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	<title>Comments on: Boak&#8217;s Puzzle: Disposing of Classified Trash</title>
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	<link>http://www.cryptosmith.com/archives/565</link>
	<description>Authentication, crypto, information security, and life with gadgets - Rick Smith</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:27:20 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>By: onetimer</title>
		<link>http://www.cryptosmith.com/archives/565/comment-page-1#comment-8215</link>
		<dc:creator>onetimer</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:27:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.cryptosmith.com/?p=565#comment-8215</guid>
		<description>GregoryF, I believe you have the correct solution. Note the final words of the Boak text: &quot;because that is par for the course.&quot; I think that language is key. 

Add up the error positions you describe in your post:
1st error: E (5)
2nd error: F (6)
3rd error: N (14)
4th error: E (5)
? error: U/L Transposition
5th error: S (19)
6th error: B (2)

5 + 6 + 14 + 5 + 19 + 2 = 51,

then, accounting for the &quot;deliberately incorporated error,&quot; add 51, from above, to 19 + 2 = 72, which is, of course, &quot;par for the course.&quot;</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>GregoryF, I believe you have the correct solution. Note the final words of the Boak text: &#8220;because that is par for the course.&#8221; I think that language is key. </p>
<p>Add up the error positions you describe in your post:<br />
1st error: E (5)<br />
2nd error: F (6)<br />
3rd error: N (14)<br />
4th error: E (5)<br />
? error: U/L Transposition<br />
5th error: S (19)<br />
6th error: B (2)</p>
<p>5 + 6 + 14 + 5 + 19 + 2 = 51,</p>
<p>then, accounting for the &#8220;deliberately incorporated error,&#8221; add 51, from above, to 19 + 2 = 72, which is, of course, &#8220;par for the course.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>By: GregoryF</title>
		<link>http://www.cryptosmith.com/archives/565/comment-page-1#comment-8210</link>
		<dc:creator>GregoryF</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Sep 2009 03:58:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.cryptosmith.com/?p=565#comment-8210</guid>
		<description>I think it is a simple innocent text system, as advertised, with only one twist that slowed me down. Of course, I may be completely wrong.

I think the solution is: &quot;The telling ash was simple buried&quot; Allowing for one error, as mentioned in the text, this ought to be: &quot;The telling ash was simply buried.&quot;

There are six errors that can be corrected with a letter and six paragraphs on the page. I found that interesting. There was also one transposition error, which has no single unique letter. Hmm, not sure what to do with that - maybe that&#039;s a typographical error (and thus the one deliberate mistake).

In sequence, the errors, and the alphabetic position of the letter are:
1st error: E (5)
2nd error: F (6)
3rd error: N (14)
4th error: E (5)
? error: U/L Transposition
5th error: S (19)
6th error: B (2)

Selecting one word from each paragraph, whose position corresponed to the letter&#039;s alphabetic position, I obtained &quot;The telling ash was with you.&quot; The first four words made me think I had the solution, but the 5th and 6th words don&#039;t make sense.

So I reconsidered the possibility that the transposition error isn&#039;t a deliberate, non-cipher error. I think, instead that it&#039;s an indicator that the transposition code for the system is changed somehow.

Figuring out the shift is a challenge, because there are many possibilities, once the simple alphabet position is dropped; I decided to work backwards a bit. It seems that the only word in the sixth paragraph that is a really good candidate to finish the sentence is &quot;buried.&quot; Nothing in the fifth paragraph leaps out as well, but &quot;simple&quot; seems close to a word that popped into mind immediately after reading the first four words, &quot;simply.&quot;

Wishful thinking, perhaps. But I tried to see what I could work out for the position of these words. If I start counting from the second sentence of these respective paragraphs, the position is 18 for &quot;simple&quot; and 27 for &quot;buried.&quot; If you take the mod(26) operator for these, the two numnbers, 18 and 1, seem suspiciously close to the corresponding letter positions for the errors, 19 and 2, and have the correct spacing.

