Hello!

I've been trying to translate a Japanese song, but encountered some text on screen I believe to be a cipher which I'd need some help with since I know very little about cryptography (it's not the first time I've seen this type I think, but not only don't I remember where I didn't know the method either)

Here's the transcription I could produce (note: there might be errors due to font differences or just because I picked the wrong character):

縺ｮ繧阪ｏ繧※繧九ｓ縺ｧ縺帙≧

縺倥＃縺上〒繧ゃｆ縺薙≧縺ｭ

縹上°縺」縺ｦ縺ゃ£縺溘＞
縹上°縺」縺ｦ縺上ｌ縺ｪ縺

The character 縺 seems to be repeated a lot, which might be a good starting point?

I tried doing some unicode shifts around the ranges 19876-20000 to fall withing Hiragana ranges, but I haven't found any text that makes sense

Link to the song and my translation (WIP) if it can help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t25YdgPBMlE
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rs_4Jc6NVk3yKDqImUpO8N1d5zs-_1UvJKsUoJduI5k/edit?usp=sharing

I'd really appreciate any help in figuring this out, thanks!

Context: I created this original multi-layer challenge myself to test some of my friends. The plaintext is in English, and it incorporates a mix of classic ciphers, word/letter manipulation, and coordinate plotting. I'd love to know what you think, please let me know how you'd rate its difficulty! V sbyybjrq gur ehyrf

The Incident Log: Lost at Sea

The ink on the dispatch logs had faded, but the stamped heading from the winter of 1907 was still perfectly legible: The Dundonald Survey Expedition.

For three weeks, the atmospheric telemetry station on the mainland had been receiving erratic, automated data fragments from a remote mapping crew deployed deep into the roaring latitudes of the sub-antarctic. The crew was tasked with cataloging uncharted territory, but a violent storm had severed standard communication lines.

When the rescue ship finally arrived at their last known anchoring coordinates, the bay was completely empty. The vessel was gone, swallowed by the gray mist. The only trace of the team was a waterlogged leather journal left behind in a makeshift emergency cache on a nearby rocky beach.

Inside the journal, there were no diary entries, no names, and no panicked farewell messages. There was only a single scribbled operational note from the navigator: "To plot our final refuge, count every letter in the deciphered log to form an eleven-digit string. Split it by standard Admiralty decimal standards, the first six digits mark our southern parallel, and the remaining five define our easting meridian."

Directly beneath the note, two lines of encrypted text was scrawled across the final page:

OHFLC VAYPYZZUTH MSVVKPUN VBA JYOKUL PZDYUKSLLZ P HACLYS ABVZO PZYOLNJUH PHUZZKS

`43 4f 55 4e 54 20 54 48 45 20 4c 45 54 54 45 52 53 20 4f 46 20 45 41 43 48 20 57 4f 52 44`

The crew had used their standard tactical multi-cipher protocol to lock away their exact survival grid. They knew that if an emergency response team was smart enough to peel back the layers of the cipher, the mathematics would lead them straight to where they were holding out.

The rescue team failed to crack it in time. Now, more than a century later, the archives department has digitized the logs. The coordinates are still waiting.

Hint 1: Look to the foundations of Roman security. A small, fixed shift in perspective will cut through the initial chaos.

https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science/cryptography/crypt/v/caesar-cipher

Hint 2: The raw output of the shift isn't a final destination, it's just a classic rearrangement problem. Sort out the clutter to find a coherent path.

https://www.dcode.fr/shuffled-letters

Hint 3: The grid below speaks the native tongue of modern hardware. Translate the bytes to find your next instruction:

https://www.strongdm.com/tools/hex-to-text-converter

Hint 4: Apply the rule found in Hint 3 directly to your results from Hint 2. If an extraction spills into double digits, strip it down to its base element.

Hint 5: Your final numeric sequence is a global tracking vector. Pay close attention to the spatial markers hidden inside your text to ensure you aren't looking on the completely wrong side of the world.

https://www.google.com/maps

This is up at the school of materials science and engineering, Queen Mary University of London.

At first I thought it was just gibberish, but there are too many weird features that have made me question that at multiple points during lunch breaks.

1) the first string of letters at the top left to right translate to "Charter", or just "chart" - potentially paper or map

2) there is a conspicuous letter missing at the position just below the first letter, almost appearing to denote the start or end of a sentence

3) there is an even more conspicuous inclusion of an English letter R in the 13th position of the bottom row

4) THERE IS AN EVEN MORE CONSPICUOUS INCLUSION OF AN ENGLISH LETTER "a" OFF GRID BETWEEN BETA (11) AND KAPPA (12) bottom row. Why would this be included as the only off grid letter if not to add to some sort of meaning.

