On February 8, 2023 at 3:06PM EST Greenmachine responded to spontaneousbob:
you would wright it that way, but you are decoding, so it would go in the opposite direction
On January 1, 2023 at 12:41AM EST spontaneousbob wrote:
Figured it out… but wouldn’t the AK pair convert to EU since A and K are in the same column?
On January 19, 2023 at 12:14AM EST Taya wrote:
I went down a long arabic rabbit hole that was not the solution. ha! Fun one for sure.
On January 12, 2023 at 4:31PM EST Just-A wrote:
I think the author should be a little more careful in the future, as fajr is more than simply 'fair' with the j substituted for an i, as is done in the playfair cipher. Googling fajr takes you down an extensive rabbit hole and while I enjoyed learning about Islamic prayer ceremony, it took me wildly off course and frustrated with the purpose of this puzzle.
On January 1, 2023 at 12:41AM EST spontaneousbob wrote:
Figured it out… but wouldn’t the AK pair convert to EU since A and K are in the same column?
On December 29, 2022 at 9:00PM EST Cass wrote:
It's been a long time since I learned a new cipher. This one was so much fun once I got on the right path!
On August 28, 2022 at 2:55PM EST Burns wrote:
It’s not a typo! Substituting j for i is a way of saying that your key should consider i and j interchangeable
On November 16, 2021 at 3:20AM EST imperfekt wrote:
This was pretty crazy. I had to learn what a playfair cipher was and how to decode it... but it was fairly straightforward after using wikipedia to learn how to do them :)
On August 7, 2021 at 11:55AM EST Dre responded to Shauna:
Yes the key is physical prowess so begin the 5x5 grid by spelling it out, while omitting any duplicate letters, then finish the grid with the rest of the alphabet.
On May 23, 2021 at 4:43PM EST Shauna wrote:
Anybody got this yet? I am completely lost. I get that it’s a playfair cipher so do we fill in the grid starting with physical prowess? Any tips?
On May 23, 2021 at 4:43PM EST Shauna wrote:
Anybody got this yet? I am completely lost. I get that it’s a playfair cipher so do we fill in the grid starting with physical prowess? Any tips?
On January 30, 2021 at 1:35PM EST ukla wrote:
Yes, I went way off in the wrong direction at first. There is a Fajr Cup chess tournament. "play fajr" so, 'play chess'... The last names "Welts" and "Weeks" show up fairly prominently in a chess search online. and, golly!, there's also a chess cipher, which it obviously wasn't, but I spent a fair amount of time looking in that direction. I am buffing my nails a little, though, by noting that I did spot the key right away. That's something, at least!
On January 29, 2021 at 11:29AM EST ukla wrote:
I felt a momentary annoyance with the typo which turned fair into fajr. I looked it up, though, and it turns out it's a thing! I'm going to look at it some more and see if I can cook up a way to apply it to solving the puzzle...
On January 21, 2021 at 9:19PM EST PotassiumIsImportant wrote:
I figured the typo was intentional but I was way off at first. Don't google "fajr cipher", all the top hits are Al-Qaeda related. I might be on a list now. As someone who is new to ciphers I thought this one was a great challenge!
On September 27, 2020 at 7:07PM EST dragonite212 wrote:
I think that the "play fair" part of the theorem suggests that the entire puzzle is a playfair cipher. (just got the book and think it's awesome btw)
