Coded message in Watershed booklet deciphered.

[Katabasis]

I'm surprised people are using a computer for this... The old fashioned way worked just fine for me. Plus you also get a 'feel' for the code that a computer printout of a frequency table just won't give you.
The first thing that clicked into place for me is something that the computer wouldn't have been able to tell me anyway.

 

[Light]

"What de matter now, massa?" said Jup, evidently shamed into compliance; "always want for to raise fuss wid old my pals. Was only funnin' anyhow. Me feered de bug! what I keer for de bug?"

LOL, but what the hell has this story got to do with deciphering this code? Or is this:

http://www.pambytes.com/poe/stories/goldbug.html

...not the full version??

 

[hibernal_dream]

^ Don't mess with de bug, massa

 

[Vega Skater]

http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/to...modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1

That should help.

Katabasis.. what is 'e'? lol

 

[Katabasis]

"What de matter now, massa?" said Jup, evidently shamed into compliance; "always want for to raise fuss wid old my pals. Was only funnin' anyhow. Me feered de bug! what I keer for de bug?"

LOL, but what the hell has this story got to do with deciphering this code? Or is this:

http://www.pambytes.com/poe/stories/goldbug.html

...not the full version??

Well, Mikael is the massa, Jup is Per, and de bug is Peter Lindgren.
...
I'm taking the piss by the way. Keep reading and the relevance of the story will become apparent.

 

[Katabasis]

Katabasis.. what is 'e'? lol

"E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled e (pronounced /iː/), plural es or ees (also written E's, Es, e's, etc.)." (from wikipedia).

Believe it or not, if you can't make it past all the "massa"s and "Jup"s in the Gold Bug, that quote is the beginning of a clue. A very simple clue, but one nonetheless.

 

[Light]

Well, Mikael is the massa, Jup is Per, and de bug is Peter Lindgren.

No, I see now... Vega Skater's link helped, thanks... the version I was reading cut off half-way through with a rather disconcerting "The End"...

(I was hoping the story would give a little more clue than simply how to solve this type of cipher, been doing that since I was a tadpole Still, it was a fun little read!)

 

[Katabasis]

(I was hoping the story would give a little more clue than simply how to solve this type of cipher, been doing that since I was a tadpole Still, it was a fun little read!)

Well, there are two quotes from that story that - if followed to the letter - would have helped me (with a little lateral thinking) solve the code a lot sooner. Unfortunately I went down a couple of blind alleys before realising what was going on.
So, yes, it is a simple explanation of the substitution cipher, but it is still a helping hand.

 

[zacmenta]

I hope it says something along the lines of "Me fans are stupid gits". I'll have to try and figure it out myself when I get my copy tomorrow.

 

[liquidcow]

Not knowing anything about the Gold Bug, and not having tried to crack the code myself, what I would say is that I would probably start by picking out the words that are only two letters long, as they are likely to be something like 'to' or 'of', then seeing if those letters make sense when slotted into other words, and so on.

 

[Reelo]

Not knowing anything about the Gold Bug, and not having tried to crack the code myself, what I would say is that I would probably start by picking out the words that are only two letters long, as they are likely to be something like 'to' or 'of', then seeing if those letters make sense when slotted into other words, and so on.

Problem is, it's one big wall of symbols, no punctuation, no spaces. The best way is to start finding the most common symbol, which is likely to be the letter "e" and then work from there finding a reocurring string of 3 symbols with the last one being "e" which would likely be "the"...

 

[x_kirby]

can't someone just post the damn solution already. I really don't get why people need to hold back on it, i mean it's a trial and error puzzle anyway so it's about as interesting to solve as algebra homework

 

[Katabasis]

It's more than trial and error.

 

[burntoast]

I'm surprised people are using a computer for this... The old fashioned way worked just fine for me. Plus you also get a 'feel' for the code that a computer printout of a frequency table just won't give you.
The first thing that clicked into place for me is something that the computer wouldn't have been able to tell me anyway.

There's nothing wrong with it. The computer ends up doing the grunt work. I'm still going to work out the cipher on my own.

 

[liquidcow]

Problem is, it's one big wall of symbols, no punctuation, no spaces. The best way is to start finding the most common symbol, which is likely to be the letter "e" and then work from there finding a reocurring string of 3 symbols with the last one being "e" which would likely be "the"...

Ah ok, now that I have a copy I can see that it's a big block. I thought at first that the dashes were spaces but then I noticed that there were occurrences of two in a row, or at one point three in a row. Does look like quite a task I admit. There is one symbol I've noticed occurs only once, so I'm wondering if that's either an X or a Q.

 

[Lothlorien]

fuck, this is exciting. telling by what some people are saying the code is lyrics or a story with the lyrics in them. this is great stuff, i wont be getting my copy(ies) until tomorrow, i cant wait to figure this out.

 

[liquidcow]

The story 'The Gold Bug' that Katabasis mentions can be found here:

http://www.eapoe.org/works/tales/goldbga2.htm

The relevant part is about three-quarters of the way down and starts with the phrase 'Here Legrand submitted the parchment to my inspection.' (use 'find in this page' on your browser).

I'm going to give it a go I guess...

 

[prowlergrig]

alrite i've had enough of this, i'm making a new thread, katabasis PLEASE post the message there
http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/opeth/399742-spoiler-warning-do-not-enter-watershed-code.html

 

[Lothlorien]

So are the special edition and regular edition cd booklets different????? different images, etc, or just different code?

 

[burntoast]

Here's a run-down of the frequencies with which each symbol appears within the ciphertext:

http://burntoast.net/watershed/

I might have made a couple of mistakes when inputting the ciphertext (i.e., substituting the wrong character for a symbol), but I'm sure they're negligible.

This isn't a solution by any means, but it's a good start for people who want to work on deciphering the code without the drudgery of having to count the occurrence of each symbol.

EDIT: Solution posted.