Running out of room, I donated my Burroughs “comptometer” to the local school’s Analog Club, but I still keep the pinwheel calculator handy, as it can do multiplication and division as well as sums.
I was literally doing cryptanalysis against one of your OTP posts but didn’t get too far. I made a chart mapping the Selectric 1 & 2 character positions, then started one for the Composer elements but was only able to get it partially filled in, based on photos from the IBM Composer catalog. Then I realized you may have been using a special Selectric element but couldn’t find it in the catalogs online. But I did do a frequency analysis on the message you posted, for what that’s worth! I eventually gave up, after one of your messages on OTP was all the same character, the black rectangle symbols, and then I wasn’t sure if the message I was working on was legible text or not. It also didn’t help that the spaces between words was obscured, but that wouldn’t stop a better codebreaker!
Well, you’re on the right track with one of your lines of attack, and it should be noted that #19 (the one with all the squares) is essentially the key, and contains a clue that is repeated in earlier ArtCiphers which will lead you to the light.
The ArtCiphers are meaningful, but not especially serious. It isn’t a waste of time to decrypt them insofar as the puzzle is doable. (:
Running out of room, I donated my Burroughs “comptometer” to the local school’s Analog Club, but I still keep the pinwheel calculator handy, as it can do multiplication and division as well as sums.
I was literally doing cryptanalysis against one of your OTP posts but didn’t get too far. I made a chart mapping the Selectric 1 & 2 character positions, then started one for the Composer elements but was only able to get it partially filled in, based on photos from the IBM Composer catalog. Then I realized you may have been using a special Selectric element but couldn’t find it in the catalogs online. But I did do a frequency analysis on the message you posted, for what that’s worth! I eventually gave up, after one of your messages on OTP was all the same character, the black rectangle symbols, and then I wasn’t sure if the message I was working on was legible text or not. It also didn’t help that the spaces between words was obscured, but that wouldn’t stop a better codebreaker!
Well, you’re on the right track with one of your lines of attack, and it should be noted that #19 (the one with all the squares) is essentially the key, and contains a clue that is repeated in earlier ArtCiphers which will lead you to the light.
The ArtCiphers are meaningful, but not especially serious. It isn’t a waste of time to decrypt them insofar as the puzzle is doable. (: