 / 346028 / 32717 / 383811 / 3495217 /
2707216 / 2397121 / 512511 / 1759213 / 377913 / 271727 / 264723 / 253523 / 4283111 / 4499117 / 4371220 / 231314 / 396415 / 354527 / 444228 / 1115925 / 1114523 / 125815 / 340612 / 396414 / 240418 / 2641221 / 27626 / 264723 / 2606210 / 3541111 / 3489111 / 4480219 / 541923 / 1114523 / 253523 / 36612 / 389927 /337514 Cipher Text Message ends.
The encoded text is Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The wrath of the awakened Saxon’ although the last verse was omitted due to time constraints (encoding by this method is laborious).
Method:
I took five random dictionaries from my copious dictionary shelf and randomly labelled them one to five. Each word of the poem was picked from each of the dictionaries with the code working as follows:
First number from left is the particular dictionary’s label number from 1 to 5
Second number is the dictionary page
Third number is the column one, two or three.
Fourth number is the word number when counting down from the first entry on that book’s page and column. So, 17826 (1/78/2/6 ) would be source one, page seventy eight, column two and the needed word is six words down.
The use of more dictionaries would go a great deal of the way to avoiding repetitions but remember both the transmitting party and the receiving party need to have the same dictionaries of the same edition and print run and the same labelling regime.
This could be made more difficult to crack by, for example multiplying or dividing the encrypted book, page, column, word number by Pi (how many places is up to you) or whatever number you and your recipient choose. With this method he recipient just needs to divide or multiply the received number by Pi or other chosen number to get the direct ciphertext to start decrypting.
I’ll set another one of these soon. You never know, manual encryption might become a useful skill to have one day.
Link
Original poem The Wrath of The Awakened Saxon.
https://www.europeanamericansunited.org/school1/Fiction/kipling/awakened.htm
If you want to donate to Hatzalah then you can do so via the link below.
Couldn’t work it out. Made my brain hurt.
Donated £100 to Hatzola, on more than one occasion we’re there for my parents. Meanwhile the stupid useless politicised Plods won’t call the burning of the ambulances and the terrorising of the local people as terrorism.
Yeah, it’s a bit of a brain hurter that one. It’s not an unbreakable code but it is sufficient to confound the casual reader. It’s certainly not as easy to crack as say a Caesar Shift Cipher. As for the Ambulance matter, four Muslims have been arrested for this and it will be interesting to see what comes out of the Crown Court trial.
IF and WHEN it gets to court. Remember the Muslim Manchester airport attackers, who attacked and injured police officers?
Not a squeak. Why the hell not…. Who has been leaning on whom, presumably something to do with the “community relations” and of course the corrupt unverifiable mosque-whipped mass Muslim monoculture postal votes that keep so many small majority MPs in their seats.
I think that the chances of this one missing court for some nefarious reason is less than in the Manchester Airport case. The reason I think this is that the ambulance attack was more public, more visible and more broadly condemned by more people than the Manchester case. There’s going to be a lot of people with political and social clout who are going to be watching this case very closely. As for the terrorism thing, we’ll know what the score is when they are arraigned at the Crown Court.