Smokie, I would like to test out your bigram measurement. Could you explain your method again so that I can add it to my program? Thanks.
Are you talking about when I said:
Instead of one big transposition, like one big grid, you are saying two or more smaller grids. Smaller units to work with, such as where cipher books show simple examples of transposition schemes and there are fewer rows and columns. No?
?
I want to show you something that has been bothering me for a while now.
Don’t worry about the red, which is smokie12. Look at the blue, which is the 340.
There are high points at period 5, 10, 19, 29, 34, 39 and 44. Many of the high points are separated by increments of 5. Maybe they are coincidences, but I have been thinking about smaller grids. Smaller chunks to work with when transposing.
In other words, a route cipher, like smokie9, but instead of a grid that is 17 x 19, smaller grids that, because of the route, cause period 19 repeats.
See directly under route cipher:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transposition_cipher
By the way, I found a really cool website, Crypto Corner, which has a scytale and a lot of other really nice examples:
http://crypto.interactive-maths.com/sim … phers.html.
Instead of one big transposition, like one big grid, you are saying two or more smaller grids. Smaller units to work with, such as where cipher books show simple examples of transposition schemes and there are fewer rows and columns. No?
I don’t own any cipher books so I can’t relate. If the following code block is a cipher 17 by 20, then each different number represents a different part with an individual transposition. For instance each part could have an individual period 5 transposition. It could exist in other divisions also, columns, 5 by 5 units, you name it. So far my test only considers horizontal (treating the cipher as one line) part sizes.
11111111111111111 11111111111111111 22222222222222222 22222222222222222 33333333333333333 33333333333333333 44444444444444444 44444444444444444 55555555555555555 55555555555555555 66666666666666666 66666666666666666 77777777777777777 77777777777777777 88888888888888888 88888888888888888 99999999999999999 99999999999999999 00000000000000000 00000000000000000
I want to show you something that has been bothering me for a while now.
There are high points at period 5, 10, 19, 29, 34, 39 and 44. Many of the high points are separated by increments of 5. Maybe they are coincidences, but I have been thinking about smaller grids. Smaller chunks to work with when transposing.
In other words, a route cipher, like smokie9, but instead of a grid that is 17 x 19, smaller grids that, because of the route, cause period 19 repeats.
See directly under route cipher:
It’s bothering me too – and yes, the route cipher is very interesting to consider – Like I have said, there seems to be something wrong with the bigram landscape. I had not noted the increments of 5 before. But I have noted that there seems to be a period on the period so to say.
Another thing, add one column to the right side of the 340 with new unique symbols and suddenly period 5 bigrams are much higher. That is hard to understand and does not seem to relate to any period 19 scheme I can come up with. It’s possible that we have a measurement problem and that it acts as a "coincidence generator" (to quote doranchak) but I’m assuming it is not the case. Though I am making efforts to improve the measurements.
How can period 5 possibly relate to period 19? Well if you have a 18 by 20 cipher with a period 20 transposition then the period between period 5 and 20 is 4 (your increments?). Because stacking periods works multiplicative. Now remove one column and you have a 17 by 20 cipher with a period 19 peak. But still no period 5. But that’s one way how period 5 and 19 could be connected.
Can you come up with a route cipher that seems to meet the demands?
I ran a test with m_2s_cycles measurement considering each position in the cipher as a starting point and wrapping around the cipher until the cipher length is met (period 1).
For the 408, the highest score is given by position 5. For the smokie9 the highest score is given by position 3. So these are close to the real encoding start of the cipher. Guess what, the 340 doesn’t behave again, the best starting point is position 169 (Score: 2191). It may indicate that there is something going on with the row order in the 340.
How can period 5 possibly relate to period 19? Well if you have a 18 by 20 cipher with a period 20 transposition then the period between period 5 and 20 is 4 (your increments?). Because stacking periods works multiplicative. Now remove one column and you have a 17 by 20 cipher with a period 19 peak. But still no period 5. But that’s one way how period 5 and 19 could be connected. Can you come up with a route cipher that seems to meet the demands?
I have been trying to think of a route cipher that causes high count period 19, 29 and 39 plus or minus increments of 5 for quite a while now.
