That’s why I want to make sure SboneS is the right word from that book
So far I got these:
eehi e
hubm h
uuno u
nsgn n
I’m missing character 434
Sorry, I promise I’m not trying to be a buzzkill 
. I would think if the words were supposed to be capitalized/non-capitalized they would have just picked a different number. Same thing with adding additional characters like an apostrophe.
I tried lots of combinations of those Turtle,eating,unko,SboneS, separating S into various words, adding ’ to Turtle, capital letters and not, still no luck. (I used the code)
Maybe I need to be more persistent. Or maybe this isn’t the right track
2 Likes
Looked at putting the text from the images into simple keyboard order, both ascending (top down, left right) and descending (reverse that). No luck.
Original
AABQD010L76223CEGD72FI5DPBOJJMO+
B51BIQPGS206HD
00LB269G
D02315CPQAWDF0B~IL7KB1FG+A
Ascending
12223567700+QEIOOPAADDDFGJJLCBBM
12560QDHIPGSBB
26900GLB
~11235700+QWIPAADDFFGKLCBB
Descending
MBBCLJJGFDDDAAPOOIEQ+00776532221
BBSGPIHDQ06521
BLG00962
BBCLKGFFDDAAPIWQ+00753211~
All in one Ascending
12223567700+QEIOOPAADDDFGJJLCBBM 12560QDHIPGSBB 26900GLB ~11235700+QWIPAADDFFGKLCBB
All in one Descending
MBBCLJJGFDDDAAPOOIEQ+00776532221 BBSGPIHDQ06521 BLG00962 BBCLKGFFDDAAPIWQ+00753211~
I cannot get SboneS with any combination in that page. I don’t know how they got it
I think it’s here
1 Like
Wait, so the book thing isn’t for B4? How did we figure that out?
The more I think about it, the more I kinda don’t want article URLs to be the solution to this puzzle, since we already know those URLs, and we kinda need new information if we’re gonna be able to move on…
We didn’t. People are just stuck on this one, so they’re thinking over the other one some more.
1 Like
Yeah, I try that, but I don’t get Snones
You get SboneS when you start from “LESSON”, skip the section letter “c.”, spaces, punctuation, and Japanese.
I don’t… if 4 is an “S”, 8 an “o”, 13 a “n”, 33 is never a “b” for me
ohhhhI was skipping that whole section and going to the Note: Paragraph
I’m going to mosey on down to the Hyogo Cultural Centre in a couple hours to access the resource library there. Hopefully they’ll have the … Romaji(?) version of Japanese for Busy People, and all the others I can verify or whatever.
Anyway, are there any left that are a priority or we are unsure of etc?
2 Likes
The ISBN listed is for the kana version.
… almost all of them.
We’re pretty sure we have the right pages of the right editions, but we can’t make anything of those pages.
I have the Kana version, but the ISBN ends in 1 not 0.
Is it a different year?
It’s supposed to end in a 1.
I think theres a 2006 version as well? I have the newer one that matches the isbn and the right page is in the screenshots/summary already
Aye, I’ve got the 2006 version. The page in question looks the same anyway (though I admit I haven’t gone over them letter by letter).
Ok, this (so far as I can tell) is every theory raised between the solving of the first clue, and Koichi’s 4500-post hint saying we were already pretty close:
- base64
- Images found in base64 binary
- QR codes found in base64 binary
- Hash identification tool - no results
- Strings lengths are all even
- String 4 has length of 26 characters, same as alphabet
- Strings 1, 2 and 4 start with A, B and D respectively (string 3 breaks the pattern)
- “Start from death” means the WaniKani “death” category.
- “Heaven” also exists as a WaniKani category
- “Start from death” means number 4
- 4 relates to April
- “To procreate, Durtles require a turtle shell to burn”
- Use kana-entry keyboard to convert strings into kana
- Since the period on the kana keyboard corresponds to る, the string numbers convert to actual verbs
- Converted strings relate directly to WaniKani vocab items - nixed
- Kana-based Caesar cipher
- Use old-style phone kana entry instead
- The fact that + and ~ are the symbols used means you need to use the shift key (as typing them on US keyboards requires it) - except + is へ and ~ is ろ regardless of the use of shift
- Difference between U and I is 12
- し (i.e. 死) is also the 12th kana
- U is the 21st letter of the alphabet, and the “death” levels start at 21. Also, な is the 21st kana in both gojuon and iroha order.
- U and I are adjacent keys on the keyboard, perhaps meaning we need to shift one key to the right (but doing that operation in either direction causes issues for the + or ~)
- Shift keys down by one row
- Shift keys down by one row and then convert into kana
- Koichi’s favourite kaomoji
- Enter the strings as-is into the password box
- Enter the strings into the URL
- Clue couplets relate directly to each string
- WaniKani page on 祈 has the text “I guess the key was prayer all along. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)” as extra information for its mnemonic (relating to our search for keys to reach B4)
- “Physical descendence” relates to changing uppercase to lowercase
- In the ASCII table, an uppercase letter is 32 (0x20) entries away from its lowercase equivalent
- Japanese cryptology
- Checkerboard cipher turns two kana into one, except that they only use at most ten unique kana as the encoded string.
- Repetition of “durt durt” and “chop chop” means that 々 is somehow involved
- New hidden comment found near the external references section on the how-to-install-japanese-keyboard page means the references themselves are important
- The Great Schism and the book cipher codes
Aaaand doing that didn’t spark a single new idea. Well, I did ponder using a kana character cipher where gojuon substitutes for iroha - and vice versa - but whichever way I did it, I got ゐ and ゑ showing up in annoying places. Plus, they were still gibberish anyway. So, not that.
And the more I stare at this list, the more frustrated I am at the sort of person who’d go “look, you’ve already got it sometime in the last twenty days worth of posts, just look again”.
7 Likes