5) counting only the greek letters it appears every letter in the greek alphabet appears 4 times, unless I've miscounted which is possible.

I have spent so many hours staring at this thing truly losing my mind. Someone people help me and tell me it's not gibberish. This seems like such an obvious and easy place to spell out meaning. This isn't the best university but SURELY THEY AREN'T THAT DUMB TO COMMISSION GIBBERISH.

THANKS 👍🏽

Hey codebreakers,

For those here who enjoy steganography, mathematical ciphers, and armchair treasure hunts, there is a genuine cryptographic puzzle woven into the text of a new techno-thriller titled BITCOIN & SEDUCTION by SKMS Meikasosa.

The novel covers the 2008 financial crash, the 184 billion BTC overflow bug, WikiLeaks, and Satoshi Nakamoto's disappearance in December 2010. Woven between the lines lies an authentic mathematical cryptogram: isolating the noise and deciphering the clues will unlock the private key of a real Bitcoin wallet funded with Satoshis.

You can inspect the opening clues and prologue for free through the Amazon Kindle "Look Inside" / "Read Sample" preview: 🔗https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HG6L74NW

If you take a look at the opening chapters, what cipher methodology or mathematical patterns do you spot first? Happy hunting to anyone attempting to crack it!

I’d like to see how strong my bind rune cipher is, so try to crack it (my handwriting is pretty bad, so even more of a good luck to those of you trying to solve it).

V sbyybjrq gur ehyrf

hi recently there were 2 encrypted things sent in a discord server im in and we've been trying to crack it for a while and we finally admitted defeat i talked with a few other members and they said i should go to reddit to ask for helping solving them cuz messages encrypted with multiple things are too much for my head

these are the things sent in the discord server

and a hint for what encryption methods were used

the wingdings translate into this D︎D︎S︎B︎V︎R︎0︎E︎0︎N︎A︎K︎B︎W︎I︎K︎Z︎W︎P︎P︎Y︎E︎F︎

the bolded letters into this 1YGYCilRYN2R3xe1g78w or 1YGY CilRYN 2R3xe1 g78w if spaced

the owner said that not all of the ciphers were used but that multiple were used for both and they arent in order and the key used for columnar is the default one uh i think thats all i know but feel free to ask me questions or for more information ill try to answer as best as i can

I‘m an intern at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. Over the summer I worked on a digital collection of the Phillips Library’s (their research archive) Revolutionary War collection. Besides the expected war records and correspondences I found a letter from Dr. Benjamin Church, a spy in Boston, 1774 who gave intelligence to the British during the city’s occupation. As I was scanning journals in the collection I stumbled upon 9 pages in the same hand that were definitely not journal entries. Interspersed with biblical verses were what seem to me to be coded messages.

I did some very brief research into codes used during the American Revolution and found a few that looked similar to it, but I have no idea where to begin to try to crack it. So, I turned to Reddit as I’m sure there capable people here who have an idea of where to start and might thrive on the opportunity to solve this mystery. Is it related to Dr. Benjamin Church, or did we have a Patriot spy ring a la Washington’s Culper Spy Ring?

If you have any thoughts or leads, or if you’re down to attempt it and collaborate please reply here! I’ll be publishing a blog post in the near future on this topic and would love to get some crowd sourced information or results to add. You can find high resolution images on our digital catalog.

Okay, so this was written in a Hebrew-adjacent code and most of the superscript seems to be vowels? It may be some sort of prayer, as it was written in the Chapel of Silence on university campus in 2017. The date at the bottom right should be 2017/01/28 03:41

Ok I am looking for someone to help me via DM with a Vic Cipher. Now it is a PNG, but I don't want to send it here as I don't want my friends to find out (it's a bit of a game). Could anyone help me?

V sbyybjrq gur ehyrf
To the best of my ability

I've already tried decoding it myself (no luck). Pretty sure the "N, E, S, W" characters are compass directions, but I'm not sure what it's there for.

Posting from burner,

Have been getting unbroken raw eggs left on my windshield for around 9 months, and last month a note was left with the egg this time. It looked almost exactly like this, with the snake symbol and all, but contained a pigpen cypher.