In the meantime, I wanted to report that I modified my "find nulls" spreadsheet so that I can delete every nth symbol starting at position p. I only made p = 0 to 20 and n = 18 to 20 because I have limited resources.
I found that if you delete every 18th symbol starting at position 15, you transform the 340 into a period 18 message and get the same basic list of period repeats, and slightly higher count and score as with period 19.
1. Upper left, the 340 with the symbols to be deleted shaded in blue. The symbols to the left and right of those are shaded light yellow for reference.
2. Upper right, after the symbols are deleted ( actually moved to the end of the message and sorted by value so that all 340 positions are filled ), the light yellow shaded symbols all line up in perfect vertical columns with each other.
3. Lower left, the 340 period 19 matches.
4. Lower right, the 340 period 18 matches after deleting every 18th symbol starting at position 15.
But this is also interesting. Lower left is the list of period 19 repeats, and lower right is the list of period 18 repeats after deleting every 18th symbol starting at position 15. They are substantially the same lists, meaning that adding a null that makes a perfect diagonal line in a 17 x 19 grid, ( or perhaps a perfect vertical line in an 18 column grid or a perfect horizontal line in an 18 row grid ? ) doesn’t change the list of period repeats very much at all.
So that would be my top candidate for a null added at an interval which would cause cyclic misalignments. There are some other high scoring candidates as well.
I have some news. I deleted every 18th symbol starting at position 15. Un-transposed and ran it through AZd32 forwards and backwards. And I didn’t get a solve.
I found that if you delete every 18th symbol starting at position 15, you transform the 340 into a period 18 message and get the same basic list of period repeats, and slightly higher count and score as with period 19.
What I think is happening is the same thing as when a column is added or removed, when a column is added the period increases by 1, when a column is removed the period decreases by 1. Which will result in either an increase or decrease of the bigrams. I do like your idea very much though and when the test that is currently running is finished I’d like to make a test that considers a large amount of such corrections.
You should really check out this 340 manipulation where simply the left-most column has been shifted to the right-most side of the cipher. I think the bigram count will amaze you! Can you explain the increase by the nature of the manipulation?
17 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 33 18 5 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 41 20 34 35 36 37 19 38 39 15 26 21 33 13 22 40 1 16 42 5 5 43 7 6 44 30 8 45 5 23 19 19 3 31 54 46 47 37 19 40 48 49 17 11 50 51 9 19 52 53 10 21 5 44 3 7 51 6 23 55 30 17 56 10 51 4 16 25 11 22 50 19 31 57 24 58 16 38 36 59 15 8 28 40 13 47 21 15 16 41 32 49 22 23 19 46 18 27 40 19 60 13 31 17 29 37 19 61 19 39 3 16 51 20 36 34 62 63 53 55 55 40 6 38 8 19 7 41 19 23 5 43 29 51 20 34 23 38 19 3 54 50 48 2 11 25 27 20 5 61 14 37 31 51 16 29 36 6 3 41 11 30 50 14 53 37 28 19 52 20 3 40 63 47 42 34 22 19 18 11 50 51 20 36 21 58 44 19 6 15 51 18 7 32 50 16 53 61 28 36 8 53 48 19 19 34 20 59 12 30 35 53 47 56 2 4 8 38 39 50 55 16 11 36 28 45 40 20 31 21 23 5 7 28 32 37 57 15 13 3 36 14 19 13 12 63 56 29 19 51 6 26 20 11 33 5 19 19 33 26 56 40 26 36 9 23 42 1 14 54 21 33 36 11 51 10 17 26 29 43 48 20 46 27 23 20 30 55 56 19 4 37 25 1 18 5 10 42 40 39 23 44 62 11 31 58
I have some news. I deleted every 18th symbol starting at position 15. Un-transposed and ran it through AZd32 forwards and backwards. And I didn’t get a solve.
That’s old news. 
Jarlve, I made a new spreadsheet last night. Now I can delete symbols at regular intervals to check for nulls or add symbols at regular intervals to check for skipped symbols. As if he added or skipped while making a route cipher and caused cyclic misalignments. I am very excited about my new spreadsheet.
