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Submit FeedbackOK, @cplewis90, this time we are tackling KRYPTOS!!!
(https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/headquarters-tour/kryptos)
There are 4 Sections to KRYPTOS, 3 have been solved.
We will attack Sections 1 and 2.
(The rest are beyond Advanced and are just for fun:)
Extra credit to those who can solve Section 3.
EXTRA EXTRA credit if you can solve Section 4!!!
(The start_file has been corrected for Section 3 as of 2019-05-21 -- Thank you @JohnJPS!)
And this is why I love Mondays.
This might be my favorite challenge ever, purely because it's a REAL one. SO COOL @TerryT!
Cheers (and I'll be back once I solve your dare, DO NOT WORRY, it will consume me until solved...),
NJ
EDIT: Finished Section III! 🙂 Rather pleased with myself until I considered that I basically had the answer to begin with... and would have had no idea where to begin had I started without any clues. Also, I have definitely gone down the rabbit hole of Kryptos theory. CANNOT. STOP. ANALYZING.
Thanks! But I'm giving @cplewis90 all the credit / blame for the sleepless nights that may result from this challenge!
Here's my solution for parts 1 - 4
My solution for Parts I-IV ... it's really a challenge, great!
Here's my solutions for Section 1 and Section 2.
I used iterative and batch macros throughout to make my solution flexible for different inputs, which made Section 2 a breeze! The only change was to add a Data Cleansing tool to remove the pesky punctuation.
@TerryT, Unless I'm missing something or perhaps cheating, from the starting point given, it's trivial to obtain the results desired for Section III. (The first two parts were excruciating and I cheerfully just studied other spoilers in order to learn the landscape; but Section III just seems to be sitting there plain as day... are we supposed to start from a different spot than the "Section III" text input provided?)
A-ha... I think the starting point needs to be that given here... then it's hard again. 🙂
Excellent challenge @TerryT
Here's a spoiler free solution to sections I and II
The 3 outputs of Macro are
W=Vigenère Wheel Answer to Part I
T=Vigenère Table Answer to Part II
D=Decrypted text Answer to Part III
Section III will have to wait until I get a little more free time
On an unrelated note: the original version of my macro fell afoul of the issue raised by @cmcclellan here. Essentiallly, the generate rows tool had an initialization expression of "A" used Char<="Z" (uppercase Z) as the Condition Expression, while using the CharFrom\ToInt functions to increment the Char. When I ran this version, the loop stopped not at "Z" but at "z", implying that lowercase "z" was used to test the condition. Anyone else have this issue?
Dan