Cypher |OT| An adventure in cryptography from the maker of Hexcells

[SteveWinwood]

Matthew Brown has graced us with another fun puzzler. It released a few days ago and hadn't seen a thread for discussion yet, and didn't want to clog up the steam or indies thread with stuff about it.



You wander a museum that teaches you about cryptography. Each room covers a different concept and then you're given codes to crack using what you've learned (and your own brains... lots of your own brains).

I've finished the first room and unlocked up to the fifth one. This game is... difficult. It does not hold your hand past the first few puzzles. At all. But I'm having a blast. Have a pad of paper ready.

i stole all these pictures from the steam community page

Also be good about using spoiler tags please!

 

[Deleted member 1849]

Oh nice. This game deserves an OT.

I like it overall so far, but something definitely caught me out on the steganography puzzles which I hope doesn't become a theme, otherwise it'll really damage this games potential to teach and instead it'll just become a test of existing knowledge:

Spoiler

Puzzle 6 requires existing knowledge or deduction of the A1Z26 cipher. This is before the game has introduced the concept of ciphers being a thing.

 

[Deleted member 2585]

I couldn't figure out the last two puzzles in the first room after staring at them for like 30 seconds.

will try again for real tonight

 

[SteveWinwood]

Oh nice. This game deserves an OT.

I like it overall so far, but something definitely caught me out on the steganography puzzles which I hope doesn't become a theme, otherwise it'll really damage this games potential to teach and instead it'll just become a test of existing knowledge:

Spoiler

Puzzle 6 requires existing knowledge or deduction of the A1Z26 cipher. This is before the game has introduced the concept of ciphers being a thing.

Click to shrink...

Well the next two puzzles in the room are a lot harder than 6.

I think it tries to encourage you to go explore the other rooms and to not necessarily do each room completely before moving on.

Granted I'm not an expert or really all the learned in code, but I guess the line of steganography and ciphers are pretty blurred to me. Each involves something representing something else, so whether that means letters being numbers or any other arbitrary symbol, I think it didn't necessarily not teach you what you needed to know, it just took a lot more thinking. If that last sentence makes any sense at all.

 

[mclem]

Out of interest, what sort of tools do they give you to work with? While I'm broadly okay with cryptography puzzles conceptually, doing it all by hand is pretty tedious! On the other hand, though, the simple presence of tools can give you hints in itself as you can make assumptions based on how you're expected to use them.

 

[Deleted member 2585]

Out of interest, what sort of tools do they give you to work with? While I'm broadly okay with cryptography puzzles conceptually, doing it all by hand is pretty tedious! On the other hand, though, the simple presence of tools can give you hints in itself as you can make assumptions based on how you're expected to use them.

Click to shrink...

Haven't tried any room but the first, but the game tells you to grab a pencil and paper.

 

[SteveWinwood]

Out of interest, what sort of tools do they give you to work with? While I'm broadly okay with cryptography puzzles conceptually, doing it all by hand is pretty tedious! On the other hand, though, the simple presence of tools can give you hints in itself as you can make assumptions based on how you're expected to use them.

Click to shrink...

Your brain.

It's the puzzle and an answer field. That's it.

I think it does a really good job of making most of the work figuring out what you're supposed to do and very little of tedious going through a bunch of translation once you know how to do it.

For example (not a huge spoiler imo, one of the easiest puzzles that's very explicit)

Spoiler: 2nd Room First Puzzle Spoiler

Is a cryptoquip like in the newspaper, but one of the words is bolded halfway through the paragraph. All the letters you need though are in the first few words so you don't have to do even a fifth of the total puzzle with tedious translation.

 

[Deleted member 1849]

Out of interest, what sort of tools do they give you to work with? While I'm broadly okay with cryptography puzzles conceptually, doing it all by hand is pretty tedious! On the other hand, though, the simple presence of tools can give you hints in itself as you can make assumptions based on how you're expected to use them.

Click to shrink...

The game literally tells you to just pick up a pen and paper.