Can you make me a message. Make a period 18 transposition and add nulls at every 18th, 19th or 20th position starting somewhere in row 1. So that it looks like a period 19 message. Or, if you want, make a period 20 transposition and delete symbols at every 18th, 19th or 20th position starting somewhere in row 1. So that it looks like a period 19 message. And don’t tell me what you did.
I will take a look at the message above. I have been thinking about transposition. It could be some type of double transposition, like a transposition after a transposition. Or maybe he transposed multiple plaintext at the same time. But I want to continue to examine misalignments for a little while.
EDIT: Your manipulation made my count go from 68 to 74, but score went up from 512 to 566, which is a big difference. This was caused primarily by the creation of two highly improbable repeats. 16 and 47 on the left, where there are nine count of symbol 16 but only 4 count of symbol 47. And 22 and 16 on the right, where there are nine count of symbol 16 but only five count of symbol 22. Note also that you made some other changes. In at least one location, you changed symbol 16 to symbol 63.
Jarlve, I made a new spreadsheet last night. Now I can delete symbols at regular intervals to check for nulls or add symbols at regular intervals to check for skipped symbols. As if he added or skipped while making a route cipher and caused cyclic misalignments. I am very excited about my new spreadsheet.
Nice!
Can you make me a message. Make a period 18 transposition and add nulls at every 18th, 19th or 20th position starting somewhere in row 1. So that it looks like a period 19 message. Or, if you want, make a period 20 transposition and delete symbols at every 18th, 19th or 20th position starting somewhere in row 1. So that it looks like a period 19 message. And don’t tell me what you did.
To your specifications:
1 2 3 4 1 5 6 7 8 9 9 10 11 12 11 13 14 15 16 17 18 17 19 20 21 22 23 24 14 25 13 1 24 16 26 27 28 29 30 31 30 3 7 32 33 34 35 36 33 2 37 25 21 38 39 40 26 4 10 31 21 6 3 41 42 35 30 29 9 43 44 45 16 1 19 11 2 17 21 29 34 5 8 15 1 20 23 34 46 1 3 47 40 42 27 35 44 9 4 14 22 38 2 48 31 46 28 15 18 34 41 33 49 5 36 42 10 26 24 8 28 32 49 16 40 43 21 20 19 44 22 4 31 26 2 4 38 40 41 34 3 37 12 5 27 8 22 17 29 33 36 6 7 35 23 9 20 40 25 24 50 10 16 4 19 13 44 29 1 22 43 45 30 29 43 15 46 7 41 37 2 26 35 31 28 42 27 18 14 33 36 49 26 10 13 35 24 22 23 18 7 38 30 17 21 41 9 16 34 47 21 45 40 10 14 50 19 17 16 15 49 27 1 42 5 13 47 16 35 4 9 15 41 18 14 18 31 25 13 8 20 20 24 23 39 6 42 38 11 14 41 33 36 35 18 30 3 10 32 26 5 6 34 37 16 13 2 39 19 49 12 8 24 48 20 44 38 23 7 35 45 32 28 47 27 32 9 25 41 19 5 37 32 26 40 35 15 24 14 12 15 45 6 42 3 14 31 7 45 47 50 26 32 24 23 28 45 37 33 26 29 46 30 14 49 33 36 8 10 17 22 16 45 4 47 6 3 32 21 16 8OA68Z@FW,,XTIT&5 C>UYU97S-%5$&8%> V#[N/"/AFJ!.2R!O: $SE1'V6X"S@AP<2/N ,3?4>89TOUSN.ZWC8 7-.B8AH'<#2?,65E OL"B[CY.P!KZR<XV% W[JK>'3S79?6"VO6 E'P.A:IZ#WUN!R@F 2-,7'$%(X>69&?N8 34/N3CBFP:OV2"[<# Y5!RKVX&2%-YFE/U SP,>.HS4'X5(9U>CK #8<Z&H>26,CPY5Y"$ &W77%-1@<ET5P!R2Y /AXJVZ@.:>&O19KIW %L7?E-F24J[H#J,$P 9Z:JV'2C%5IC4@<A5 "F4H(VJ%-[4:!VNB/ 5K!RWXU>46H@AJS>
Note also that you made some other changes. In at least one location, you changed symbol 16 to symbol 63.
