Can anyone solve this cipher?

lolily

lolily

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Jan 28, 2019
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Hello. I'm not sure if anyone on here likes solving ciphers or if posts like this are allowed, but if so then please help me solve this. I'm very much a beginner when it comes to solving, so this may be pretty simple. I've attached a picture. Thank you in advance
 

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Usually solving a cypher this short requires some idea of context. Is there any context you can give us without spoiling the puzzle?

-Dan
 
This is clearly some variation of the "pigpen cipher":

en.wikipedia.org

Pigpen cipher - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

The usual form (which I immediately wrote out, and which Wikipedia shows prominently) doesn't work, but you might try different arrangements of letters.

You should also answer topsquark's question.
 
topsquark said:
Usually solving a cypher this short requires some idea of context. Is there any context you can give us without spoiling the puzzle?

-Dan
Click to expand...
Sorry about the late reply. I just learned that apparently the cipher was a sentence that was translated into another language, and then converted into a cipher. The only hint I got was that it's "not some obscure language that no one knows about."
 
so i decoded it with a pigeon decipher thingy online and got this:
FKDR
FRC
PCQRCTRHKK
HP
QKCKQPATP
so now, im gonna run it through a few more things and try to figure it out
 
DripKracken said:
so i decoded it with a pigeon decipher thingy online and got this:
FKDR
FRC
PCQRCTRHKK
HP
QKCKQPATP
so now, im gonna run it through a few more things and try to figure it out
Click to expand...

I converted the symbols to arbitrary letters (same letter for each occurrence of the same symbol) and dumped it in a cryptosolver.

There was no legit decryption.
 
Romsek said:
I converted the symbols to arbitrary letters (same letter for each occurrence of the same symbol) and dumped it in a cryptosolver.

There was no legit decryption.
Click to expand...

I second this. I tried an algorithm to match the 3rd word against a dictionary (an English dictionary from "gnu aspell") - and the 30ish results would not enable the other words to then match against the dictionary using the symbol mappings.

I guess there could be hyphenated words, proper nouns, or slang which I didn't check for.
 
yeah i tried to put it through an online Cryptanalysis machine and got nowhere. It cam out as more scrambled letters that i tried putting through a translator, but that got nowhere.
 
lolily said:
Sorry about the late reply. I just learned that apparently the cipher was a sentence that was translated into another language, and then converted into a cipher. The only hint I got was that it's "not some obscure language that no one knows about."
Click to expand...
How about telling us the actual context? What kind of person gave you this puzzle, and why?

Clearly the cipher in its usual form doesn't represent another familiar language (since there are almost no vowels), so either it's a variation of pigpen with a different letter order (which amounts to doing an extra substitution cipher), or it's a language with a different alphabet. (I would have expected Pig Latin!)
 
It looks like it's Spanish. Several choices almost translate well to English and it's very possible that they are colloquial phrases that I just don't know enough Spanish to recognize.
 
Yeah. I agree with Dr.Peterson. What class is this from. What topics have you been discussing lately. Can you show us the original document with the code?
 
Romsek said:
It looks like it's Spanish. Several choices almost translate well to English and it's very possible that they are colloquial phrases that I just don't know enough Spanish to recognize.
Click to expand...
Can you show us what sort of choices you made to get Spanish out of it? I've tried a few of the more natural rearrangements, but still didn't get many vowels.
 
Dr.Peterson said:
How about telling us the actual context? What kind of person gave you this puzzle, and why?

Clearly the cipher in its usual form doesn't represent another familiar language (since there are almost no vowels), so either it's a variation of pigpen with a different letter order (which amounts to doing an extra substitution cipher), or it's a language with a different alphabet. (I would have expected Pig Latin!)
Click to expand...

The person who gave me the puzzle is just a friend from school. The only context there is, he likes solving codes and wanted to see if he could confuse me. He did end up confusing me ? I'm sorry, I know what I've given isn't a lot to work with. Thank you to everyone who's helping me to figure it out though!
 
Dr.Peterson said:
Can you show us what sort of choices you made to get Spanish out of it? I've tried a few of the more natural rearrangements, but still didn't get many vowels.
Click to expand...
I just dumped the alphabetic representation into a cryptosolver that had a choice of languages.
 
Ah, so you're either assuming there is another encryption between the language and pigpen, or hoping the solution you get might correspond to a reasonable arrangement of letters in the pigpen.

One way or another, @lolily, I think it's too much to ask of a friend -- too many steps with too little data.
 
Dr.Peterson said:
Ah, so you're either assuming there is another encryption between the language and pigpen, or hoping the solution you get might correspond to a reasonable arrangement of letters in the pigpen.

One way or another, @lolily, I think it's too much to ask of a friend -- too many steps with too little data.
Click to expand...

The Pigpen cipher has more structure to it than I assumed. I take it as given that symbols retain their decryption across the length of the message.
So I just assign another set of symbols, the letters of the alphabet, to the symbols we are given.

This allows me to dump it into a a crypto solver website, that doesn't understand the pigeon cipher.

I do assume that the decryption will be letter perfect in the non-English language.
 
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