ANN Daily Crytoquote

[Jim Hurley]

This is for those of you programmers with time on your hands. :-) I 
am still trying to catch up after our magnificent Run Rev conference.

Some time ago I change my newspaper subscription from the San 
Francisco Chronicle to the NYT. The Times is a a great paper but it 
wouldn't stoop to something so frivolous as a cryptogram puzzle. The 
daily crytogram is in part an addiction and in part a continuing test 
for the threat of senility.

So, without the Chronicle, I decided to rolled my own. (This is what 
I like about Rev. It is not just a tool; it is a entire tool box.)

The stack downloads daily quotes (usually 4 in number) from 
http://www.quotationspage.com/. The stack will encrypt these quotes 
and display them for your crypto-pleasure.

They are a little intimidating at first. But there is a mistake-proof 
mode for beginners; it will disallow any incorrect substitution.

To decode look for one letter words, short words (of course), and 
words containing double letters--the double letters are either E or O 
or the letters on either side of the pair are good candidates for 
vowels. Etc. You will develop your own strategy.

Also included is a substack as a crutch. It is a decoding utility. 
You type in "H*11***22" which signifies that the first letter is "H" 
, the second letter is unknown, the third and fourth letters will be 
the same letter, as are the eighth and ninth. Letter for known 
letters, numerals for like letters, and * for unknown letters.  The 
decoder will reveal "Happiness" as a possibility in this case.

The big problem with the decoder is the size of the dictionary 
(61,000 entries)--much too big. Many of the words you will not 
recognize.  Anyone know of a more reasonable dictionary?

Because of the dictionary, the file is large, about 900 K. (Thanks to 
Chipp's AltClean, I save over 30% on the crytoquote stack.)

To try it,  type into message box:

      go url "http://home.infostations.net/jhurley/DailyCryptoquote.rev"

you will need to wait a bit if you are on a 56K modem.

Or you will find it on my web site:

http://home.infostations.net/jhurley/


DKKF UAMN (Good luck).


Jim