You scared me there, then I checked my 340 with that of doranchak’s webtoy and it is the correct placing for symbol 63: http://www.oranchak.com/zodiac/webtoy/
I also compared with the real thing: 
Obviously I have a problem with my 340. Could you please sum all of the symbols on yours. I have 9477, and if I change the symbol at row 17 column 7 from a 16 to a 63, I get 9524.
EDIT: Better yet, could you please post your 340. Thanks.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 5 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 20 34 35 36 37 19 38 39 15 26 21 33 13 22 40 1 41 42 5 5 43 7 6 44 30 8 45 5 23 19 19 3 31 16 46 47 37 19 40 48 49 17 11 50 51 9 19 52 53 10 54 5 44 3 7 51 6 23 55 30 17 56 10 51 4 16 25 21 22 50 19 31 57 24 58 16 38 36 59 15 8 28 40 13 11 21 15 16 41 32 49 22 23 19 46 18 27 40 19 60 13 47 17 29 37 19 61 19 39 3 16 51 20 36 34 62 63 53 31 55 40 6 38 8 19 7 41 19 23 5 43 29 51 20 34 55 38 19 3 54 50 48 2 11 25 27 20 5 61 14 37 31 23 16 29 36 6 3 41 11 30 50 14 53 37 28 19 52 20 51 40 63 47 42 34 22 19 18 11 50 51 20 36 21 58 44 3 6 15 51 18 7 32 50 16 53 61 28 36 8 53 48 19 19 34 20 59 12 30 35 53 47 56 2 4 8 38 39 50 55 19 11 36 28 45 40 20 31 21 23 5 7 28 32 37 57 15 16 3 36 14 19 13 12 63 56 29 19 51 6 26 20 11 33 13 19 19 33 26 56 40 26 36 9 23 42 1 14 54 21 33 5 11 51 10 17 26 29 43 48 20 46 27 23 20 30 55 56 36 4 37 25 1 18 5 10 42 40 39 23 44 62 11 31 58 19 HER>pl^VPk|1LTG2d Np+B(#O%DWY.<*Kf) By:cM+UZGW()L#zHJ Spp7^l8*V3pO++RK2 _9M+ztjd|5FP+&4k/ p8R^FlO-*dCkF>2D( #5+Kq%;2UcXGV.zL| (G2Jfj#O+_NYz+@L9 d<M+b+ZR2FBcyA64K -zlUV+^J+Op7<FBy- U+R/5tE|DYBpbTMKO 2<clRJ|*5T4M.+&BF z69Sy#+N|5FBc(;8R lGFN^f524b.cV4t++ yBX1*:49CE>VUZ5-+ |c.3zBK(Op^.fMqG2 RcT+L16C<+FlWB|)L ++)WCzWcPOSHT/()p |FkdW<7tB_YOB*-Cc >MDHNpkSzZO8A|K;+
You could also copy-paste from doranchak’s CryptoScope: http://www.oranchak.com/zodiac/webtoy/stats.html
It is a period 18 transposition, but looks like a period 19 transposition because starting at position 12 you added a symbol at every 18th interval.