Click to shrink...

You can get a hint to get you started, but that's all it'll give you.

 

[mclem]

Your brain.

It's the puzzle and an answer field. That's it.

Click to shrink...

That's a worry...

I think it does a really good job of making most of the work figuring out what you're supposed to do and very little of tedious going through a bunch of translation once you know how to do it.

Click to shrink...

...but that's a reassurance.

Mind you, at that point I do perhaps start to ask whether it's something that doesn't really need to be directly interactive; now you're making it sound akin to Notpron (structurally, not necessarily in terms of the nature of the puzzles), which is no bad thing, but does make this all look a bit, well, overengineered for that purpose.

 

[nrtn]

Looks interesting.

At first I thought it was about the text adventure:

Spoiler

 

[SteveWinwood]

Looks interesting.

At first I thought it was about the text adventure:

Spoiler

Click to shrink...

nope this has full 3d walking around!

in unity!

 

[TheIlliterati]

As someone who is not a general fan of cipher puzzles, I guess I'll pass on this for now. I was hoping there would be some more onboarding or ease of access tools to help the solving. I have no desire to solve the cipher puzzles in a word games book and this doesn't sound much different. :(

 

[Wibblewozzer]

That's a worry...



...but that's a reassurance.

Mind you, at that point I do perhaps start to ask whether it's something that doesn't really need to be directly interactive; now you're making it sound akin to Notpron (structurally, not necessarily in terms of the nature of the puzzles), which is no bad thing, but does make this all look a bit, well, overengineered for that purpose.

Click to shrink...

Honestly I considered that as well. And I'm glad you mentioned notpron since I was just thinking about that a week or two ago.

Alright, someone want to give a tip on First Room Puzzle 8? I'm going to lay out some of my thought process and just want a little nudge:

Spoiler

I imagine this puzzle is wanting us to use binary with the small and large letters being the two states. I get from that five different numbers based off of the smaller letters being 1s and the larger 0s. That gives 4 0 19 2 13 if I recall (the game is closed right now). I can't make that enter in any way. I'm pretty sure I tried just typing those numbers in, though now I'm questioning myself. I've definitely converted them to letters giving DSBM but I was bothered by the 0. I tried acting as 0 is A and put in EATCN. I'm sure I've tried a handful of other things.

Edit: I've now tried the numbers in a row. I also tried them backwards (1321904) because why not.

I definitely don't want the answer but maybe something that confirms I'm on the right path. Maybe the total amount of characters that need entered?

 

[SteveWinwood]

Honestly I considered that as well. And I'm glad you mentioned notpron since I was just thinking about that a week or two ago.

Alright, someone want to give a tip on First Room Puzzle 8? I'm going to lay out some of my thought process and just want a little nudge:

Spoiler

I imagine this puzzle is wanting us to use binary with the small and large letters being the two states. I get from that five different numbers based off of the smaller letters being 1s and the larger 0s. That gives 4 0 19 2 13 if I recall (the game is closed right now). I can't make that enter in any way. I'm pretty sure I tried just typing those numbers in, though now I'm questioning myself. I've definitely converted them to letters giving DSBM but I was bothered by the 0. I tried acting as 0 is A and put in EATCN. I'm sure I've tried a handful of other things.

Edit: I've now tried the numbers in a row. I also tried them backwards (1321904) because why not.

I definitely don't want the answer but maybe something that confirms I'm on the right path. Maybe the total amount of characters that need entered?

Click to shrink...

Spoiler: puzzle 8

from what i just read you totally understood it and thats right. like you're 98% there. well the word isnt (kind of close though) but the path is. i would just double check all your stuff for example the 1st letter is not e. when i was messing around with it i missed some of the smaller letters like the i in the second is and i also got off by one somehow which obviously messed it up pretty bad. edit: luckily this puzzle is in the op! with a quick look at it that 19 is off. just double check your breaks i think and you should have it

 

[Wibblewozzer]

Spoiler: puzzle 8

from what i just read you totally understood it and thats right. like you're 98% there. well the word isnt (kind of close though) but the path is. i would just double check all your stuff for example the 1st letter is not e. when i was messing around with it i missed some of the smaller letters like the i in the second is and i also got off by one somehow which obviously messed it up pretty bad. edit: luckily this puzzle is in the op! with a quick look at it that 19 is off. just double check your breaks i think and you should have it

Click to shrink...

