A Challenge Problem in Anti-Cryptography
This is a simple experiment in anti-cryptography, wherein the goal is to create a transmittable message that is easy to decipher rather than difficult. Ideally, such a message contains its own primer to teach one how to read it. (Recall the movie "Contact" where Ellie figures out how to read the alien transmission.)
The message contains a continuous string of 4,299 binary digits. And it contains a primer as well as a primary message.
Normal communications rely on both sender and reciever having a shared context and a coding system used to encode the message. For example, the document you are reading uses the english language and the english alphabet. But when sender and receiver have never met and so do not both know a common coding system, then how might they communicate? One must create a message that relies on some minimal context that is guaranteed to be shared, and then use that to bootstrap the teaching of a coding system.
If you have an affinity for this kind of challenge, take a crack at figuring out the message. Please send me your answer (or your questions). You can email me at: andrew@steckleyandassociates.com.
I'm very curious to hear about how people approach this problem and the thinking process they use to solve this. Or by which they fail to solve it.
Note:
-
There is no "trick question" here.
-
The sender wants you to succeed in figuring out the message. It helps to remember this when trying to decipher it.
-
The file contains the message stored in ASCII text, but the message itself is the continuous string of binary digits -- the 0's oand 1's you see in a simple text editor.
(As soon as anyone has cracked it, I'll post an update here too.)
Good luck!
Answer (as submitted by Max Langhof, Germany, July 2019):
111111
000000
111111
-> message is in blocks of 6 bits (also used as delimiter later)
000000
000001
000010
000011
000100
000101
000110
000111
001000
001001
001010
001011
001100
001101
001110
001111
010000
010001
010010
010011
010100
010101
010110
010111
011000
011001
011010
011011
011100
011101
011110
011111
-> count from 0 to 31
000001
000010
000011
000101
000111
001011
001101
010010
010011
010111
011101
011111
-> primes to 31 (1 2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 31)
111111000000111111
-> delimiter
000011
000101
-> 3x5
000
000
000
000
000
-> all 0 image
001011
000111
-> 11x7
11111111111
11111111111
11111111111
11111111111
11111111111
11111111111
11111111111
-> all 1 image
000110
001010
-> 6x10
111111
100001
100001
100001
100001
100001
100001
100001
100001
111111
-> box
000111
000111
-> 7x7
1000001
0100010
0010100
0001000
0010100
0100010
1000001
-> cross
111110
111100
-> 62x60
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000001110000000000000000
00000000000000000001000010000000000000000001111000000000000000
00000000000000001111000000000000000000000000011100000000000000
00000000000001111110000000000000000001100000001100000000000000
00000000000011111100010000000000000101000000000110000000000000
00000000000011111000110000100000000011000000000110000000000000
00000000000111111000001111110000000000000000000110000000000000
00000000000111111000011110100000000000000000000011000000000000
00000101100111111000111100000000000000000000000001000000000000
00001100100111111000011000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00011001001111111000000000000000000000111100000000000000000000
00010000101111111100000000000000000000001100000000000000000000
00010000111111111110000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00100000011111111110000000000000000000000000000011100000000000
00100000001111111110000000000000000000000000000011110000000000
00100000000111111111000000000000000000000000000001111000000000
01000000111111111111000000000000000000000000000001111000000000
01000000111111111110000000000000000000000000000000111100000000
01000111111111111110000000000000000000000000000000011110000000
00000011111111111100000000000000000000000000000110001110000000
00000011111111111100000000000000000000000000000111000110000000
00011001111111111111110000000000000000011110000011000110000000
00011111111111111111111100000000000111111111000111000011100000
00011111111111111100001110000000000000000001100110000001100000
00011111111111111100000000000000000000000001110111000001110000
00001111111111111100000001100000000000000000010111000000110000
00000111111111111101000001110000000000000000010111000001110000
00000001111111111111111000111000000111000000000111000000111000
00100001111111111111111111011000001111111001000111000000111000
01100011111111111111111001011000000011111111000011100000001000
11001011111111111111100000011000000000011100000011111110000000
00000011111111111000000000110000000000000000000111111000000000
11100001111111110000000000110000000000000000000111111100000000
01100000011111111000000000111000000000000000000011111100000011
00000111101111111000000000111000000000000000000011110100000011
00000111111111111100000000111100100000000000000011110000000111
00000011111111111100000001111111110000000000000011000000000000
00000000111111111110000001111100000000000000001010001000001110
00010000011111111110000000000000000000000000011011011101111000
00010000111111111110000000000000000000010000011000011111111000
00111000111111111110000000111111111000000000011000011111111100
00000000111111111111000001111111111100000000010001111111111100
00000000011111111111000011111000111110000000010000111111111100
00111000011111111111000011100000001110000000011100011111100000
00010000111111111111000011111000011110000000011111111111100000
00000000001111111111000001111100111100000001111111100111100000
00000000011111111111000000111000110000000001111111110111000000
00000100101110111111100000000000000000000011111111100110000000
00001100000000011111100000000000000000000011111110000110000000
00001000011111001111110000000000000000000111111001110000000000
00000111111111000111111000000000000000011100111111111000000000
00000111111111100111111100000000000001111000111111111111100000
00000000111111111111111111000000000011110000111111111111100000
00000000001111111111111111100000000111100001111111111111000000
00000000000111111111111111111111111110000001111111111000000000
00000000001111111111111111111111111100000001111111111000000000
00000000001111111111111111111111110000000001111111110000000000
00000000000111111111111111111111100000000001111111100000000000
00000000000011111100111111111100000000000011111100000000000000
00000000000000011100001111111000000000000011111000000000000000
-> Marilyn Monroe
111111000000111111
-> delimiter