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Fermilab Calls For Code Crackers
atrocious cowpat passes along a call for help from symmetry magazine, the joint publication of Fermilab and SLAC, noting: "Could be just plain gibberish, it could be something like those wonderfully weird letters to the Mount Wilson observatory, or it could be a message from aliens who just happened to have gotten their hands (tentacles/exoskeleton) on a fax machine." "A little over a year ago, the Fermilab Office of Public Affairs received a curious letter in code (4.4-MB image here). It has been sitting in our files all that time and we haven't had much of a chance to look into breaking the code, nor are we particularly expert at this!"
Three "stanzas" maybe.
Starting with the "middle" stanza, that appears to be some sort of "key" perhaps. Each of the different symbols correspond to a different hexadecimal digit.
In the first stanza, each grouping of lines has 1, 2 or 3 lines.
In the last stanza, each group of lines is only 1 or 2 lines.
Maybe the last stanza is binary?
And maybe the first stanza is base 3?
Anyone else care to wager a guess?
My blog
My question is: Are the tiny dots in the background a dirty fax or photocopier artifact or are they, in fact, the code.
Perhaps Google is targeting Fermilab scientists for hiring.. Don't they have a history of using strange riddles and puzzles for hiring purposes?
Any hint on the source, or at least why they consider it important?
Not to be harsh, but if I send some random code letter to some lab, I guess (hope) it won't make the news, even on slashdot.
Don't take my posts literally; it's just code to control my botnet.
Considering that the ticks are vertically aligned, I would consider the interstitial spaces important parts of the message. Also note that the top block contains no more than three ticks consecutively, while the bottom block contains no more than two. Neither contain consecutive spaces, and both appear to start with a tick (not a space).
Part of it bears a striking resemblance to UPC code for "8200019288".
If I change the 1s to 0 and the 2s to 1, I get some interesting bits.
"J)IEQ)"""$curren;\QHquot;$)T
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Not a critique as such and only vaguely on topic: Does anyone else find it interesting that parent found it natural to represent ternary using 1-2-3 and binary using 0-1?
That was actually my first instinct too when I was "reading" the thing...
"I think I am a fallen star. I should wish on myself."
while it may not be terribly relevant to the solution, it's worth noting a few oddities about the author's writing style. first of all, the second set of vertical lines is likely to be read right to left. notice how well justified the right side of the message is, while the left side terminates at various locations. we also know he writes the individual clusters from left to right based on the strokes left at the bottom of the bars.
secondly, i assume the author is writing with a felt tip pen and is transcribing this from another source. notice how some bars will have a larger dot at one end or the other. i postulate that the author has set down his pen and is checking another sheet to determine what to write, while his felt pen bleeds a little too much ink onto the paper. this, however, doesn't happen with a ball point pen. perhaps this will be of assistance in determining the order strokes were written in, giving us some insight into the author's intent.
thirdly, notice that the author writes the number 0 with a slash through it, but not the number 7 with a dash through it. i'm not an expert on handwriting identification, but certain groups will often be more keen on the selection of particular stylistic numbers, so this may help us to understand something of the author's background.
finally, note that many of the chars used in the second section are letters from other char sets. the letter i is obvious to the english readers, but less apparent is the instance of one that looks suspiciously like a greek capital phi. also, several bear a striking resemblance to chars that appear in a masonic cypher alphabet. http://www.odr.org/anonymous/fam-code.htm can the other chars be identified as belonging to specific alphabets?
The first part is ternary, with 3 substituted for 0. It's somewhat miswrapped, but it appears to say "FRANK SHOEMAKER WOULD CALL THIS NOISE".
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
The first and last parts *DO NOT* look like terniary and binary to me.
Instead, they look like an RLL encoded pattern, similar to what you'd see on a hard drive. Maybe NRZI.
In fact, the first looks surprisingly like (1,3) MFM RLL.
Also reminds me of the old Apple Floppy drive "between any two ones there can only be a maximum of one zero" data writing rule.
We've mostly solved it further down the thread. The top section is in ternary (with 0 replaced by |||), 000-space, 001->a, 002->b, etc. It's strangely wrapped: the spaces and non-spaces at the beginnings and ends of lines count. It says "FRANK SHOEMAKER WOULD CALL THIS NOISE".
The second part we haven't deciphered yet. It's possible that we'd need a Fermilab insider for this.
The third part is RLL. Once you decode the RLL (number of | between consecutive ||), you get the same code as part one, which says "EMPLOYEE NUMBER BASSE SIXTEEN", or so I've been told. This suggests that at least one part of the puzzle requires help from Fermilab people.
My uninformed guess is that once we solve the middle section, we'll get someone's name. His or her employee number at Fermilab spells something out in base 16, a coincidence which Frank Shoemaker would call "noise". Another possibility is that the middle section is hex-encoded employee ID numbers, which would mean that we can't solve it.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.