It is possible to arbitrarily define a shift to the transposition code after the transposition indicator, to make this fit the target text. The shift I posit is:
 1. start counting words from the second sentence
 2. add one to the basic alphabet cipher (or rotate the transposition so that B = 1)
 3. add 26 to the cipher number up to (or through) the letter L

This provides the solution I offered. I think the change after the transposition error is a bit arbitrary, which makes it a little unsatisfying, but if you believe the code is as simple as one word per error, it&#039;s about the only sentence that makes sense.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I think it is a simple innocent text system, as advertised, with only one twist that slowed me down. Of course, I may be completely wrong.</p>
<p>I think the solution is: &#8220;The telling ash was simple buried&#8221; Allowing for one error, as mentioned in the text, this ought to be: &#8220;The telling ash was simply buried.&#8221;</p>
<p>There are six errors that can be corrected with a letter and six paragraphs on the page. I found that interesting. There was also one transposition error, which has no single unique letter. Hmm, not sure what to do with that &#8211; maybe that&#8217;s a typographical error (and thus the one deliberate mistake).</p>
<p>In sequence, the errors, and the alphabetic position of the letter are:<br />
1st error: E (5)<br />
2nd error: F (6)<br />
3rd error: N (14)<br />
4th error: E (5)<br />
? error: U/L Transposition<br />
5th error: S (19)<br />
6th error: B (2)</p>
<p>Selecting one word from each paragraph, whose position corresponed to the letter&#8217;s alphabetic position, I obtained &#8220;The telling ash was with you.&#8221; The first four words made me think I had the solution, but the 5th and 6th words don&#8217;t make sense.</p>
<p>So I reconsidered the possibility that the transposition error isn&#8217;t a deliberate, non-cipher error. I think, instead that it&#8217;s an indicator that the transposition code for the system is changed somehow.</p>
<p>Figuring out the shift is a challenge, because there are many possibilities, once the simple alphabet position is dropped; I decided to work backwards a bit. It seems that the only word in the sixth paragraph that is a really good candidate to finish the sentence is &#8220;buried.&#8221; Nothing in the fifth paragraph leaps out as well, but &#8220;simple&#8221; seems close to a word that popped into mind immediately after reading the first four words, &#8220;simply.&#8221;</p>
<p>Wishful thinking, perhaps. But I tried to see what I could work out for the position of these words. If I start counting from the second sentence of these respective paragraphs, the position is 18 for &#8220;simple&#8221; and 27 for &#8220;buried.&#8221; If you take the mod(26) operator for these, the two numnbers, 18 and 1, seem suspiciously close to the corresponding letter positions for the errors, 19 and 2, and have the correct spacing.</p>
<p>It is possible to arbitrarily define a shift to the transposition code after the transposition indicator, to make this fit the target text. The shift I posit is:<br />
 1. start counting words from the second sentence<br />
 2. add one to the basic alphabet cipher (or rotate the transposition so that B = 1)<br />
 3. add 26 to the cipher number up to (or through) the letter L</p>
<p>This provides the solution I offered. I think the change after the transposition error is a bit arbitrary, which makes it a little unsatisfying, but if you believe the code is as simple as one word per error, it&#8217;s about the only sentence that makes sense.</p>
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		<title>By: Dr. Rick Smith</title>
		<link>http://www.cryptosmith.com/archives/565/comment-page-1#comment-8204</link>
		<dc:creator>Dr. Rick Smith</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sat, 02 May 2009 20:18:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.cryptosmith.com/?p=565#comment-8204</guid>
		<description>Regarding solutions: I haven&#039;t heard about any. I plug &#039;Boak puzzle&#039; or some such into Google every once in a while to see if something has popped up elsewhere. Nothing so far.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Regarding solutions: I haven&#8217;t heard about any. I plug &#8216;Boak puzzle&#8217; or some such into Google every once in a while to see if something has popped up elsewhere. Nothing so far.</p>
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	<item>
		<title>By: thehjellejar.com/</title>
		<link>http://www.cryptosmith.com/archives/565/comment-page-1#comment-8203</link>
		<dc:creator>thehjellejar.com/</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sat, 02 May 2009 11:15:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.cryptosmith.com/?p=565#comment-8203</guid>
		<description>Anyone found the solution? I&#039;m curious. :-)</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Anyone found the solution? I&#8217;m curious. <img src='http://www.cryptosmith.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':-)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
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		<title>By: bk</title>
		<link>http://www.cryptosmith.com/archives/565/comment-page-1#comment-8201</link>
		<dc:creator>bk</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:57:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.cryptosmith.com/?p=565#comment-8201</guid>
		<description>I noted the spelling errors as well.  The author also, on two occasions, uses digits rather than words for numbers.  Perhaps significant.  (60&#039;s and 100)</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I noted the spelling errors as well.  The author also, on two occasions, uses digits rather than words for numbers.  Perhaps significant.  (60&#8217;s and 100)</p>
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		<title>By: sunpig.com/martin/</title>
		<link>http://www.cryptosmith.com/archives/565/comment-page-1#comment-8200</link>
		<dc:creator>sunpig.com/martin/</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:46:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.cryptosmith.com/?p=565#comment-8200</guid>
		<description>There&#039;s something up with the numbers in the text.

