Postcard Code

The code of 221545484848465100503215 is beneath the Semacode on the Perplex City Postcard, does this mean something? This page is going to be used as a workpad for the puzzle.

Images

Postcard Semacode

Theories

• We've tried using numerical translations into Kanji and Hebrew. No luck, though "2210" gives us "SEEK."
• Various ROTing, and conversion to ASCII then ROTing proved...nothing but gibberish.
• Equally, running modulus calculations on the number to bring it into number spaces for ASCII etc. AND converting to ASCII as base 10 and base 16 AND ROTing the results gives yet more gibberish.
• Ditto multiplying the number by 2210 (the number next to the semacode stamp on the card) and trying the above operations.
• Tried translating to EBCDIC: still gibberish.
• Too many digits to be an ISBN or a latitude/longitude.
• Tried mapping numbers to characters in the text of the postcard (i.e. first character in Sente's message is 00, second character is 01 etc.) trying various starting points and different combinations of including/ignoring spaces, hyphens, line-breaks etc. Results were meaningless so ROTed them but still no obvious message.
• Also tried mapping numbers to the letter on the www.perplexcity.com home page.
• Also tried mapping numbers to other various strings on the postcard as well as other sources on the www.perplexedcity.com site, with different offsets, base 9, 10, etc. For all ~5000 results see: Base 10 and Base 9
• Shish tried converting to music using 'beep' command in Linux and Tanner tried mobile phone ringtones but no obvious answers or recognisable tunes were found. Tanner has now broken out into doing Postcard Code Remixes as MP3s, available from his site.
• Frequency analysis of the numbers was similarly unsuccessful. Assuming the string was one-digit numbers gave far too much repetition of characters (for example the 484848 would probably be tetete or etetet) for a meaningful message. Assuming the string was 2 (or more) digit numbers prevented frequency analysis simply because there wasn't enough data to work with (frequency analysis works best over a very large amount of encrpyted data).
• Currently trying various ways of converting number to binary (all possible methods of writing number in binary have been listed on unfiction forum by Seej) then converting that binary to morse code, i.e. 0 = dot, 1 = dash (or vice versa) and interpreting that series of dots and dashes (actually more complicated than it sounds as morse code characters don't always have the same number of dots and dashes so there's no clear way to tell when one character has ended and another has begun).
• Binary number strings from above method also all converted to ASCII but non-alphabetic characters were output.
• It's not a prime number.
• We've tried indexing in every way to every available text (ie, 31 could be 3rd sentence, 1st word; 3rd paragraph, 1st letter, etc.)
• It's not a phone number or a credit card.
• graphing it in various ways hasn't revealed anything.
• Doesn't appear to be related to a deck of cards because of repeating sequences.
• Assuming code is a series of 2 digit numbers:
  • Reasons to believe this:
    1. "484848" jumps out as a pattern
    2. the numbers are clearly clustered and not very random
    3. all 12 numbers range from 00-51
  • Since numbers range 00-51 we've tried several simple translations using 2 alphabets (ex. A=00, B=01,...Z=25,A=26,...Z=51).
    1. In some cases "484848" translates to "www", but the rest doesn't look like a URL (also tried tinyurl)
    2. In other cases, it translates into a set of letters which can be scrambled to come up with "cube" but the rest is undecipherable. Note: letter on website refers to "XXX Cube" where XXX is blacked out. It looks like about 6 or 7 letters in length, so it could be a proper name.
• It has been suggested that the number may simply be a key for a cipher such as MD5 or RSA but there is no way to verify this until further encrypted messages are received on which the number can be used as a key. This is unlikely to happen until the game starts properly.
• Tried converting the number into different numeric strings and converting to hex, to get unicode and Adobe Postscript characters. Provided Gibberish thus far, even after ROT'ing.
• Tried converting the number to an IPv4 address a few different ways. There are probably more. (Link)
• Tried plotting pairs of numbers as (x,y) coordinates, i.e. the first coordinate would be (22,15). Then joined up coordinates in order plotted, but it didn't give any meaningful shape.
• If 484848 means www, no web extensions can be found through any rots, both forwards and backwards. This also indicates that even if the code is a continously changing code, it isn't a web address.
• Could be a continously changing code every pattern of letters.
• None of the below means anything to us yet:
  • 22 15 45 48 48 48 46 51 00 50 32 15
  • 221 545 484 848 465 100 503 215 = html co-ords? 221, 545, 484, 848, 465, 100, 503, 215
  • 2215 4548 4848 4651 0050 3215
  • 221545 484848 465100 503215
  • 22154548 48484651 00503215

• Tried converting numbers to letters in a 52-piece alphabet, and rotting the letters with code 2210, for example, 22 becomes W and is changed to ROT 2, 15 is P and is changed to ROT 2, 45 is T and is changed to ROT 1, 48 is W and isn't changed at all. No solutions.
• Tried adding each number cumulatively to the previous number/sum of numbers, then converting into letters. All ROTs produce nothing. However, only done using single digit numbers.

Results

For those who don't know, www.soogees.com was created as a fun puzzle to satisfy you while waiting for Syzygy. The authors are anonymous, and say that we'll find out who they are in due time. We traversed our way through the puzzles, finally reaching the www.soogees.com/theend.htm puzzle. After modifying the colour table in photoshop, we got this string of numbers:

2215 45 484 848 4651 00503 215

These perfectly correspond to the number string under on the postcard. Now that we have broken down segments of the code, perhaps it will be easier to solve.

• Posted by xMythx* *Solved by CatherWood* *Contributions by SinVraal, Firefox, xMythx, rRootage*