Challenge #177: Ham Hamlet

A solution to last week's challenge can be found here!

This challenge was created for a HackCU hackathon event in which teams were formed and were given 24 consecutive hours and Alteryx Designer to solve the challenge.

In this challenge you must break apart the given [encoded_string] into two character pairs and then build a decoder table, mapping the two-character pairs into ASCII characters to reveal a pig-latin encoded document.

To solve, or not to solve: that is the question.

challenge_177_start_file.yxzp

challenge_177_solution.yxzp

Parse

Join

Preparation

Advanced

Data Analysis

Data Preparation

Transform

Difficult

Accepted answers

All comments

binu_acs

solution attached

Challenge_177_solution_BV.yxzp

scoles0617

My solution:

challenge_177_start_file.yxmd

mmontgomery

Challenge #177.

Spoiler

I started by decoding a few letters (like space and e) but then noticed that lower case and upper case letters starting the same which cut the number needed down and then noticed after key letters like a, e, t, h, that the code was sequencing: 5c was e; ac was a; 3c was d; 4c was d. So the number would increase on each letter for c until 9 and by that point i had 18 from that alone plus other key letters along the way with doing most common letters for missing words like "the", "and", "are" etc.

c_177.yxzp

CHarrison

My solution

challenge_177_start_file.yxzp

FrederikE

Took me 3 hours to get it done, fun one!

Spoiler

Challenge 177.yxzp

acarter881

Here's my solution.

Spoiler

challenge_177_start_file.yxmd

JamesCharnley

Spoiler

Looked at this one for absolutely ages and didn't really use that much Alteryx, rather just brute forcing logic going down a list of words. I found that isolating my list to words whose pig latin started with A just about allowed me to find a new letter or two with every run of the workflow. Not pretty but worked in the end.

Challenge 177 Zipped.yxzp

ARussell34

I'm thankful for all the tips that every 2 characters represented one letter or character in the message. Identified that "ks" represented a space, then found "t" and "h" as "the" is one of the most frequent three letter words. Then identified the rest of the vowels since they provided the code for "a" and "y." After that I found "b" for since we already had "y" "by" was easier to identify. Then following the same behavior I found "s", "f", "r", and "n." Then after reading some of the other posts the second letter in a code when capitalized is the capital letter. That then gave me over 26 characters identified which was enough for the macro provided to give the rest of the solved characters and I found the overall final message in Pig Latin.

AR_challenge_177_sol.yxmd

grazitti_sapna

Solution:

Challenge _177.yxzp

ahsanaali

Spoiler

Thanks to @Claje, was able to understand and finish this challenge.

challenge_177_Solution_AAA.yxmd

RWvanLeeuwen

What a horrible horrible challenge this is and was. I am so glad I have something that resembles a solution workflow. Here's my take - over and out!

Spoiler

challenge_177_start_file attempt2- RWvL.yxmd

Raj

This was something new and interesting

177.yxmd

alacoume

Hard! It tooks me days...

challenge_177_solution.yxmd

chandler-gjino

attaching my solution

177_Advanced_Difficult_Parse.Preparation.DataAnalysis.Join.DataPreparation.Transform.yxzp

mithily

Spoiler

use the cryptography website cited by Digan and followed the clues

challenge_177_start_filemili.yxzp

olga_strubbe

I followed the solution proposed to figure out the extra credit assignment - this was a tough one, I admit, for me. I did learn new tips on using RegEx when parsing into 1-4 word pairs (nice use of RegEx!) thank you , @AYXAcademy !

challenge_177_solution_OS.yxmd

ed_hayter

This challenge was hell

Spoiler

Strategy was to identify the most common characters a, y and space then try and reverse engineer some of the values based on word configurations.

I started by working out by or "ybyay" and also found S from a word that looked like "atessay" as states.

Also worth noting you can brute force the macro by trying all combinations as it does not penalize wrong guesses.

challenge_177_start_file.yxzp

gawa

done

challenge_177_start_file_gawa.yxmd

Christina_H

Fun challenge using trial and error to decode the message!

Spoiler

challenge_177_CH.yxmd

tammybrown_tds

This was nothing short of confusing for me. I really didn't understand what it was doing, even after using the solution for a guide.

challenge_177_tbrown.yxmd

BSilverblatt

Thanks for the challenge! Here's my solution:

Challenge_177_BS.yxzp

geoff_zath

Spoiler

challenge_177_start_file_GKZ.yxmd

Bobbyt23

I initially cheated by 'borrowing' the lookup table from the macro as I couldn't work out how to get the letters.

However, I then saw @Claje method of hammering through all possibilities of ASCII characters to the pairs and thought it was brilliant, so replicated that.

Weekly Challenge 177 23-10-24.yxzp

lwolfie

Once I saw the pattern it got easier. I did start with the cryptography for dummies.

challenge_177_solution_LW.yxmd

ANNE_LEROY

Thank you Shakespeare, you helped me a lot !

First part done;

second part; partial solution but readable.

my_solution_0177.yxzp

JBevan89

Thank goodness I had not heard at the time of this 24 hour hackathon....would have been painful

challenge_177_JB.yxmd

Carolyn

Solved! I started by figuring out the vowels and then trying to figure out the most common consonants in 2 letter words that start with a vowel - "of" "on" etc. I was doing okay but then I ended up with saying "this one is either T or R or S - let me list them all in the Text Input file since one is going to be right". After a bit of that, I finally gave up and went with brute force (details in the spoiler)

Spoiler

I generated a list of all letters A-Z & a-z. I took the list of all the 2 letter combos and appended it to my alphabet list. I ran that through the macro and figured that at least 26 of them would be correct, which would unlock the macro

2025-06-12 09_27_33-Alteryx Designer x64 - _challenge_177_Carolyn.yxmd.png

2025-06-12 09_27_33-Alteryx Designer x64 - _challenge_177_Carolyn.yxmd.png

2025-06-12 09_26_17-Alteryx Designer x64 - challenge_177_Carolyn.yxmd.png

challenge_177_Carolyn.yxzp

SteveY02

just curious, how many times do you use to split this string? I've alreday run 45 mins, still runing. Is this crazy?

Erin

I added a Step column to my cypher table so that it would be easy to walk through this step-by-step if trying to walk through this from the beginning.

Spoiler

Big yuge THANK YOU to @T_Willins because I could not have completed this one without the logic you posted on how you solved this. I literally took a screenshot of your post and put it on my canvas as a guiding north star. Also, thanks to @Carolyn for putting up with my texts as I complained the whole way through this one. But I finally got it!!!!

challenge_177_submission_EM.yxzp

DaisukeTsuchiya

Spoiler

challenge_177_start_file_DT.yxzp

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