The pigpen cypher read,

IF YOU WISH TO FIND THE EGG MAN BEHIND THE MASK

YOU MUST FIRST COMPLETE THIS SIMPLE TASK

THE NEXT EGGS TO COME SHALL HAVE A CODE

SOLVE IT AND THE TRUTH WILL BE KNOWN

IF UN SUCCESFUL THE EGGS CONTINUE

GIVE THESE CODES THE BEST THATS IN YOU

Last Friday, I found the note that I've attached here, I have spent the past 5 days trying basically everything I could find, but to no avail. I figured you smart people here would be able to help me out. The biggest correlations I've seen have been, deck of cards, binary, baconian, playfair, and a couple others that seem less likely. None have worked out so far, only coming with gibberish or dead ends. The symbol and pigpen have other connotations which is why I'm trying to stay as discreet as possible. Any help is greatly appreciated!

I made a four-part cipher puzzle inspired partly by Kryptos. Each part hides another section of a connected story. I personally suggest solving them in order as earlier parts provide material relevant to later ones.

I, a highly dyslexic human, developed the story and puzzle ideas, with ChatGPT helping formalise the encoding and check that the stages decode correctly. This is an original puzzle, not an ongoing contest. (this means all creation is me, but to keep any typos or miscalculations I used a super smart calculator to double check my work before submitting it, i want it to be solvable and not dyslexic garbage ://)

I have then taken it to and tested it in other AIs, and allowed them to attempt to recovered any of it, Some were able to recover Parts 1 and 2 sometimes with hints. Others reached Part 3 with specific hints. I haven’t seen an independent complete solve of Part 4 yet, and I’m now curious how human solvers will approach it.

Information to start with:

- The plaintext is English.

- The character set is "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789.,!?"

- Spaces and capitalisation are not preserved.

- Line wrapping has no meaning. Blank lines separate distinct strings.

- All four stages have been checked by decoding them back. (I have the full decoding method so it can be reproduced correctly)

I’ll include the full transcription below. Please put solutions and substantial discoveries behind spoiler tags so others can try it themselves. I can provide hints if people get stuck, but would like to give it a while before I do so to allow a fair chance for people that don't see it until next week.

GOOD LUCK!

~~~~~

PART 1:

11101111110011110111110101101111111111111111111111011010111110010111110010111011111111101111111111111111110011111111111011111111101111111111111011011110111001111101101111101011110011111111110011111111101001111111111101110111111011111111111001101111011110111101111011111111111111111111

61733330253725363635963820262233816352725532333118173338163825272537133824183731172537262527213331181553737363021473152816302629163163626318263628272538202334337253723381636362725382637233916302149153717233525262813302133023381633382621113302723331330233313372527218202133730253263626313535311521155371553734233114911923302532382335263723391630214915371633302713382133316342829133338263820262263627218163333162634337133523302539173111115637118262331149162828235353116318163017262816333915382823391626333915382

~~~~~

PART 2:

111011101011100010001100101111100111111111101110000111111101010110101111010111110000011111100111111101111011010100111110110011101110111010110001110011110110111000111100100111101001010111010101101111010111010111110010100111011110110111010111110111101111111101011101111111011111111111101111010111110111111111010110011001110111011

138242313211179167392117450371831221433823115102618163049211839273739211512914142717393931141438255386196323433833112373222353731321324557393431132731189630422623182316040112116736380344157610433912276103459393535211122711717124267173169936133440421333343293453718146701933392962391630422625922122104911048381348355143752412313141163046327130293926393364249189630413812721132453631923173304322327311838150341611343293921183924103611853113275331217393825356241938361733391132123713510421338634732291134367322128131224261019815035185114196423181503921156241

~~~~~

PART 3:

A18DDQZ9X889R16S660RD1969AZUD0TY6889S6098Y0ZYKZA90819AA8IBRYC6ZU6AKTXK9Z6BFZ9DEF1Y6TZ990ZEKRCRL868968SE8TCI996689RKY1ZSD1KAURZC9Q9Y8Z686M9DI96A1.RT006698ZRI82P9Y86Q6ZB6YZ0DY8D1A9QYZD6R6Y629Y6TUZKZ1AB8908KAA910Z0RZZYY6Y6TAU6Q6GAPA9NKKBQQRATA

~~~~~

PART 4:

100011011011001101001101100011111111001101110110001111101011100100001110001011000101001101001011100000100111001001111101001111001001111011010110001100011111101001101011000111110110001111110010011111101010110011010100100111110111001110011110100011010111000011110100011111101010100110010011110111101110001001001011100011111001001111010111100100000011110101010111

