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Lexor: I have a feeling I am very close to solution but I would like to know how many mentioned "tricks" are here? :)
Agreed. I've come up with like 6 different solutions / codes but none of them are valid. He's living up to his forum title!
Bumping this, and asking, anyone has any ideas?
Also, I think that the umlaut characters are padding, though not sure about the Capital one, is that padding as well?
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JMich: Bumping this, and asking, anyone has any ideas?
Also, I think that the umlaut characters are padding, though not sure about the Capital one, is that padding as well?
My idea: Lots of A's, U's, C's, and G's.... DNA encoding? Not sure whether the T's would be included in it or not. Not sure about the capital letter.

I toyed with this for a long time and pretty much gave up. I figured once I put all that time into it, it'd be my luck that if it was a gift code, it'd be for something I already have. :D
My thoughts were along the same line regarding the four letters that are most used. I didn't use the "fancy" letters since those were a different key on the keyboard. I tried counting the rest, grouped them by letter (x number of "a", y number of "c", and so forth), then used the numbers I came up with (x and y in my above example) and matched them with the corresponding letter of the alphabet. Tried that in about 10 different methods with 10 different resulting codes... none of which worked.

I figured I'd let it go at that point.
I got rid of all letters not being part of the code, converted them, played with the results a bit, got 4 or 5 different solutions, all wrong. Most likely I've missed some clever hint, but because of lack of time I will not solve it any time soon.
Some possible clues that I completely did not regard in my method:
1) Fujek calls it spam twice. (Might not be important to solve it, though.)
2) The words "might" and "limitations" in "Oh and, the poor riddling soul might find this a bit tricky at some positions, in which case it might help to remember certain limitations."

I assumed "tricky at some positions" referred to the whole thing. :D
After you remove the padding, you end up with a combination of g, c, a and u. The padding is mostly the qwerty keyboard added in it, though since it's a german one it's actually qwertz one.

My ideas were the following.
Idea 1) Assume that g and c are 0, while a and u are 1, then convert the binary to ascii. Didn't get anything useful, and neither did I by changing 0s and 1s.
Idea 2) Since the code is an alphanumeric one, that means that if it is binary, then it would be numbers from 32 to 127, so if a binary octet started with 1, I would add a 0 in the beginning, while if it started with a 0 I'd leave it as is. That gave me an 18 character text, which contained 2 special characters '&' and '(' if I recall correctly. The other 16 characters seemed like a code, but it wasn't one unfortunately.
Idea 3) Assume the pairs weren't g+c, a+u but another combination. Still didn't get anything.
Idea 4) Assume that instead of each character being a 0 or a 1, you use pair of characters, if the pair was an RNA pair, value was 1, else value was 0. That gave me way too few characters for a code.

So, those were what I tried, but still didn't manage anything, and since we are currently about 30 hours from the code's post, I do feel like sharing my tries.
Well, I spent a lot of time during last day, night and today. Now, by sharing my thoughts I probably will not win this as first now but... well. I've sent PM to Fujek today with my answer which I think is the only possible.

If you look at this code it easy to recognise that in the last part of it there are only gcau letters - its RNA code. Last part of Fujek's spam is the only part where there are no other letters between. After converting this using genetic code you are getting this: MPTGEESEVENEMWTWQPEE. RNA code is limited - you can not get any digits nor B, J, O, U, X and Z letters. One example to get digit is to type it like here: SEVEN = 7. So now we are getting: MPTGEE7EMWTWQPEE - it is perfectly 16 characters suitable to be code. But MPTG-EE7E-MWTW-QPEE does not work. Tricky part of this is: some letters are coded by two different codes: P (once it is "ccu" and the other "ccc"), T ("acu" and "acc") and E ("gaa" and "gag") - so these letters in other codes could be used to play "missing letters" from genetic code - that is the limitation Fujek was talking about. I tried many combinations in last nearly 20 hours with no valid answer. Now I'm really tired of this one but it is the only possible answer for me so.. sigh. :(
Post edited September 13, 2011 by Lexor
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Lexor: Well, I spent a lot of time during last day, night and today. Now, by sharing my thoughts I probably will not win this as first now but... well. I've sent PM to Fujek today with my answer which I think is the only possible.

If you look at this code it easy to recognise that in the last part of it there are only gcau letters - its RNA code. Last part of Fujek's spam is the only part where there are no other letters between. After converting this using genetic code you are getting this: MPTGEESEVENEMWTWQPEE. RNA code is limited - you can not get any digits nor B, J, O, U, X and Z letters. One example to get digit is to type it like here: SEVEN = 7. So now we are getting: MPTGEE7EMWTWQPEE - it is perfectly 16 characters suitable to be code. But MPTG-EE7E-MWTW-QPEE does not work. Tricky part of this is: some letters are coded by two different codes: P (once it is "ccu" and the other "ccc"), T ("acu" and "acc") and E ("gaa" and "gag") - so these letters in other codes could be used to play "missing letters" from genetic code - that is the limitation Fujek was talking about. I tried many combinations in last nearly 20 hours with no valid answer. Now I'm really tired of this one but it is the only possible answer for me so.. sigh. :(
Looks like you're close enough.
Good luck!
Post edited September 13, 2011 by DebugMode
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DebugMode: Looks like you're close enough.
Good luck!
I am "this close" since last 20 hours, my eyes are red now, and I am seeing these letters everywhere, lol.
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DebugMode: Looks like you're close enough.
Good luck!
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Lexor: I am "this close" since last 20 hours, my eyes are red now, and I am seeing these letters everywhere, lol.
I have all 16 letters/numbers using your technique (I had looked at the wrong DNA-hiding codes for mine.), but it's an invalid certificate, from what I see...
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Lexor: I am "this close" since last 20 hours, my eyes are red now, and I am seeing these letters everywhere, lol.
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adambiser: I have all 16 letters/numbers using your technique (I had looked at the wrong DNA-hiding codes for mine.), but it's an invalid certificate, from what I see...
I get 20 >.< I've made a mistake somewhere
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adambiser: I have all 16 letters/numbers using your technique (I had looked at the wrong DNA-hiding codes for mine.), but it's an invalid certificate, from what I see...
Please read my post again. I did say that it is invalid. :) It is the tricky part where I am at. I was looking on the web for some genetic code messages - how they are represented. And scientists indeed are using some doubled letters to code missing one. They are even using Q to code O (also checked by me here - no valid). The problem is: there is no standardisation at this - some scientists code by similarity (example: P -> B, Y -> X) some of them by other things. I've checked hundreds of combinations already with no positive results - I am really tired now :(
Post edited September 13, 2011 by Lexor
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Lexor:
You only decoded part of the message. I got 16 different letters/numbers. MPTGEE7EMWTWQPEE is not what I'm using.
Ha, I've found the code at last :D But... the code is still waiting :>