The text is very specific about some dimensions (e.g. &quot;five feet in height, eight to ten feet wide&quot; - is there a reason we need to know the exact size?), but vague in other areas (e.g. &quot;some the size of the palm of your hand&quot; - why not use inches?). In the last paragraph, is there any reason for using the numbers &quot;twenty-jillion&quot; and a &quot;million&quot;?  He calls special attention to a &quot;million&quot; by adding &quot;a myriad&quot; immediately afterwards, which is incorrect: a myriad is 10,000, not a million.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>There&#8217;s something up with the numbers in the text.</p>
<p>The text is very specific about some dimensions (e.g. &#8220;five feet in height, eight to ten feet wide&#8221; &#8211; is there a reason we need to know the exact size?), but vague in other areas (e.g. &#8220;some the size of the palm of your hand&#8221; &#8211; why not use inches?). In the last paragraph, is there any reason for using the numbers &#8220;twenty-jillion&#8221; and a &#8220;million&#8221;?  He calls special attention to a &#8220;million&#8221; by adding &#8220;a myriad&#8221; immediately afterwards, which is incorrect: a myriad is 10,000, not a million.</p>
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		<title>By: ZZMike</title>
		<link>http://www.cryptosmith.com/archives/565/comment-page-1#comment-8199</link>
		<dc:creator>ZZMike</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:41:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.cryptosmith.com/?p=565#comment-8199</guid>
		<description>This is a bit like the old Francis Bacon code (different type fonts marked the cipher symbols).

I noticed right off that there&#039;s a misspelling in the first sentence: &quot;baside&quot; for &quot;beside&quot;.   Then in line 1 of the last paragraph, there&#039;s &quot;he advised&quot; for &quot;be advised&quot;.

Then the odd sentence in the paragraph before that: &quot;That, right, I have!&quot;

&quot;Our investigator found that site, alright, ...&quot;  That last is probably an extra word with part of the cipher.

It does go to show that there&#039;s more to this than RSA encryption.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This is a bit like the old Francis Bacon code (different type fonts marked the cipher symbols).</p>
<p>I noticed right off that there&#8217;s a misspelling in the first sentence: &#8220;baside&#8221; for &#8220;beside&#8221;.   Then in line 1 of the last paragraph, there&#8217;s &#8220;he advised&#8221; for &#8220;be advised&#8221;.</p>
<p>Then the odd sentence in the paragraph before that: &#8220;That, right, I have!&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Our investigator found that site, alright, &#8230;&#8221;  That last is probably an extra word with part of the cipher.</p>
<p>It does go to show that there&#8217;s more to this than RSA encryption.</p>
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