Going back a bit to before the hint, I tried something a bit out there with the durations and the watch face. Since the dial appears to be a watch with a slide rule along the outside, you can get a clear orientation for a clock face, with 12 o'clock being at the 60. Using this, you can draw the clock hands for the time equivalent to the duration (where 144 minutes gives you 2:24). A lot of the hands clearly intersect with only a single character on the watch face, but it started to break down near the end.
Here's what I ended up with.
I can't completely vouch for everything since my image editing software was a bit inexact, but it could be a starting point.
Could this cipher thing actually show that this guy’s random letter pulling is not random at all ?
It could do... but ig-eighty-eight is the pilot not the ship. and Bane Blood is a mix of Cad Bane and Xanadu blood, so it could be a thing, but it's not a consistence rule in the answers given it mixes ships and pilots.
Has anyone assigned a letter/number to all of the numbers in the parsecs table?
If so could they form a Rotate cipher? 'Rotated' is mentioned in the 'Get the nod, Ace' post, and the parsecs tables is something that could possibly be used as it's in a grid format.
I've been following this pretty much all day, and have been experimenting with various things as progress has occurred. Happily, I've come across a challenge that involved a Bacon cipher before, so I'm reusing the (extremely basic) script I wrote then to try and test various ways of defining "A" and "B" in the cipher text, and putting the resulting string in an online decoder to see what falls out.
My general approach so far has been to try and use the characters in "scoundrels4life" (in both uppercase and lowercase) as the characters that would become "B"s, and the rest would be "A"s (when substituted in the poem). I've attempted to do this whilst handling whitespaces in various ways too (stripping it completely, including it as something that should become a "B" etc.)
Sadly everything that I've attempted so far decodes to junk. An obvious possible reason is that we are not discriminating between "A"s and "B"s correctly (if a Bacon cipher is the right approach at all). If anyone has any more specific ideas I'd be happy to try and implement them.
Last night the secret to the dial was discovered. Three columns of the parsecs table and the dial were used to decode the “Scoundrels4Life” message. I’m not saying there isn’t anything more with the dial, but the cryptic message is definitely the next step.
I kinda just want to know if the words have meaning as words, or if they just are a way to hide a message.
'Cause all dis cipherin' stuff makes mah hey-ad hurt.
I know what you mean, I was trying to squint at it and think outside the box... Had one idea that "For a tease due" could be interpreted as "42" if you said it quickly enough, and I tried to run that through with the rest of the poem (unsuccessfully).
On a completely different thought, I looked into comparing the times that we have from the table and seeing if they match in-universe travel times between star systems. All the SW galaxy maps I could find didn't have hard numbers on them though, and the one reference I did find suggested that the times we were given here were far too quick for Star Wars hyperspace travel (which takes a day plus for an average journey). That was just one source http://www.starwars-chronicles.com/Hyperspace_Travel_Time.htm) though, so I'd be happy to be proved wrong.
The letters on the inner dial read like (taking the 'rate' marker as the beginning):
R8EQOASSFY134L7B (16 characters)
J9IXZ9FD6JH58CGUDM (18 characters, the last two being squished together)
TLFERW2BNMGK0PLV (16 characters, the first two being squished together)
Corrected one of the letters above. I'm going to go through and check your work on the others shortly. Picked this one up because (in the previous version) the dial contained every number from 0 to 9 and every letter except Y. Turns out Y should have been in there---so although there are repeats, the dials contain every alphanumeric Aurebesh character.
Make of that what you will.
@CG_SBCrumb it looks like @Tsuo_Vook is on the puzzle. I’ll give you less than an hour before it’s solved. Book it!
I'd take that bet. You haven't even scratched the surface yet bwhahaha
Though Vook doesn't mess around so I expect the pace to pick up
(12 hours later...) well... it looks like you win that bet. Good thing I didn’t bet the Millennium Falcon on it or anything... right?!
Last night the secret to the dial was discovered. Three columns of the parsecs table and the dial were used to decode the “Scoundrels4Life” message. I’m not saying there isn’t anything more with the dial, but the cryptic message is definitely the next step.
Ok, total number of characters without spaces is 275. If we find a mapping to As and ****, we can decrypt to a 55 character phrase.
Does the character count include periods?
Yes. And question marks, apostrophes, etc. Just not spaces
Finally at my computer and was able to write a quick script to check! It also includes line breaks - without punctuation or line breaks the count is 255
If you take out the commas, apostrophes and questions marks and spaces, there are 255 characters.