Alright, let me further note something because I don't see what you mean based on how I got where I am:

Spoiler

SCIEnCE IS KNOWlEDge iS PowEr

That's how I'm reading it. And I'm assuming that's five different binary that essentially look like 0000100 00 000010011 10 01101. I'm converting that to 4 0 19 2 13. I don't see how those numbers are wrong based on the upper and lower case letters and I've eyeballed it a LOT to make sure I'm not somehow reading a letter incorrectly. I thought about ignoring the spaces between the words and instead treating it like a byte so grouping it into eight bits: 00001000 00000100 11100110 1. But that assumes too much from someone I imagine as they don't really push that idea prior. And it causes other issues as you can't convert those to letters as easily with a simple swap of number to letter.

What's really annoying to me is that now nearly 1/3 have solved the puzzle so it can't be too terribly difficult and I have to be missing something fairly obvious.

 

[SteveWinwood]

Alright, let me further note something because I don't see what you mean based on how I got where I am:

Spoiler

SCIEnCE IS KNOWlEDge iS PowEr

That's how I'm reading it. And I'm assuming that's five different binary that essentially look like 0000100 00 000010011 10 01101. I'm converting that to 4 0 19 2 13. I don't see how those numbers are wrong based on the upper and lower case letters and I've eyeballed it a LOT to make sure I'm not somehow reading a letter incorrectly. I thought about ignoring the spaces between the words and instead treating it like a byte so grouping it into eight bits: 00001000 00000100 11100110 1. But that assumes too much from someone I imagine as they don't really push that idea prior. And it causes other issues as you can't convert those to letters as easily with a simple swap of number to letter.

What's really annoying to me is that now nearly 1/3 have solved the puzzle so it can't be too terribly difficult and I have to be missing something fairly obvious.

Click to shrink...

Spoiler: more puzzle 8

okay I see what happened. Yes ignore the spaces of the words. They don't mean anything. You were close with the byte thing but it's not 8 basically. A hint would be think of what you would need in binary to fit the alphabet.

 

[Wibblewozzer]

Spoiler: more puzzle 8

okay I see what happened. Yes ignore the spaces of the words. They don't mean anything. You were close with the byte thing but it's not 8 basically. A hint would be think of what you would need in binary to fit the alphabet.

Click to shrink...

Alright, got it. I have to say the wall made that a bit misleading in my opinion. And I even considered what your last hint mentions but ruled it out as too arbitrary.

No real fault of the game. I should have allowed more experimentation instead of being as rigid with my thought process. I'm off tomorrow with a three day weekend so I'll start working on the next room soon enough.

 

[Sloane]

I liked the Hexcells games and this looks very interesting, too, but -- Is there a point to it being a video game? I don't mean that in a bad way, just trying to figure out if this does anything different or better than an actual book, if you have to use pen and paper anyway. (If it's possible to answer that without spoiling anything.)

 

[Kalor]

I started playing earlier and it's real neat. I'm still in the first room but I've always enjoyed cryptography stuff.

 

[Sch1sm]

I got stuck on #8 for the first room (I know the solution, and I get it's meant to use binary, but it seems I was off or overthinking the overflow digit) , moved to the 2nd (Transposition), did like 3 puzzles, went to the 3rd (Substitution) room, solved half of them.

I feel so bad at this compared to other games. The hints, I imagine, are great if you have some existing knowledge on the type of cypher it is already. I never really knew much about cryptography, so I've been struggling through it a lot. Oml.

 

[Deleted member 1849]

I got stuck on #8 for the first room (I know the solution, and I get it's meant to use binary, but it seems I was off or overthinking the overflow digit)

Click to shrink...

