eps1.91_redwheelbarr0w.txt - Tic-tac-toe Solution
There’s a page ripped out of Tolstoy’s Resurrection with many games of tic-tac-toe in the margins that’s tucked inside the pages of eps1.91_redwheelbarr0w.txt.
Front:
Back:
In most of the games, O looks one turn away from winning against X. There are always two X’s and 1-3 O’s. The one game where X plays 3 times is crossed out, and the X in the top-right corner is replaced with an O. There are also games where the 2 X’s are in the same place and the O’s are placed differently. My first inclination was that this was a pigpen cipher, based on the location of the two X’s.
I decided to assign letters to the different arrangements of X’s in the hope that there were enough characters for the frequency analysis built into quipqiup.com to decipher the plaintext.
X|X| X| | | | | |X | | | | | |X X| |X | | X| | | | | | |X|
| | | | | |X | | | | X| | | | | | | | | | X| | | | | |
| | X| | X| | |X| X|X| |X| X| | | | X| |X |X| X| | |X|X |X|
A B C D E F G H I J K L M
X| | | | | | | |X | | | |X |X| | | | | | | | | | | | |
X| | | |X X| |X X| | X| | | |X X| | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | |X| | | | | | |X | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
I wrote out the corresponding characters on each page left-to-right and top-to-bottom. I spaced them apart in my notes in the same shape as they appear on the pages, so I could easily find my place.
# Page 1
ABCDAEF
GDHIJK
EILDMG
BCBADMJ
NCCHIBJ
E
A
B
N
I
O
P
NCBIKDP
# Page 2
DPDQHD
R
A
R
A
E
L
D
A
S
N
R
A
E
AHRHTM
EAD
# All Together
ABCDAEFGDHIJKEILDMGBCBADMJNCCHIBJEABNIOPNCBIKDPDPDQHDRARAELDASNRAEAHRHTMEAD
I pasted my string into quipqiup.com, selected statistics mode, and received an answer:
TIMETABLE UNCHANGED LIMITED COMMUNICATION FROM IN HERE REQUEST STAGE TWO STATUS UPDATE
The cleaned up final message reads:
Timetable unchanged. Limited communication from in here. Request stage two status update.