Sunday 20 March 2016

cipher - Murder of the President - Part 5


This is Part 5 of the Murder of the President brainteaser/riddle series. If you have not already, check out the answers for Murder of the President - Part 1 posted by Nit, Murder of the President - Part 2 and Murder of the President - Part 3 both posted by Joe Z., and Murder of the President - Part 4 posted by el jefe. Each part will give you a clue and you must solve it. This part will have several clues. Use all knowledge you have of cryptography, ciphers, past puzzles, etc. You should also use Google. This case is meant to take place in the present day, so all politicians, celebrities, places, etc. are who they are now. Please post your answers in spoiler tags.





Here's the riddle:


You arrive at the London NYC Hotel at 2:26 a.m. You've already called the staff at the hotel to let them know you were coming. On the way up, you were beginning to hear reports that the President was murdered. You head up to room 118. You look around for a bit until you find a box under the covers. On top of the box is a note.


It says



nvnmjoonhenuan
m2m
121
0+1
ttfflhesi




You check out the padlock. It is a one 5 digit code. Under the box there is another note.



Padlock:
ZUTYS





After you figure out this code, you open up the box and find, of course, 6 coded notes. Some notes are typed, others are handwritten. (Italics will indiacte handwritten and bold will indicate typed)


Here are the notes



#1

ERP BTRCBIV PTUKU GTI CUBL






#2
WAPHFS RPL MU UMK SQOF GWAWFGX UCTME UPCG






#3

M DT AJF MMUPIS - YQ






#4
SAQEHY WQG NT XLF VMOIA DUWI






#5

BVB YPPX LEXDK NJ






#6
VVHC ASL FNOXIS JETM ZVVOIU ZWTJPK
LLIFVFXZIDN



What is the code to get into the box? What do all the notes mean?


Good Luck.



Hint:



The messages are coded using the method and seed answered by el jefe. The sequence of numbers is continuous (it doesn't restart for each message). Also, you must add one to every zero in the sequence





Note: I will be posting Part 6 (the final part) in one to two days. I will select the correct answer for Part 5 before, but I will post the answer for Part 5 if no one gets it



Answer



Here are the decoded notes. Italics for handwritten, bold for typed.



#1: ALL WRITTEN NOTES ARE TRUE

#2: NUMBER ONE IS THE ONLY CORRECT TYPED NOTE
#3: I AM THE KILLER - VP
#4: NUMBER SIX IS THE RIGHT CLUE
#5: YOU WONT CATCH ME
#6: PREZ TOD WINTER FALL SUMMER SPRING CHEESESTEAK



So I suppose:



Our next stop is Hotel Four Seasons in Philadelphia (as in Philadelphia cheesesteak). Also, the VP is off our list of suspects.
"PREZ TOD" must refer to the President's time of death, which was November 5, 2014 at 1:09 p.m. That's most likely our clue for the room number (109 maybe?)




About decrypting the messages:



The notes are encrypted with a vigenére cipher, using the sequence of pseudorandom numbers obtained by using a variation of John von Neumann's middle square method using 121 as a seed, taking three numbers from the end (offset by one) and replacing all zeroes with ones. For those interested, here is the ugly but working Python implementation I ended up with.



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