[Aaron]

First week
050E0B0B0E161A1307041A18040B0B0E161A011108020A1A110E0003 becomes:
Follow the yellow brick road.

[SherlockHolmes57]

  Can you explain how you got these solutions from the code?

[Aaron]

00 represents A, 1A represents space, hex representation is used. Fairly simple.

[Aaron]

0517091307  08082615  241310  0501141213040914  1315090324
becomes
"Every good boy deserves fudge."

The first double digit directly becomes the first letter, the second double digit is the number of letters you have to move forward form the first letter, and the third double digit is the number of letters you have to move forward from the second *decoded* letter. If close to the end, just loop back around to A.

[SherlockHolmes57]

I am pretty much a newbie to some systems of code. What is hex?

[Aaron]

Hex is hexadecimal, the lanugage of computers compressed. It is easier to use than binary in some cases as you have to type a lot less. It is base 16.

[kleigh2]

The first double digit directly becomes the first letter, the second double digit is the number of letters you have to move forward form the first letter, and the third double digit is the number of letters you have to move forward from the second *decoded* letter. If close to the end, just loop back around to A.

Hi Aaron--

Thank you for explaining the solution method for your code-of-the-week.  Even if others consider them simple, this is the most interesting aspect to me of the cipher process.  I am not a "solver" myself, but am fascinated by the patterns used to create (and decode) ciphers, the history of the patterns, and the process by which the patterns were created or developed.  I hope to learn alot of fun facts from the Ancient Cryptography SIG forum.

Happily, kleigh2   

[Aaron]

You are very welcome.

And yes, there are many ways of permuting text into strange patterns, some of them nearly uncrackable if they are complex enough. Even a computer can have tons of trouble trying to decode the hairiest of ciphers, otherwise all those ancient texts would have been solved by now.

However, a quantum computer was recently developed that could very well crack any possible cipher... I'm looking forward to the progress of that computer.