So I made a puzzle about different ciphers:
http://itstoohard.com/puzzle/NlLGDWwx

No CV required, ends next Wednesday. The game is bundle game, but solve the puzzle to find out which one.

Hopefully it works, as I encrypted many of the puzzles by hand so be ready for typos :P

It shouldn't be too hard after the hints appear.

Like every other current puzzle, I also made this because of this.

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There was two character typo in Q5 (the decrypted message was still mostly readable) corrected cipher: tybgbgvdgqswnvliwmgfgckubvqkli 1999.

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Solutions:

1: This was just about googling. Mary, Queen of Scots had sky terrier and plotted against Queen Elizabeth. She didn't use good enough cipher and was decapitated as punishment. The plot was called: Babington Plot. There was also some alternative allowed answers like "plot to assassinate Elizabeth" with different punctuations.

2: Count the letters. There are 25 of them, so we can write this message as 5x5 letter square. Rotating the square gives "who is clark kent not superman". Here people had little problems with the ending. I meant it just to mean that superman is not the right answer as a word but superman person is still the one we are looking for. The right answer was Kal-El, which is his birth name on planer krypton.

3: The hint is written in Hexa-decimal and asks to guess number between 1-10. The right guess is Octal number system (base 8). Decoding the message gives "511044N14935W", which is map coordinate located near stone henge. stone henge was the right answer.

4: This was Gold-bug cipher by Edgar Allan Poe. It is simple substitution cipher. The partial key is easy to find. For whole key one must either guess or find the whole key. The cipher tools I posted as hint had the whole key. Decrypted message as: "Marvel Comics goldbug firts appearance march of what year" which can be found from wikipedia. The answer was 1977. As side note the hint was excerpt from Poe's poem and also mentioned golden bowl which is kinda like golden bug :P

5: This was Playfair cipher. There was unfortunate typo in it that I corrected here in the OP. Personally I encrypted it by hand using the wikipedia. It is possible to decrypt it with same rules, or by using online decrypters. The key that was meant to be used was "TV quiz jock, Mr. PhD, bags few lyn" (so the given key without x). Decrypted message reads as: "uefafairplaywinqerassociationq". Here the Q is letter doubler letter, so it reads:
"UEFA fair play winner association 1999". Again this can be found from wikipedia, the answer was: scotland.

6: This was two letter substitution cipher invented by Della Porta. Simply putting "Della Porta Cipher" in google's image search should give the key. Using the key gives: "when della Porta released this work". This is maybe little mystic question, but reading the wikipedia article about Della Porta tells that this cipher was released in his work "De Furtivis Literarum Notis" which was released in 1563 and that year is the answer.

Solving all 6 questions gives another cipher as a answer (go solve it if you want to see it). Those 5 numbers are all prime numbers, looking from any table of prime numbers what n'th prime they are. Like 661 is 121st prime. Those numbers are then just basic decimal encryption. Giving the right letter to giveaway.

11 years ago*

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lol'd at 6. :P

11 years ago
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cipher 2 hard

11 years ago
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I do not like ciphers.

I'm a rebel!

11 years ago
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Shameless shelf-bump. No solvers so far. 30 players with almost 90 guesses, is everyone giving up on 3rd question? (by guessing wrong number in the hint or not having map with rocks?). Is anyone still solving this, any hints needed?

11 years ago
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Actually I'm stuck at Q2. I decoded the message, tried many answers, but still failed to solve it.
I understand what the Q5 hint means, but I can't decode it.
Q1 is solved, and no idea for the rest.

11 years ago
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q2: birth name (the "not s"-part just means the "s" is not an answer, the C-K is still that "s-person", sorry if that caused confusion)

q5: I double checked this, there was small typo, corrected version in OP.

with 4 and 6 the hints give (might be indirect) the inventor of those ciphers, if that helps in the identifying process.

edit: formatted the text better and wrote some extra to hint to 2

11 years ago
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I think my brain esploded.

11 years ago
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I would love to try but I don't know anything about ciphers and how to decode them.

11 years ago
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Something just cracked in my head, i should rest now...

11 years ago
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Since people's heads are overheating, and I didn't mean this puzzle to be too hard, I have updated the OP with bunch of hints.

11 years ago
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Still no entries, so time to bump. Is there something specific where you are stuck? Need more hints?
Remember that even though I did these by hand, you don't have to there are internet solvers for most of these ciphers, so you just need to identify the cipher. Hopefully that wasn't too big of a spoiler.

11 years ago
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Deleted

This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

11 years ago
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hmm... I hope people are not turning around when they see that question, it's meant to be a very simple thing to google. As a small hint, Mary does not have a lamb, neither has she a head.

11 years ago
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So far Q1 and Q3 (tried only first 3). Q3 is nice.
Edit: Q2 down, though with a hint Q2.iii

Edit2: Q5 solved but with difficulties.

11 years ago
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Morning bump for having Q6 solved.

Edit: and Q4. Now...

Edit2: ...solved (last idea is great)

11 years ago
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Bump for solved :)

11 years ago
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Yey, one solver, and chour seems to be proceeding nicely. Updated the OP with small hint for 3 as it seems I wasn't that good at reading map.

Edit: Made it two

11 years ago
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Two! Make it two! :)

11 years ago
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I'd love to see solutions

11 years ago
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Oh sure. Solutions posted.

11 years ago
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Thanks :)

11 years ago
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Closed 11 years ago by Plimsoll.