A Canadian Cryptographic Mystery

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Luigi
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A Canadian Cryptographic Mystery

Postby Luigi » Fri Mar 28, 2014 9:28 pm

So anyone who has lived in Ontario for an extended period of time has probably heard of Western University. What you probably have not heard about the institute is that a professor employed there discovered a mysterious cipher text hidden in between the pages of a book from their D.B. Weldon library:

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It included a page with text, a stock photo of a pillow, and a green plastic leaf with 2 coloured dots painted onto it. All characters are black except the leaf characters which are green. The professor was perplexed and contacted every mathematician, programmer and other figures of academia in the university to help solve the mystery but to no avail. So he publicly announced his finding and offered a 100 $ reward for anyone who could solve the mystery. Soon people began to find many more notes and in total 18 have been found, including one that a student had kept for years after he found it in early 2012. The notes all had text, a stock photo of IKEAish items, and a miscelaneous coloured item which reflected in the colour of a symbol in the text.

All notes had a web address written on the back of them: 000xyz.blog.ca. However this website is simple a blog with no entries in it that is titled DBW Stack(D.B. Weldon Library stack). 10 out of the 18 notes were found between pages 16 and 17 of the book they were found in. Of the remaining 8 most people either forgot the page number or never knew it because the note fell out of the book.

If you want to know more here are some links:

http://www.swontario.ca/2014/03/secret- ... tacks.html
http://www.swontario.ca/2014/03/two-mor ... brary.html
http://www.swontario.ca/2014/03/notes-4 ... below.html
http://www.swontario.ca/2014/03/notes-6 ... vered.html
http://www.swontario.ca/2014/03/notes-1 ... vered.html
http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2014/03/ ... on-ciphers

If you think you want to solve it, here is a transcription that might help you:

http://pastebin.ca/2653426

This is all pretty cool stuff, and its not everyday a mysterious elaborate cipher mystery pops up in your own backyard.
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Luigi
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Postby Luigi » Sat Apr 05, 2014 8:14 pm

The code has been cracked:

http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2014/04/ ... olved-seem

Congratulations to the solver Jordan Himelfarb.
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Masato
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Postby Masato » Sun Apr 06, 2014 10:51 pm

Holy shit - smart fukin dude

You crypto people amaze me, I wouldn't even know how to begin thinking of this kind of stuff. I can imagine if you had the right kind of brain how fun it would be though

Very cool thread


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