Wednesday, 29 July 2015

cipher - Can you help me find out what this guy's name is?



I'm a publisher. Yesterday I received an email from someone who wanted me to publish his book. However, he refused to send it to me unless I figured out his name. I sent back an email with the answer 'Rumplestiltskin', but he said no. Instead, he sent me this:



bar.gjb.gjb.gjb.gjb/gjb.gjb.gjb.gjb.bar|bar.bar.bar.bar.bar|bar.bar.bar.bar.bar ^
bar.gjb.gjb.gjb.gjb|bar.bar.gjb.gjb.gjb/bar.bar.bar.bar.bar ^
bar.bar.bar.bar.bar|bar.gjb.gjb.gjb.gjb/bar.bar.gjb.gjb.gjb ^
bar.bar.bar.bar.bar|bar.gjb.gjb.gjb.gjb/bar.bar.gjb.gjb.gjb <>
bar.bar.bar.bar.bar|bar.gjb.gjb.gjb.gjb/bar.bar.bar.gjb.gjb ^
bar.bar.bar.bar.bar|bar.bar.bar.bar.bar <>
bar.gjb.gjb.gjb.gjb|gjb.gjb.gjb.gjb.bar|bar.bar.gjb.gjb.gjb/bar.bar.bar.bar.bar ^
bar.bar.bar.bar.bar|bar.gjb.gjb.gjb.gjb/gjb.gjb.gjb.gjb.bar ^

bar.gjb.gjb.gjb.gjb|bar.bar.gjb.gjb.gjb/bar.bar.bar.bar.bar|bar.bar.bar.gjb.gjb|gjb.gjb.gjb.bar.bar ^
bar.bar.bar.bar.bar|bar.gjb.gjb.gjb.gjb/bar.bar.bar.gjb.gjb ^
bar.gjb.gjb.gjb.gjb|bar.bar.gjb.gjb.gjb/bar.bar.bar.bar.bar ^
bar.bar.bar.bar.bar|bar.bar.bar.bar.bar ^
bar.bar.bar.bar.bar|bar.gjb.gjb.gjb.gjb/bar.bar.gjb.gjb.gjb



Can you help me figure out what Mr. Bar Gjb's real name is?


Hint 1:



13. Decaying.




Hint 2:



What's an anagram of here come dots?




Answer



The first hint...



... alludes to rot13 encoding, which converts bar and gjb to one and two. Confirmed by OP




The second hint...



... refers to Morse code. Confirmed by OP



The bar/gjb sequences are...



... organised in groups of five. In Morse code, the numerals all have five signals. Taking bar/one as dit and gjb/two as dah, the message reads:

1 / 9 | 5 | 5 ^
1 | 2 / 5 ^
5 | 1 / 2 ^
5 | 1 / 2 <>

5 | 1 / 3 ^
5 | 5 <>
1 | 9 | 2 / 5 ^
5 | 1 / 9 ^
1 | 2 / 5 | 3 | 8 ^
5 | 1 / 3 ^
1 | 2 / 5 ^
5 | 5 ^
5 | 1 / 2
Confirmed by OP




Each line...



... represents a letter. The caret denotes the end of a letter, the diamond denotes the end of a word. Confirmed by OP
As @yuzuki observed in a comment, the slash probably means that two adjacent digits are joined into a larger number. After joining the numbers and removing the end markers of the letters, we get:

19 | 5 | 5
1 | 25
5 | 12
5 | 12
5 | 13
5 | 5

1 | 9 | 25
5 | 19
1 | 25 | 3 | 8
5 | 13
1 | 25
5 | 5
5 | 12



The next step is...




... to convert the numbers to letters. The number represents the position of the letter in the alphabet, so 1 is A, 2 is B and so on:

see ay el el / em ee / aiy es aych em ay ee el

These are the letters as they are spelt when read out loud. (Although I'd have used ELL and AITCH.)



The sentence reads:



CALL ME ISHMAEL

which is the famous opening line from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. So the author's name is Ishmael. (The name could also be Herman Melville, but nobody will know the famous quote if the book hasn't been published.)



Footnote:



I had found the answer without figuring out the second step, where series of numbers are treated as letters. It was enough to treat each individual sequence of numbers, say 5|12, as a letter in a monoalphabetic substitution cipher. Just finding that the caret and diamond are letter and word separators was enough to attack the monoalphabetic cipher.




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