These look like base64 to me, with the exception of the last one which has the ~, that could indicate a “space” between two different valid base64 strings.
… But base64 decoding them doesn’t lead me to any obvious meaning. Tried decoding in UTF-8, shift-jis, not sure what else might make sense.
Just in case we were making this too hard (not likely, but…) I tried
try_four_words(“AABQD010L76223CEGD72FI5DPBOJJMO+,B51BIQPGS206HD,00LB269G,D02315CPQAWDF0B~IL7KB1FG+A”);
and
try_four_words(“AABQD010L76223CEGD72FI5DPBOJJMO+,B51BIQPGS206HD,00LB269G,D02315CPQAWDF0B~IL7KB1FG+A”.toLowerCase());
not it.
The strings, sorted:
+00122235677aabbcdddefgijjlmoopq
01256bbdghipqs
00269bgl
+00112357aabbcddffgiklpqw~
and all together
++00000001111222222335556667779aaaabbbbbbbccddddddefffgggghiiijjklllmoopppqqqsw~
Is… Is this progress?! I’m so proud of you all ;_; I forgot what this feels like since we’ve been swimming in circles for the last week (the feeling of progress that is, not the feeling of pride! :') )
Ok, I feel like we’ve gone back into overthinking mode. I actually quite liked the solution to the first clue - it’s clever, and elegant, and I really wish I’d thought of it myself. Getting bogged down into keyboard encoding, or base64 encryption… it feels messy.
Though, I do find it curious that both of the symbols which appear in the codes that aren’t alphanumeric are… for want of a better word, “upper-case” symbols. Which is to say, why + and ~ rather than = and `? (Or I guess, looking at the Japanese keyboard maps, ; and ^?)
I do agree. The solution for the first clue is simple and clean and I don’t know how we didn’t see it before. I too checked the number of strokes but didn’t see the date The + and ~ appear when you press down shift, is that important maybe?