I think I did the same thing with the overflow digit. Definitely overthinking.

The actual solution is easier than that. What you have might be right, but missing one final step.

 

[SteveWinwood]

I got stuck on #8 for the first room (I know the solution, and I get it's meant to use binary, but it seems I was off or overthinking the overflow digit) , moved to the 2nd (Transposition), did like 3 puzzles, went to the 3rd (Substitution) room, solved half of them.

I feel so bad at this compared to other games. The hints, I imagine, are great if you have some existing knowledge on the type of cypher it is already. I never really knew much about cryptography, so I've been struggling through it a lot. Oml.

Click to shrink...

Have you been reading the wall panels (front and back)? Also it sounds like you're doing pretty well compared to a lot of others!

 

[Sch1sm]

I did the same thing with the overflow digit.

The actual solution is easier than that. What you have might be right, but missing one final step.

Click to shrink...

Huh. I'll give it another look! I have it written down in my notebook, because I was trying at it offline.Thanks. :)

Have you been reading the wall panels (front and back)? Also it sounds like you're doing pretty well compared to a lot of others!

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I have been! Sometimes I don't realise the use of the back panel until I get to that puzzle that requires it, though. Like in the Stenography room, the Morse code didn't stand out to me until I got to the puzzle that required it. I could tell what wouldn't need them, because of my knowledge of them, but before that I was sorta: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The wall in Transposition was very straight forward, but those puzzles can appear really overwhelming because of the length of some of them. I took a break from the game because I figure I needed a fresh perspective.

 

[Wibblewozzer]

Been playing other stuff but went back to it finally. I used a hint on Transposition #2 only because I didn't want to do what I feared was the correct answer, haha. I REALLY need to get a pad of paper to make these simpler. Instead I just have to keep stuff in my head. I also close an eye and hold up a finger to help me not lose track of where I am on a puzzle. So now I've completed the first five in Transposition. The funny thing is that on #4 I randomly tried out what ended up being the solution but it wasn't coming together for me because I wasn't seeing the words correctly but I still got the solution right away. I then had to work backwards a little bit to figure out why it was really correct.

I also checked the Challenge Room and that looks absolutely ridiculous.

 

[Kalor]

I'm enjoying the Monoalphabetic puzzles. Too bad there's only 4 of them though I understand that's probably due to their length.

Edit: I realised the challenge room opened and after looking at them, I'm suddenly really excited to try those puzzles once I'm done with the other rooms.

 

[Wibblewozzer]

I'll be purposely vague since pretty much everything I say could be used to describe many of the puzzles, heh.

I'm honestly surprised I figured out Transposition #6. I did it in my head until I started having trouble keeping track but as soon as I opened up Notepad and started writing things out I was like, "Oh wow, this actually is working!"

Transposition #7 was confusing because I surprisingly got the trick of it but then discarded it because I didn't know why it worked. But it was due to me finding a word that ended up being part of the correct wording and finding what felt like an arbitrary reason that sequence of letters together worked. So after dropping the trick I just started testing different words and groupings of letters and got what it all spelled out but it still didn't make enough sense at first. I was just left with words that didn't have any proper reasoning behind them and thought "Well, what now?" But it came together after I put it together and realized my early trick had to be used. Pretty neat once it's sorted out.

I looked briefly at Transposition #8 and not sure where to start there. Looks like it'll be a fun one.

Edit: Went back to #8. Pretty much just trying to brute force it with possibly no luck, heh. I can nearly use every letter treating it like a large anagram without using any sort of reason to the order. How frustrating! Spoilers for my thinking on #8:

Spoiler

I couldn't find any sort of logic to the ordering right away but with two Zs, and assuming every letter is used, I realized PUZZLE could be spelled easily. So I took out those letters and using the remaining I tried to use the X and got either EXIST or EXIT or something like that. From there using remaining letters I could spell SOMETIMES so I started thinking it would be something about sometimes puzzles exist with no order. Well, it turns out the remaining letters could get "WITH NO" but you're left with RUN and "SOMETIMES PUZZLES EXIST WITH NO RUN" makes no sense. I also flipped things around trying to figure out other phrases and got to TIME EXISTS WITH SOME PUZZLES..." and still nothing. I could be way off or maybe I'm relatively close. Not too certain. The problem is I'm so stuck on this idea I haven't been able to drop it and try other things, heh. But I'm done for the night.

