Data Prep is Murder, literally in some cases - CHALLENGE

[chris_love]

I wanted to let everyone know that tomorrow the UK Midlands Alteryx User Group are hosting their first meeting......and there's going to be something going down in Leicester town - a murder! 

Now should you want to help us solve this ghastly crime then come back to this post tomorrow around 6.30pm BST (1.30pm EDT) and we'll be working on some data clues (which we'll also post here) and help the detectives in Leicester piece together the puzzle behind this terrible crime and catch the murderer before he slips away. Good job we've got just the tool!

[cbridges]

Wow @jdunkerley79! Will your magic rub off on me if I shake your hand at Inspire?

[JohnJPS]

I used a formula tool with various String functions, attached.

Edit: updated with the rest of Part 2 pieces.

[cbridges]

Your solution has me thinking "what the what?"

I'm teasing it apart to figure out exactly what you did!

[TaraM]

Wow @JohnJPS - a minimalist! slick.

[jdunkerley79]

not there unfortunately  consider your hand virtual shaked and dm channel always there

[JohnJPS]

Thanks Chris for a really entertaining challenge!

[JohnJPS]

Awesome solutions!  In the age old tradition of wasting a day to save an hour, I created a Formula AddIn to do the character shifting. Everything is attached.  If interested in running it, you'll have to drop the XML and DLL into the Alteryx install directory's bin\RuntimeData\FormulaAddIn subfolder in order to run the workflow.

[Edit: fixed to allow shifting either direction.]

[JohnJPS]

I thought I would pop back in and mention that I actually utilized some of these ideas today: we're doing a fund raiser and I thought it would be fun to send some things anonymously with an encrypted message.  I also thought that doing a simple bit shift for the entire message would be just way too easy.  Why not shift every word in the message by a different amount?  Basically shift the 1st word by 1 character, the 2nd word by 2 characters, and so forth (wrapping around eventually, so MOD 26, and any shift up from Z means A).

With Alteryx and the CharShift formula add-in located here, this is a piece of cake; the attached workflow does both encoding and decoding with just a handful of common tools.  Feel free to use it when you want to really annoy coworkers who take pride in their OCD.

Happy obfuscation!

[chris_love]

Thats awesome, great news. Hope the fundraiser went well.

[jdunkerley79]

That's fantastic @JohnJPS.

Anyone manage to crack it?