(SPOILER EDITION) Descent of the Durtle into Madness

Borx · January 14, 2019, 6:30pm

That is entirely something Koichi would come up with too.

ctmf · January 14, 2019, 7:32pm

Most of the book ciphers don’t make words… but they make letters. Maybe the ones that don’t make words aren’t meant to be read in isolation, but mixed together and anagrammed.

tombo · January 14, 2019, 11:01pm

One of the ideas I’ve been mulling is that perhaps the different book ciphers have different means of solving them.

Multiple pages with characters
Moving forward from the last character
Changing the direction (forward/backward) with each character

However, I haven’t experimented much because a physical copy of the book is required because many of the pages needed for analysis aren’t available here.

Belthazar · January 16, 2019, 9:46am

Went back to the Tofugu article to see if there were any other differences from the archived version, but that’s literally it - just the addition of those ten strings of numbers. Got a brief moment of hope when I noticed Koichi in the background of the Japanese for Everyone photo throwing a thumbs-up, but he’s there in the old version too.

Stared at the book pages for a while too, but no amount of counting from different points is doing anything, and frankly, I’m getting quite bored of staring at book pages and counting from different points. Thinking the only way we’ll get a further clue on this is to go back and solve the previous puzzle. Maybe that’s why the Regular Durtle was so happy for us to schism - because there’s literally no point to it without the previous solution.

Saruko · January 16, 2019, 2:19pm

When Koichi said this in the other thread, I took that to mean that, yeah, we’ve gotta figure out the 4 lines first, and probably independent of the book cipher.

spamneko · January 16, 2019, 2:30pm

Yeah, that was my take as well. It’s back to the four line cipher.

The question for the spoiler thread is if the article names can be used as a valid crib as first suggested by tehgeer. (SPOILER EDITION) Descent of the Durtle into Madness - #144 by TehGeer

tombo · January 16, 2019, 4:29pm

Instead of book pages, I’ve spent a lot of time exploring that angle and it went no where. Every pattern that I can find in the numbers doesn’t hold up when trying to validate the titles as a crib.

rfindley · January 16, 2019, 8:16pm

Maybe someone else already thought of this, but with all the mention of Reviews: Lobby, B3, Koichi…

And I just realized that the book ciphers have all been on tofugu.com/reviews/*

As people have already noticed, of the 4 encrypted clues, 3 have matched length with URLs that have clues.

AABQD010L76223CEGD72FI5DPBOJJMO+
how-to-install-japanese-keyboard

B51BIQPGS206HD
genki-textbook

00LB269G
????????

D02315CPQAWDF0B~IL7KB1FG+A
beginner-japanese-textbook

And also that there are 22 URLs are the same length as the 3rd keyword above…

22 URLs

AltJapan Interview: Ghosts, Goblins, and Ghouls
Interview About Lang-8's New Service: HiNative
Ashigaru – Japan's Overlooked Warriors
Bosozoku Biker Gangs Just Aren't What They Used To Be
Botaoshi: The Sport Where You Knock Down That Pole Or Die Trying
What Is a Butsudan? And Why Are People Paying $630,000 for Them?
Furigana: What it is and how to use it
Gyaru-go, The Language Of The Mysterious And Elusive Creature: The Gal
Otonagai: A Japanese Word for Your Toy and Candy Habit
Why Tsundere Is So Attractive?
Tsundoku: Japan's Word for 'Books You Buy But Don't Read'
Japonism: What Made Van Gogh Great
Mimikaki: Ear Cleaning and Romance in Japan
Namahage: Akita’s New Year’s Ogre
Nurikabe: Hitting the Wall in Japan
Pachinko and Gambling in Japan
Purikura: The Joy of Japanese Photo Booths
Washitsu Is a Room With Many Uses.
HiNative: The Tofugu Review
You can practice kanji and stroke order, all with one handy app. Read our in-depth review to see if it's right for you.
Tonoharu Part 3 is Here After a Six Year Wait
Harmonica Yokochō Bar: Hanachan

But only 3 of those are in the reviews section:

Has anyone scoured these three articles?
I’ll take a look this evening, but thought someone might want to get a headstart.

Safarigirl · January 16, 2019, 8:23pm

Yes, I checked those back when @Belthazar brought up the very same point. There’s nothing in any of the source code, and I didn’t do any Wayback machine-type comparison of edit history. I skimmed the articles, and saw nothing.

I had originally thought the furigana article would be our Golden Ticket, but no cigar…

.
.
.
Wait. I don’t recall Tonoharu being on Belthazar’s list…

Hang on.

Safarigirl · January 16, 2019, 8:39pm

Okay. Nothing there that I can see. Although the article did make me want to read the books.

Belthazar · January 16, 2019, 8:46pm

Aye, it did, rather. I never got around to hunting them down, though…

tombo · January 16, 2019, 9:17pm

When I put together that list, Tonoharu was on it

emucat · January 16, 2019, 9:20pm

This make sense…

the clue also say to start from death (4)… and that’s what we have been doing… but only the Genki an DBSG have’s clues in the code…

emucat · January 16, 2019, 9:20pm

What about reviews by Koichi?

TehGeer · January 16, 2019, 9:36pm

Also, in case this wasn’t specifically stated previously, the two review pages with Durt Durt comments are linked to us from the book cipher page:

TehGeer · January 16, 2019, 9:44pm

My comment above links 3 of the 4 pages found together.

So I’m thinking we are missing something that was supposed to take us from the keyboard page to the book cipher page and the translation of “starting from death or four” could be the clue to get to that page.

Maybe we were supposed to notice the comments in the keyboard page and the correlation of the cipher’s length to the keyboard article’s name length. Then the clue to start from four would cause us to look for Tofugu pages that match the length of the fourth cipher and bring us to the book cipher where we would then notice the comments on that page.

Is it possible that the keyboard cipher is merely to notice number of characters and that the actual values are meaningless?

Just a theory, not sure what I believe, just trying to spread ideas.

Belthazar · January 16, 2019, 9:46pm

Hey, when I put together my list that @Safarigirl mentioned , Tonoharu was on that too.

Safarigirl · January 16, 2019, 10:04pm

And I may even have looked at it at that time, I just didn’t recall it.

emucat · January 17, 2019, 8:40pm

I guess we ran out of ideas…

Anything regarding Probability?

What about this?

Have any brave durtles attempted the journey to Durtle Heaven before? If so, what happened to them?

Have you seen many Durtles on your way? Perhaps they’re all deeper… or perhaps they just haven’t bothered because they know the folly of even attempting.

hachiken · January 17, 2019, 10:08pm

Additionally these urls on the tofugu site also have 8 characters.

Summary

I’ve been through some of the urls with 8 characters a little while ago but I wasn’t able to find additional comments in the code.

Maybe it’s necessary to work out the cipher to get that last word for a clue or word that isn’t a tofugu url, but at this stage the only thing we know conclusively is that Q = - or space.