96314337344158610302924222863631142887351111373537191113212732131937182363915242535126373932111883931113326392228951278119350403718734144221228362919323841218353329361337381838895938333630373234193534340389131417322422382315231273734493011233110483618226304613716314171731215178131410383621298204482414918211735534113928273622311453501773612363492036353792613836183013111925749332253924393020301910422738304453323833443837351619343820361829323131461210163422238046513143631519293627719293733833111341104146920153914551037824173730443920163114111935292939218366323317301710231192016122041041133882638733311048134892018292831191

~~~~~

(V sbyybjrq gur ehyrf)

Hi guys. I've received a quest from a secret admirer, but I can't seem to complete the task. Do you have any ideas? The picture shows the Russian alphabet, initially I thought it was a Caesar cipher, but maybe you need to work with numbers instead of letters (I don't know for sure). The inscription in the upper left corner means "year?". In previous hints, there were numbers (as in the second picture) similar to the year, and one hint mentioned the year 1931. I hope you can help me, if you have any more questions, I'l try to answer them in the comments.

Back in school me and a friend gave each Ukrainian letter it's own symbol and could actually read it, I had a sheet with which ones which but lost it, is someone here able to decode it? I know second page #1 says Назар but after comma idk

Hello, I need some urgent help.

Context: My friend, which I know for around 10 years now, went unexpectedly offline since today and he uploaded this image on his WhatsApp status and nobody knows what's going on. Since he never did such a thing before at all, me and also his sister are actually kinda worried about him, because he doesn't even respond back, nowhere and nothing at all. To make it even more worrying, he also posted this exact same image on his Facebook account shortly after and he usually never uses his account for anything, so seeing this is totally strange and out of the sudden, because this is the only available post he made up on his Facebook account right now (or maybe the only visible post for now). So I searched online and stumbled over this sub and want to ask, if someone can get a clue, what this could mean by any chance?

He also uploaded a second image (but only on his WhatsApp status) where the exact same code appears and some additional human readable text, like some personal info, shortened, but readable, so I'm going to redact that information, because it says things like his zip/postal code - where he actually lives (the information's are all correct) and his full family name, which is also shown there. The code I mentioned in his other image is defined as "user", so maybe this is all just something he made up, because it doesn't ring any bells for me or whatsoever.

Some text in the second picture is written in German, so I will translate it:

----------

"Attention

Contact to TR (his first and last name, shortened) is already lost for over twenty-four hours!

Code (the code I mean) takes immediately in effect.

Contacting/Reaching out to TR is until further notice not possible at the moment!

Last made connection on FSN192(?):Redacted"

----------

If someone has a clue what that code could mean, I would really appreciate any help, because it's really strange and a bit worrying and very likely no joke from him, but I literally can't do anything else now, except to ask here for help - it's night here already, else, I would just straight drive over to him with public transit, but that's literally impossible right now.

I found this unusual two-page letter and have hit a wall trying to decipher or translate the script. It looks like it was written on leather due to the texture, but it is actually heavily degraded, folded paper.

I have already consulted some experts, but no one has been able to identify the language or the writing system. I am hoping the cryptanalysis or paleography community might recognize it or be able to crack it.

Here is what is known so far:

• The Date: The year 1813 is clearly visible near the bottom right of the first page. There is also a "1600" near the middle.
• The "Key": The very last line of the first page appears to be a sequential substitution key or alphabet, featuring a distinct row of characters.
• Ruled Out (Greek): I contacted a linguistics expert at The Ohio State University who specializes in Greek. He and a colleague reviewed it and confirmed it is absolutely not Greek.
• Ruled Out (Gabelsberger Shorthand): While it looks a bit like shorthand, the 1813 date predates the development of the Gabelsberger system, and the distinct, separated characters with floating superscript marks do not align with standard cursive shorthand rules.
• Formatting: The second page ends with a short sentence followed by two large diagonal slashes (//), which was a common historical way to mark the end of a document or ledger to prevent later additions.

Any ideas on what this script might be, or what language family I should be looking into? If it is a custom cipher, any tips on how to start a frequency analysis on these specific symbols would be greatly appreciated!

My friend an me used to send each other birthday cards with multiple ciphers to crack. This was my last one and my friend has forgotten about it for quite some time. No I have lost my old cipher hint sheet after such a long time, but I'm curious, if you can help me solve it.