 

[Wibblewozzer]

Anyone else plugging away at it? I'm around 50% complete but definitely because I'm doing the easier puzzles in each room.

I've been so tempted to look up that Transposition #8 because I simply don't think I'll get it.

I really liked the mechanized puzzle with the partial Enigma Machine sort of thing. Looks like the digital room won't be too bad until the last puzzle or two there. I've completed two of the Mono puzzles fairly easily and looked at the third without jotting anything down and I think I'm already making some progress there, too.

Just wanted to check in since these get really rough. I haven't bothered spending any real time looking at the Challenge Room. I've glanced at them but spent no thought on them. Honestly not sure if I ever will!

 

[SteveWinwood]

I've been really busy this week and the little video game time I had went to Into the Breach :(

I just want to my work to be over

 

[Tunahead]

I'm at 8/8 steganography and transposition and occasionally banging my head against the wall that is the final monoalphabetic substitution.

I'm gradually making my way through, but from polyalphabetic substitution onwards I just get terrible headaches and feel a thousand years older from just doing one of these damn things and then I have to take a break for several days.

Currently I've skipped the polyalphabetic substitution and mechanised cryptography halls and am solving the much less complicated and more relaxing digital cryptography ciphers.

 

[Wibblewozzer]

I'm at 8/8 steganography and transposition and occasionally banging my head against the wall that is the final monoalphabetic substitution.

I'm gradually making my way through, but from polyalphabetic substitution onwards I just get terrible headaches and feel a thousand years older from just doing one of these damn things and then I have to take a break for several days.

Currently I've skipped the polyalphabetic substitution and mechanised cryptography halls and am solving the much less complicated and more relaxing digital cryptography ciphers.

Click to shrink...

Could you give me a little hint for Transposition #8? First off:

Spoiler

Is there a specific trick/pattern or is it purely random and more just a mixed up anagram?

Secondly, because this will drive me crazy:

Spoiler

Is one of the words it comes out to "puzzle" or "puzzles"? I'm pretty much set on that and if it's not one of the words I'm going to have a tough time figuring how else to use two Zs.

Those will at least give me some direction so I don't bark up the wrong tree for too long.

 

[Tunahead]

Could you give me a little hint for Transposition #8? First off:

Spoiler

Is there a specific trick/pattern or is it purely random and more just a mixed up anagram?

Secondly, because this will drive me crazy:

Spoiler

Is one of the words it comes out to "puzzle" or "puzzles"? I'm pretty much set on that and if it's not one of the words I'm going to have a tough time figuring how else to use two Zs.

Those will at least give me some direction so I don't bark up the wrong tree for too long.

Click to shrink...

A small hint:

Spoiler

There's a pattern. You're right to focus your attention on the two Zs. They really stick out, in much the same way that certain letters in previous Transpositions did.

 

[Wibblewozzer]

A small hint:

Spoiler

There's a pattern. You're right to focus your attention on the two Zs. They really stick out, in much the same way that certain letters in previous Transpositions did.

Click to shrink...

Thanks! Figured it out.

Spoiler

What's frustrating is early on I had tried it by stacking them as they are (in fours) and then tried in fives but didn't get anywhere with that. Of course if I had just tried it in groups of six it would have worked but instead I got fixated on using the Zs in words and that's what throws the whole thing off since they're not used!

Edit: Only have the advanced Mono and Poly puzzles left. And did the first Challenge Puzzle as that was easier than I thought once I went back to that room. Had an idea how to start one or two others but I'll wait until I do more.