UBJ IREL QVFNCCBVAGVAT.

You've lost me.

Of course the point is not whether to work hard or work smart: it isn't work at all, it's a game. I bet Diandra is one of those close-to-autistic geeks who can't relate to people, doesn't get jokes, and to whom this whole social thing is a bit of a mystery, unlike, say, quantum mechanics.

ROT-13 encryption. "How very disappointing".

Ah. Quite.

Okay, yeah, I can see where you're coming from with this. I was disappointed too when I saw that Diandra had "solved" it with a computer program. But, you should understand, in the community we come from, we solve puzzles. Lots and lots of puzzles. It used to be fun, but it's become routine for a lot of us. We now solve puzzles because, in the kind of games we play, solving a puzzle leads us somewhere else. Maybe Diandra did this because she thought this was the beginning to a new Alternate Reality Game (It's happened before). Maybe she did it because she knew that a lot of us would spend many a sleepless night trying to figure out this puzzle. Or maybe you're right, maybe she just did it to show off. All I'm saying is that, whatever her motives, they may not be as self-centered as you think.

Oh, and Stephen West? We are indeed geeks, but I'm not too sure about the close-to-autistic part. And we definitely get jokes.

Smiles, laughter, and anything else that will convince you that this comment is not as hostile as it probably sounds,
Poke

Look, I'm also a geek, and love solving codes and puzzles, but when I read S2's first post on the code I didn't immediately fire up my codebreaking software, since it was obviously a blogging experiment of a social nature, and since brute-force decryption of a substitution cipher is trivial, it would be nothing to boast about, apart from the stupidity of spoiling the game for everyone. The only people I know who would instantly focus on the code segment without looking at the context are the Asperger types, who, due to their preoccupations and inability to understand social contexts and subtleties, would behave in exactly the way that Diandra did. I didn't say all geeks are like that, and I wasn't targeting the group that you obviously feel that you belong to, because I had no idea of its existence. In fact, since you also expressed disappointment with Diandra's actions, and can see where we are coming from, it's obvious that you do not suffer from her disability. So there's no need to defend yourself.

In less technological times, spoil-sport was the word. They have always been with us.

Poke,

> Maybe Diandra did this because she thought this was the beginning to a new Alternate Reality Game (It's happened before).

Eddie did actually say that the decoded message wouldn't be anything profound or particularly interesting, so, if Diandra did think that it would be the start to a whole new alternate reality game, she's even more of a fucking idiot than she's already made it clear that she is.

> Maybe she did it because she knew that a lot of us would spend many a sleepless night trying to figure out this puzzle.

In which case, Stephen is absolutely right: her failure to understand that spending sleepless nights trying to figure it out is the whole point demonstrates what a fucking idiot she is.

> We now solve puzzles because, in the kind of games we play ...

The kind of games you play? How on Earth is that relevant? This was a game being played by other people entirely; Diandra was not one of the twenty invitees. Did I mention that she's a fucking idiot?


Jerry,

You are absolutely right; hence the title of my post.

Ah, now I know when you’re being rude and insulting.

Hi

I recently received an invitation to a friends wedding on December 28th. My friends name is Ieuan and he is getting married to Paula.

He sent out a piece of paper enclosed in the wedding invitation with the following number sequences on it:

222666 66477728 8855528444666 66777709996668804428883302227772 2225533 308443302226663 330944280933096668855530777332555 5559990555444553304447777083367887777089666

He obviously thinks that his wedding guests enjoy decrypting as much as he does.

I have tried all I the ways I know of breaking the code and was wondering if anyone could give me some clues on what to do next. I've broken it down into patterns, then noted frequency of individual sets of numbers i.e. 222, then noted down frequency of bigraphs i.e. 222666, but I cant seem to make any sense of it.

Any help from anyone would be appreciated.

many thanks

Sean