Score: 22356 Ioc: 736 M: 147 C: 340 S: 50 apirateofnearmythis alreputationthedret dpiraterobertsisfee redacrossthesevensv asforhisruthlessnet sandswordfightingpe owessandiswellknowd fortakingnoprisonec sitisrevealeddurinn thecourseofthestort thatrobertsisnotone manbutaseriesofindn vidualswhopassthenn meandreputationtoas hosensuccessoroncer heyarewealthyenouon toretirewhenthetioi ecomesrobertsandh 1 17 30 4 2 35 36 26 7 45 36 21 4 11 39 9 14 49 8 2 18 31 10 17 44 42 2 35 30 26 45 9 14 19 25 31 33 9 3 17 30 31 21 9 10 4 23 43 10 40 15 41 49 41 7 36 10 4 19 3 21 29 4 26 38 20 15 13 10 41 33 12 19 45 8 12 1 20 7 6 34 14 24 41 40 46 35 14 18 36 8 5 47 10 15 5 21 32 3 5 22 28 34 25 7 24 50 14 35 24 37 50 17 16 6 22 33 41 8 2 32 3 24 41 22 19 18 18 48 32 26 22 25 7 23 34 42 1 48 49 37 50 37 23 17 31 30 20 26 32 16 29 8 24 35 30 20 31 16 12 10 2 18 16 25 3 44 40 24 45 32 9 14 33 29 23 46 40 5 16 26 7 15 13 10 38 35 23 4 35 9 13 2 9 34 28 43 27 4 35 38 49 8 32 23 15 28 47 36 11 1 37 43 46 15 21 8 19 31 30 27 20 26 7 24 45 3 37 12 24 25 44 1 18 20 22 13 28 17 1 20 5 35 14 33 32 37 11 16 21 45 3 34 19 17 44 42 21 42 24 6 45 15 26 21 38 13 26 38 16 47 41 44 29 29 27 41 5 23 34 28 45 29 16 40 14 27 39 1 40 33 22 33 1 18 9 13 39 16 47 6 46 6 47 15 28 40 19 42 49 4 36 22 14 16 47 42 13 27 42 30 6 49 16 29 26 11 27 5 31 6 43 33 34 35 38 2 32 3 14
Well done. One small mistake, I started at position 11.
If something like this is going on in the 340 then I suspect more symbols will be involved in this manner.
I ran through period 18, 19 and 20 EDIT: For the 340. And deleted and added at every nth symbol where n = 9 to 43, starting at row 1.
Comparing to a base count of 68 period 19 matches and total score of 507, it seems as though there are many ways to delete every nth symbol, starting at some position in row 1, causing a higher count and score for period 18 ( blue). In other words, if it is a period 18 message with symbols added at regular intervals, there are many possibilities.
There are three ways to add a symbol at every nth position starting with some position in row 1 that would cause a higher score, but notably lower count, for period 20 ( red ). In other words, if it is a period 20 message with symbols skipped at regular intervals, there are three possibilities. And although the count of period 20 matches is lower than the base count of period 19 matches, the probability scores are overall higher ( less probable for those matches to occur, so much so that the lower count is outweighed by the lower probability ).
So there are some possibilities. I imagine a 17 x 20 grid and a route cipher, but every nth row skipped. Or a null plaintext added at every nth position.
I am also trying to imagine a similar route cipher where the rows skipped are alternated somehow, which would maintain a high count of period 19 matches, but also cause high numbers of period 29 and period 39 matches. Perhaps intervals of 5 or 10 rows, on occasion. Such as skipping row 10 most of the time, but skipping row 5 or 15 once in a while. That would be a very interesting and difficult cipher to skip certain rows in a cyclic manner and the message receiver knew when to skip a row when un-transposing.
The system your describing smokie is or could be a fence rail cipher that is simple to perform
and smokie you posted up the 340 original yesterday and the circle on the side caught my eye as it runs through a series of symbols in a manner that skips? I tried to work on how that would be a clue but came up short.
I’m putting together a spreadsheet of test ciphers so I can run measurements on them and compare them with each other.
When you guys use numeric forms of the cipher texts, are you always using the Z340’s original mapping of symbols to numbers? Or does each test cipher get its own mapping depending on the order of the symbols? (i.e., a symbol gets assigned the number 30 if it is the 30th unique symbol encountered as one reads the cipher text in the normal reading order)
01=H 02=E 03=R 04=> 05=p 06=l 07=^ 08=V 09=P 10=k 11=| 12=1 13=L 14=T 15=G 16=2 17=d 18=N 19=+ 20=B 21=( 22=# 23=O 24=% 25=D 26=W 27=Y 28=. 29=< 30=* 31=K 32=f 33=) 34=y 35=: 36=c 37=M 38=U 39=Z 40=z 41=J 42=S 43=7 44=8 45=3 46=_ 47=9 48=t 49=j 50=5 51=F 52=& 53=4 54=/ 55=- 56=C 57=q 58=; 59=X 60=@ 61=b 62=A 63=6
Also, when you add new symbols to the cipher alphabets, are you starting the numbering of new symbols at 64?
