OK, this one was pretty fun once I got going! I couldn't come up with a more automated solution, so I did visual inspection (as it looks like most others did).
Workflow:
Process:
Spoiler
- Break the input into two-character segments (2 encoded chars = 1 output char)
- As expected, the most-common characters are a (qd) and y (ac), which we are given
- ks is also very common (it’s nearly as common as a and y, so it would have to occur in all or nearly all words). Guess that this is a space.
- Use spaces as a delimiter to break out the individual words.
- The most-common word is three characters, not beginning with a vowel. Assume this is the. Now we know t, h, and e.
- The next-most-common word (#3) is a_ _ --> assume this is and. Now, we know n and d.
- The next word (#4) is a single vowel. Since we already have a, assume this is I.
- Then, we have two words (5-6) that start with the same letter, but one ends in -yay. So, we know #6 is a 2-letter word starting with a vowel, and #5 is a 2-letter word ending with that same vowel. The most-likely ending vowel for a 2-letter word would be o.
- #9 is _n, and we’ve already used o, so this must be i. 9C (capitalized) was I, so 9c is probably i.
- Assuming a capitalized second character means the letter is capitalized, go back and add capitals for the letters we already know (A, Y, T, H, E, N, D, O).
- Since we already know t, #12 is probably is (6d=s/6D=S)
- Moving down the list, #15 is with --> now we know w/W
- 2c (#17) and kc are either b or m (me/my or be/by)
- Since we know not, the next-most-common _o_ word is for. Guess #18 is for. We now know f/F/r/R
- Now we have enough character mappings to run the macro and decode the string
So much guesswork!!
Spoiler
I started with a bunch of common words in English, and luckily chose Shakespeare plays...and went on a rollercoaster of guesses
I've spent soooo much time on this. I tried for a long time by myself but then I liked @Claje 's solutions so much that I decided to go with that approach.
Spoiler
I started with trying to match characters translating a Wikipedia article to pig Latin and finding the frequency of each character. But that didn't work... I didn't think about doing things more manually so went with Claje's solution at this point.
After realising that it was kind of cheating (although I did learn something new when I was recreating it!), I decided to try and decode the pig Latin text to English. It worked for the most part but there are some mistakes there... Anyway, I think it's pretty good for me and I'm also done with this challenge haha
After realising that it was kind of cheating (although I did learn something new when I was recreating it!), I decided to try and decode the pig Latin text to English. It worked for the most part but there are some mistakes there... Anyway, I think it's pretty good for me and I'm also done with this challenge haha
workflow
