CUCaTS
Puzzlehunt 2012
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TL;DR
Solution
Author
Tom Bytheway (tb403)
Description
The linked file is a big block of seemingly random capital letters. It looks suspiciously like some find of ciphertext. If we count the letters (maybe using a computer to help) we find that the most frequent letter is V followed by C, whereas the most common letters in English are E then T. We could keep doing this with further letters matching them to their expected values, or take a guess at the type of cipher. It is an Affine cipher, and from just the first two mappings we can deduce that the formula is 17x + 21.
We find the text is taken from Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold-Bug, except that the words "And the solution was pentagonal" have been added to the end. Pentagonal is in fact the solution
Solution
pentagonal
Correct submissions
| rm -rf / | 2012-06-15 21:04:27.986874 |
|---|---|
| '; DROP *.*; SELECT ' | 2012-06-15 21:09:50.403363 |
| '; DROP *.*; SELECT ' | 2012-06-15 21:09:51.717296 |
| The 5th Element | 2012-06-16 01:18:11.414013 |
| pae8Eerai9 | 2012-06-16 02:45:09.502498 |