MINERVA - read-only archives

Perhaps each pair of numbers represent something, it couldn't be simpler!

Hey, long-time Minerva fan, this latest puzzlement goaded me into joining this forum.

Anyway, focus: a Polish friend of mine has decoded all the numbers.

195 201 227 232 064 244 244 064 195 193 211 211 201 213 199 064 096 064 195 214 213 227 217 214 211 211 197 217 064 217 197 211 214 195 193 227 197 196 107 064 215 215 217 214 209 197 195 227 064 226 227 211 211 064 211 201 229 197 226 064 096 064 244 247 075 246 241 248 107 064 096 241 242 242 075 241 249 064 096 064 197 213 196 000 000

I noticed that there are exactly 255 digits (255 being a special number in computing, more info ), 85 groups of three, and none of the groups go over 255. This may be important.

I've spent hours at this and am none the wiser. Nothing I do with the 'key' produces anything sensible.

Can someone please just post the solution in a spoiler-marked thread? So those of us who want to can concentrate on the message rather than the puzzle.

I think... I've gotta go to sleep. I've spent every waking hour staring at numbers, google, coffee, and whatever else happened to be in front of me. I'm thinking myself to death. Nothing. I haven't had enough sleep these past few weeks to do any major deciphering...

hehe...

Could anybody give me a kickstart? Maybe a hint (big, please) about the dial tone numbers. I got what numbers they are, but could somebody decode them for me or tell me what they do/how to use them as a hint?

A PM will suffice, so not to ruin the experience for the true puzzle solvers... I used to be one, but then I stopped sleeping.

Thanks!

~Mikel S.

If anybody wants a hint, you can always send me a PM, I've helped several people along already. I guess if anybody posts the final answer that's their business, but it is fun to do at least the last bits of decoding yourself. The contents of the message will definitely be revealed eventually anyway.

(unrelatedly, 'rides again'.)

There's easily enough information in this thread to decode the message. If you really, really want a hint, highlight the text in between the angle braces below:

<ASCII is not the only encoding>

That should be more than you need.

Here's a big spoiler, that I have said 3 times already.

<The dialed number is a text string, and the numbers tell which characters you need. Google whatever you translate it into. The data is already in its final form, time to figure out which format it is! :D>

(Anyone who hasn't solved it, ignore this; you won't understand it). Also, Ace is right, you don't need to know the key in order to figure out which format it is. I tried analyzing it and I nearly figured out how to decode it, but the format isn't very logical, the character sequences isn't chronological. See wikipedia for more information. Therefore I failed to decode parts of the message. Had I spent more time without the key, I could have broken it the hard way. :P

Great puzzle, I just wish it had more layers, like if Adam encrypted an URI to the next file that we need to decrypt. :D

Time's up!

If you still want to solve the puzzle by yourself, don't look at the blog-thing!

--- somewhat spoilery post ---

Finally got it, would not have managed without the key. And from my understanding of cryptography it actually is a key, because I had been quite sure about how the message was "encrypted" even while transcribing it, but had been missing that piece of information to actually decode it.

--- end somewhat spoilery post ---

even after reading Adam's post giving the message, I was still compelled to at least decode it by hand, and yes, the DTMF tones were the key I'd probably have missed even if I had managed to transcribe the numbers (congrats to everyone who taught themselves Polish numbers, I just don't have the dedication).

I'm glad I did it, as monkfish said, it was fun reading up on numbers stations, and I found the Conet Project along the way. :)

Hmm, I had a feeling that Adam hinted at this puzzle a while back, and I only found the link now:

Interesting, indeed...

Quite the interesting puzzle. I felt compelled to substitute the letters for myself as well, just for the heck of it. I hope that I'll be able to solve the next one he comes up with before he posts the answer...

The trick is to arrange the number in a circle spiraling inwards. You then close your eyes and imagine a miracle code breaking machine appear before your eyes. Open your eyes and the machine should be there. Use it.

(JK if you haven't read Sphere by M. Crition.)

Still working on the code, managed to get a polish guy to read it for me. (I asked nicely and mentioned I was Canadian and it all worked out quite nicely.) Currently I've writen up a mass of algorithms that do things to the numbers to convert them to text but no luck so far.

Got it! But either my transcription of the numbers is wrong or we have data corruption... Time to check blog...

The question isn't if your version of the data is corrupted (unless a number is missing, you can see the real numbers on the top of page three in this thread), the question is rather what format the data is stored in.