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Cracking the Quicksilver Code

Posted by timothy on from the greatest-living-writer dept.

wka writes "Todd Garrison describes in detail how he solved the cryptographic puzzle promoting Neal Stephenson's forthcoming book Quicksilver, and the reward for his effort. Stephenson himself calls Garrison's story 'remarkable' because Garrison was completely unfamiliar with the system of writing (Real Character) used in the puzzle. Also, Stephenson notes that the system and its creator play roles in The Baroque Cycle."

9 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. Been there.. by User+956 · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's kind of like when I cracked the "stilted English" code used in Tolkein's Lord of the Rings.

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
  2. If it ain't Baroque... by killmenow · · Score: 4, Funny

    why fix it?

    1. Re:If it ain't Baroque... by zerOnIne · · Score: 4, Funny

      that was horrible... this is worse:

      Baroque: When you are out of Monet.

      --
      09
  3. Re:Remarkable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I also think Garrison's story is remarkable in that you'd think just about anyone would have better things to do with his or her time than crack a fake cipher being used as a promotional tool for a book.


    Right, like posting to slashdot to belittle an effort to crack a fake cipher being used as a promotional tool for a book.
  4. and here you are sniping about it on slashdot by autopr0n · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yup, doing a puzzle is not interesting at all. We should immediately burn all puzzles and brainteasers immediately. In fact, even reading a book is a waste of time. So we should burn those too. And movies, television.

    It's clear that human time is to precious to waste on anything. We must endeavor to eradicate time wasting from existence, in order to concentrate on important things. Like insulting people on the internet.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  5. Re:Slashdotted ... by orthogonal · · Score: 4, Funny

    If you understand this, send a fax to 1 (212) XXX-XXXX

    That fax number's in a strange code too. And it's really resistant to the character frequency analyses I've been trying.

    I think it might be 555-5555 though, I heard that number in some movie.

    --
    Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
  6. After reading the article, the funny thing is this by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Funny

    Imagine being the guy so obsessed with Real Character that you have scanned in the whole book and made a huge website about it.

    Meanwhile, someone just stumbling across the site uses all your work to get a signed copy of the book!

    If the web site author had run across it, he probably could have just read the thing right there and solved it in about a minute. I wonder if they knew the site existed before publishing the puzzle?

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  7. Re:I found Snow Crash fairly weak by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Funny
    > Starts off well, but loses it long before the fairly disappointing conclusion. It didn't make me want to rush out and get Cryptonomicon, which I've never bothered to read.

    Yeah, give Cryptonomicon a chance. After two or three novels, he's gotten to the point where he can end a novel in about 4-5 pages, rather than just a paragraph or two.

    I'm a Stephenson fan, and Snow Crash is among my favorite reads, but I do feel your pain. It's as if the ending of most of his books is cut off in mid-

  8. Here's the plaintext by prockcore · · Score: 4, Funny

    Here's the plaintext:

    "You have just violated the DMCA, our lawyers shall be contacting you soon. Have a nice day."