Left side instructions:

(Kilrathi-X) => a(97)
⌄
⌄
–| <<<<<< –|
⌄
⌄
<< ⟶ ✓ [Checkmark at upper-left of 9x5 grid]
⌄ ⌃
⌄ ⌃
| <<<<<< ⇒ – –
| <<<<<  ⇒ – –

Thoughts so far:

1. The right side is Kilrathi alphabet translating to:

C C H H
Q H A Q
Q Q P P
P P P X

1. The first line seems to be a mapping X to ASCII character 97 (small a). I think I remember choosing this somehow in a way that the following operations would somehow land on the uppercase ASCII-Characters (65-90)

2. I think I used some directional grid movement in the instructions below as well as some bitshift operations (probably those with many `<<<<<<`... but not 100% sure anymore...

3. the bold line was most likely a checkpoint hinting that my friend should have landed in the upper-left corner of the grid after this step. But how... I can't remember. And why the checkpoint-grid has 9 columns instead of 4 and is also open towards the left, bottom and right, is unclear.

4. I probably avoided typical search phrases like "congratulations" or "happy birthday" to prevent backwards-solving... but maybe not... I cannot remember 😅

I'm curious if you can solve it.

V sbyybjrq gur ehyrf

A while ago I bought some comics from an italian site and I just noticed that in the back of the receipt there’s this code,to me it kinda looks like it’s in wingdings but some characters look out of place,also the rest of the page is completely blank so I’m pretty sure this is intentional.
Best of luck to anyone that’ll try decode this and thanks to y’all!

https://youtu.be/Gq4mcGFkx5s?si=DpRTdKZ_Fg-sCK4q -> link of the introduction video of the book.

I've found a video of a mysterious channel/group called Gamma 9497, that have made a series of books called Manuscripta Gammae. This is the second of these.

I'm having trouble to decipher this. Someone probably could do that

The cypher, for now, is unknown.

The better quality image of the book is attached below.

"V sbyybjrq gur ehyrf"

Scenario:

Wanna Isis has posted another encrypted communication this time using a different cipher, Zanigma. We know the beginning of the message starts ATTACKATDAWNISISARMYAT but nothing beyond that. Help us break their communication.

ZRPLAJTQBPPHUYELXOMBHBIVPSILVYIEOLRKWISFFZDHKZQQEZGLETJIWBSAXGLEGGWSSRCREKBPYSXRUBLYNMBFUBJDJYYVOLKYDJUJBSNBHKXVXEOPRGFJKJKCQLIQDVESIGASUXVDIGLJUVYYUJRGISTLMJWZNGPWOQQVYWPIBJHMGPQY

https://github.com/utepshaadm/Zanigma/

V sbyybjrq gur ehyrf

In my testing, several AI models failed to reconstruct the encryption process, even when provided with the ciphertext, plaintext, and public reference. Have fun :)

Edit: My apologizes but this string doesn't actually validate in the new decoder I built round trip. This is my first attempt at an algorithm and I made a mistake. However the commentor below still produced the correct plaintext.

Contains error:

810910212940810160522240010911141810240211811710810212540011212771211431312511212911281211211120212141211160031911710710911012811160312811431840512240910010031511211951212630311522911412771212911710211160522312031771031112112211212830010570810811411210771212941212312240522160771212710141010360940031311522312031121010212510212910710160212431811910212111432031210771212510031810522212312811312212911810811311811030240610312311522810031911412710031260810911141811410312212121511811030810010940360211911810751771211410570212811610011031911951

Same plain text message verified round trip with custom software:

631420720410240311010311132750710631311141252710240212432232532022960431041462532911611551551351532710211311532540710710750012931311041332431210020311321010720222551710720940311132731412420212731710140311010041212420212821730452212031010710810320431661420212640720041311132311022720710710010740410720311132041212542132720510212910710311720431931910532111021212341022720640212240132532041320312532540631320311030042311432041311132240120750412710120611240911710252410312120422422430821631010410521211911810530022220410710720030432072120731710

Another subreddit, which I shall not name here due to the nature of the sensitive content there, told me about a website called Timelock in a deleted post. To combat my instinct to not think before posting this on the public internet, I decided to wait until a certain time passes for me to think and to give everyone else a chance to decrypt before then. This site allows you to encrypt a message in the future using an open-source cryptosystem developed by the League of Entropy. I created an encrypted message that will be unlocked exactly at midnight when Halloween starts, through the Timelock website, in Pacific Daylight Time. Is it possible to use the source code of that cryptosystem to decrypt my message and crack the early?

The link to the encrypted message above will automatically expire when next month starts, so please download the text file before then! I tried putting the message in a code block, but Reddit doesn't allow the body of this post to exceed 40 000 characters.

^{Text files are safe and will not harm your computer.}

Edit: While this post was originally made to be as SFW as possible, it has since been marked NSFW due to a link that appears when the comment is decrypted.

Edit 2: I forgot the V sbyybjrq gur ehyrf!

This from a video game called call of the elder gods. A super cool puzzle game, I have looked into this thing and I cannot find anything on it, which I find suspicious because is not exactly hidden in the game.

V sbyybjrq gur ehyrf