These could be grouped into 51 blocks of five letters each for a Baconian Cipher
Ok, total number of characters without spaces is 275. If we find a mapping to As and ****, we can decrypt to a 55 character phrase.
Does the character count include periods?
Yes. And question marks, apostrophes, etc. Just not spaces
Finally at my computer and was able to write a quick script to check! It also includes line breaks - without punctuation or line breaks the count is 255
Last night the secret to the dial was discovered. Three columns of the parsecs table and the dial were used to decode the “Scoundrels4Life” message. I’m not saying there isn’t anything more with the dial, but the cryptic message is definitely the next step.
Arent there 4 columns?
Yes, you needed the fourth to find the values for the other three
Ok, total number of characters without spaces is 275. If we find a mapping to As and ****, we can decrypt to a 55 character phrase.
Does the character count include periods?
Yes. And question marks, apostrophes, etc. Just not spaces
Finally at my computer and was able to write a quick script to check! It also includes line breaks - without punctuation or line breaks the count is 255
This is way out of my comfort zone so I'm likely off base but could you use the Bacon encryption of scoundrels4life and then overlay the AB sequence on the clue text to distinguish casing?
Replies
Here's what I ended up with.
I can't completely vouch for everything since my image editing software was a bit inexact, but it could be a starting point.
Lando's puffer pig?
Could this cipher thing actually show that this guy’s random letter pulling is not random at all ?
It could do... but ig-eighty-eight is the pilot not the ship. and Bane Blood is a mix of Cad Bane and Xanadu blood, so it could be a thing, but it's not a consistence rule in the answers given it mixes ships and pilots.
30cpt9bpe4ve
It’s pretty similar to my old att WiFi password, but I think that’s probably a dead end
If so could they form a Rotate cipher? 'Rotated' is mentioned in the 'Get the nod, Ace' post, and the parsecs tables is something that could possibly be used as it's in a grid format.
My general approach so far has been to try and use the characters in "scoundrels4life" (in both uppercase and lowercase) as the characters that would become "B"s, and the rest would be "A"s (when substituted in the poem). I've attempted to do this whilst handling whitespaces in various ways too (stripping it completely, including it as something that should become a "B" etc.)
Sadly everything that I've attempted so far decodes to junk. An obvious possible reason is that we are not discriminating between "A"s and "B"s correctly (if a Bacon cipher is the right approach at all). If anyone has any more specific ideas I'd be happy to try and implement them.
Sorry if this is redundant, I just wanted to check. Getting a bit lost on who has done what
Also, is it significant that the characters seem to be backwards on the dial?
@Xupaosso has done it https://imgur.com/gallery/mFybGWQ
'Cause all dis cipherin' stuff makes mah hey-ad hurt.
I know what you mean, I was trying to squint at it and think outside the box... Had one idea that "For a tease due" could be interpreted as "42" if you said it quickly enough, and I tried to run that through with the rest of the poem (unsuccessfully).
On a completely different thought, I looked into comparing the times that we have from the table and seeing if they match in-universe travel times between star systems. All the SW galaxy maps I could find didn't have hard numbers on them though, and the one reference I did find suggested that the times we were given here were far too quick for Star Wars hyperspace travel (which takes a day plus for an average journey). That was just one source http://www.starwars-chronicles.com/Hyperspace_Travel_Time.htm) though, so I'd be happy to be proved wrong.
(12 hours later...) well... it looks like you win that bet. Good thing I didn’t bet the Millennium Falcon on it or anything... right?!
Arent there 4 columns?
Finally at my computer and was able to write a quick script to check! It also includes line breaks - without punctuation or line breaks the count is 255
These could be grouped into 51 blocks of five letters each for a Baconian Cipher
Isn't the maximum count for ASCII 255?
Yes, you needed the fourth to find the values for the other three
256 you count zero also
HAVEM YBEST HATO NFITF AINTT HEBES TFEAT OTHER FOLDS SADST
OPCHA NGING KEEPF ARMIN GIMRE APING THEWA GERSMY PLAYS
WINRE ASONI SSIMP LEPAI REDAN DTRUE KNOWF ANSAN DJOKE ADDCL
UEBUT GETTH ENODA CEFAI LNIGH ANDST EMHOP EROTA TEDNO HELPG ETPWD DUNCE
ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
Cthulu confirmed?