Hi, Raht...

Thanks for the tip, but I was already to the point of decoding the
bits that way. I was modeling my own theory of the code as some sort
of Huffman tree against a particular frequency table, with the trick
being to find the right table. Their clues were certainly indicative
of some sort of frequency-based substitution, so I threw together some
code to build a Huffman tree, then threw some frequency tables at it,
but the results never came close to anything intelligible.

I finally broke it the other day, realizing I had come closer with a
separate theory I had abandoned. And, yes, I certainly had the
"ovaltine" effect when I realized the answer...but it was a great
mental exercise to see if the stuff you *think* know about encryption
had sunk anywhere into the gray matter in *practice*..

-dew


(raht) wrote in message om...
(David Whitney) wrote in message . com...
Yup, I've been trying, but no luck so far. Actually thought I was
making some headway until I got their 1-21 clue, which actually
confused me more than helped...but it is great fun.

I'm sure some more experience cryptographic types could break it
readily, but its an interesting project if nothing else...

Good luck!

-David



(Pierre) wrote in message . com...
Has anyone had any luck decoding the message on the Spirit Mars
Exploration Rover DVD?

Have a look at http://planetary.org/news/2004/crack-the-code.html for
more.


P.


Let me see if I can help a little?

take a line from the example

---ll---lll--l-----llll-llll------lll-lll-lllll-ll-ll-llll--ll---lll----l-ll--,

now break it into 3's (it's 3 bit binary)
--- ll- --l ll- -l- --- -ll ll- lll l-- --- -ll l-l ll- lll ll- ll-
ll- lll l-- ll- --l ll- --- l-l l--,

the - = 0
and l = 1

so the breakdown into numbers is

--- ll- --l ll- -l- --- -ll
000 110 001 110 010 ect....

now.. we have to turn those into real numbers we can understand..

it's simple math now..

the places in the 3 bit binary are

4 2 1

if a 1 is in the 4 place it = 4
if a 1 is in the 2 place it = 2
if a 1 is in the 1 place... you get the idea!
if a 0 is in a place it = 0 no matter what.
so now you take a group and add the values up.. for example

010 would really be 0+2+0 which = 2
110 would be 4+2+0 which = 6
000 would be 0+0+0 = 0
and so on...

when you finish that step you get a long line of numbers
the trick is figuring out what numbers = what letters...

I hope this helps somewhat without taking the fun out!
Raht