Cryptography and Codes

Puzzles involving deciphering, decoding, or decrypting a message

Tricky, Tricky

Can you figure out the number I am thinking of?

Some cryptic clues:

  • Call it sin, and mess it up (9)
  • Between θ and κ (4)
  • Engage emotionally (5)
  • Half a byte (6)
  • Mottle (5)
  • Never mix meds & gin (7)
  • – (4)

If you have all the answers right, that’s only about 33% percent of the solution: you need to justify them too.

Some clues were left over, so here’s a second set:

  • Sing about the matter (10)
  • Frog’s pole (3)
  • Heroin or slap (5)
  • 0 or 1 (1,3)
  • A toy asking a question on an online forum (4+2 = 6)

An ingenious and very difficult puzzle by Bass on Puzzling StackExchange (spoiler warning: contains the solution)

View Solution

Secret Translation

The CIA intercepted some messages from a criminal organization, some in English and some in an unknown foreign language or code. As a CIA analyst and translator, you have figured out the following sentences and their English translations, but you do not yet know which sentence matches which translation:

  • Casara ashter osar
  • Intara amar
  • Intara orter osar
  • Alatara inter osar
  • Ortara amar
  • Alatara orter osar
  • I see a spy
  • I run
  • You see me
  • You see a spy
  • A suspicious man sees an enemy
  • You run

You have the opportunity to send a message in order to provoke a reaction from the criminal organization. Can you figure out and match up the translations above, and then send a message saying “a suspicious man runs” in this foreign language?

Continue reading “Secret Translation”