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The A.S.P. Alphabet Soup Puzzle

Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 7:24 am
by stahrwe
I have attached the ASP as a pdf file. I made one mistake in the file. The first letter should be lower case. There are only 3 capital letters. The collection instructions are within the puzzle. The prize is$100,000 after taxes.

Re: The A.S.P. Alphabet Soup Puzzle

Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 2:50 pm
by Interbane
It doesn't seem to be a straight modular cipher. If you check the frequency counts, each letter pops up within 5% of every other letter, between 1900 and 2k times each. If you check double letter frequency, it's even worse. Every letter has between 50 and 100 doubles.

It's too clean, there are either fillers or it gets translated to number then back to letter. If it's fillers, then there's a hopping algorithm. Skip every 2/3/4/5 letters, diagonal, vertical, backwards, mixed with a modular cipher.

Maybe playfair cipher or vigenere cipher?

The things I know how to try are likely too simple. What's the source of the puzzle?

Re: The A.S.P. Alphabet Soup Puzzle

Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 4:48 pm
by stahrwe
I think it may be an image in some analog form. A decade or so there was a fad where you stared at a poster and eventually could see something, well some people could but I never was able to.

I have some summary data along the lines of most frequently occurring letter and pair. I will try to post this tonight.

Re: The A.S.P. Alphabet Soup Puzzle

Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 5:23 pm
by LanDroid
It's gonna be solved by an employee of the N.S.A. :hmm:

Re: The A.S.P. Alphabet Soup Puzzle

Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2014 9:15 pm
by Interbane
I have some summary data along the lines of most frequently occurring letter and pair. I will try to post this tonight.
I thought of copy/pasting it, but didn't see any significance. They're all more or less even.
A decade or so there was a fad where you stared at a poster and eventually could see something, well some people could but I never was able to.
I still have a book of those. Cross your eyes then space out a little bit, and they'll eventually lock onto the right depth. It's like when you look at a door screen and it looks closer than it really is because your eyes are slightly crossed. Your brain thinks your eyes are looking at the right square, when in fact they're different squares.

If that's the case you could use geometry to transpose the letters. The math is beyond my experience. If you mean actual visual image, there is barely enough detail for a single word in aggregate. And if there are words, the frequency counts would be closer. I think it's one of the ciphers I mentioned, or some other advanced one that fills in gaps with underused letters.

Re: The A.S.P. Alphabet Soup Puzzle

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2014 5:52 am
by stahrwe
The puzzle was created by a friend of mine with a PhD in computer programming. I do not know the solution but it should be solvable by a high school senior. The only other hint I got from him was a story about a substitute teacher who showed stereo pictures to a high school class using a tabletop viewer one looks down through.

The puzzle format should be on a broadside included in a newspaper. I could not find a paper size large enough to fit it all on one page.

Re: The A.S.P. Alphabet Soup Puzzle

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2014 8:49 am
by Chris OConnor
I wouldn't know where to start with a puzzle like this but I'll be watching to see what people come up with.

Re: The A.S.P. Alphabet Soup Puzzle

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2014 9:28 am
by stahrwe
Here is some information I developed about the puzzle.
aspstats.pdf
(13.17 KiB) Downloaded 238 times

Re: The A.S.P. Alphabet Soup Puzzle

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2014 9:31 am
by stahrwe
Here is some information given to me including a hint of some kind.
aspstatsbasic.pdf
(197.74 KiB) Downloaded 235 times

Re: The A.S.P. Alphabet Soup Puzzle

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2014 9:32 am
by stahrwe
I think part of it may be a map because the last line is only five letters which spell miles.