Has anyone figured out the sevenstars encrypted message/password on PopSci's website yet?

Question

Has anyone figured out the sevenstars encrypted message/password on PopSci's website yet?

Answer 1

Answers: clear

Theseus

cormorant

cogswarm

electrolyzer

something

something (you can skip these)

Hindenburg

Next puzzle:

From: Agent Voicebox

To: Daedalus Control

Have completed the historical survey per your request and isolated magazine work fitting the following criteria:



— written by or about Daedaleans

— after the Hindenburg rift; and

— no reference to the article or series appears in meeting minutes, suggesting that these articles may not be part of the approved series.



Close-Up Photos Reveal a Turbulent Mars

Consulting Editor on Space

Hexapent

106 Science Claims

Policing a Nation at War

"Sea Fleas" article

The Twenty-First Century: The World You'll Live In



In the circumstances, it seems pretty obvious that only one of these could now be our mole in the present day — but I wanted to confirm with you before taking any action.

(I would say that we're supposed to find the author of the unapproved article)

Answer 2

I know who WSW is. He's William Speed Weed, a contributing editor at PopSci.

code Speed Weed gets you to this:

--

From: WSW

To: 7S_main

Sent: Mar 24, 2012



I am continuing to update our list of projects believed integral to the Daedalus project and those overlapping 7stars interests. Several of their suppressed platforms might be useful to us assuming we reach them first.



Passcode to the document is

the length of the Shenandoah to the nearest hundred feet

the usual lining of the goldbeater's skin

passengers of the Turtle



(in order, no punctuation)

--



The length of the Shenandoah river is 293600 feet (rounded) BUT WAIT then as I was looking up goldbeater's skin it referenced the USS Shenandoah, and airship 700 ft long (rounded) and i believe it is actually that. Goldbeaters skin is cow intestinal lining used in blimps and goldbeating, and this might be caecum or membrane. Tghe passengers of the Turtle, this one is tricky, the USS Turtle was the first combative submarine, but only carried one person, but it was used to attach explosives to ships, so torpedos or explosives may be it. I am just having a hard time finding the right compination of these. Do any of you know of a plane called the Turtle? That seems more likely. There is a company called Turtle Airships, but no actual ships of theirs I can find are called the Turtle.



EDIT 1

--

From: Agent Voicebox

To: Daedalus Control



Have completed the historical survey per your request and isolated magazine work fitting the following criteria:



— written by or about Daedaleans

— after the Hindenburg rift; and

— no reference to the article or series appears in meeting minutes, suggesting that these articles may not be part of the approved series.



Close-Up Photos Reveal a Turbulent Mars

Consulting Editor on Space

Hexapent

106 Science Claims

Policing a Nation at War

"Sea Fleas" article

The Twenty-First Century: The World You'll Live In



In the circumstances, it seems pretty obvious that only one of these could now be our mole in the present day — but I wanted to confirm with you before taking any action.

--



How bout we check out the articles to try and find out who the "Daedaleans" are?

Mole means spy, so one of the authors or subjects of these articles is the mole.

EDIT 2

OF COURSE!!!

The mole is WSW, William Speed Weed, and Speed Weed (which I already gave, but I got to it in a way other than the clues. (the note says -SW, and Speed Weed is listed in the contributing editors and i found some stuff by him) He was an author in these articles. Next code is Speed Weed (know i already said that, but come on guys, lets go!)

EDIT 3

700 or 293600 should be first part, then something with cow intestines (caecum is a scientific name or something, so try that), but I still can't get the Turtle part. The Koreans built a Turtle Ship once but nothin else I can find. We should really make a forum on this somewhere.

EDIT 4

Hey guys Herbert Spencer died in 1903, so this looks like a hoax OR myabe Herbert Spencer is a code name, could someone help me look into him.

EDIT 5

Goldbeaters skin clue could be blind gut (its a weird term but yeah.) and the seven stars were a nickname for the Pleiades.

EDIT 6

Thanks Patrick actually the DSV Turtle is another name for the USS Turtle. Thanks for the lockheed hint and oh I changed my profile name (long story, but this is my more used name.) The Turtle (lockheed) carried 4 crew and a nine-month old kangaroo on a record setting flight here is a excert from a webpage on it:

Two and a half days (55h, 18m) later, "The Turtle" touched down in Columbus, Ohio, 11,236.6 mi (18,083.6 km) from its starting point. It was the longest unrefueled flight made to that point in history.

Answer 3

It took me a few hours, but I managed to figure out what the ciphered message said:



May of ninety six



My dear friend,



I congratulate you on your recent successes in flagstaff!



May I invite you to join me at my eating club Thursday next?



Together with Edward Youmans, I have for some years been in the habit of gathering a few friends of unusual vision and scientific education to discuss a common interest of ours, though we each of us approach it from the perspective of manned flight, and the boons it may bring to mankind. Since Youmans' passing, I have been the leader of this gathering.



We have given ourselves the name of Daedalens, and hope to think of plausible and valuable directions of study. Youmans, with the publication at his disposal, aimed to shed light on our discoveries, and to foster an acquaintance with the best men and women of science, whoever they may be.



Pray join us. I believe your input would be most valuable, and your studies of the sky especially relevant to our concerns.



I am, my dear friend, sincerely yours, Herbert Spencer.



PS. We hope that pages forty through nine of last month's issue - the second page eight-forty-seven through nine! - gave you pleasure to read.

Answer 4

next keyword is Paus.



I think the message is encrypted with a magic square...not exactly sure

see if you can make a 5x5 magic square which adds up to 34 for each row. Then you can probably use the values in the boxes of the magic square to get the corresponding letter in the message. That seems the most likely solution.





Jack, there is also the DSV Turtle, I can't tell if that would be more than one passenger.



There's also a plane named "The turtle", its a Lockheed p2v1 neptune, with a crew of 4





EDIT:

Just a thought, it might help to look at the words all organized:



Richelieu Grille

frequency visualizer

keyword stealth 2001



might help, I myself have no clue right now

Answer 5

From the clues I get:

Seven Stars Mole Active

Study Daedalus' History

Start From First Editor

so the first editor of the magazine?

EDIT

word is Youmans

you get a ciphered text shown here, http://pastebin.com/P60X3cxV

EDIT2:

it seems like LZFKVFI=SPENCER, full translation coming soon

EDIT3:

here is the plain text

http://pastebin.com/330LxEcn

next word coming soon ... i hope

EDIT3

word was Lowell, giving yet another cipher located here: http://pastebin.com/WJ8aS28b

Time to decode!

EDIT4

useing this site, http://smurfoncrack.com/pygenere/index.php , i decrypted the message

http://pastebin.com/rfPSbXtq

EDIT5

keyword was Nikola (it was in a letter to the editor section of the february 1901 issue)

http://pastebin.com/SxvCNX3A

CRAP NOT ENOUGH SPACE TO ADD MORE!

EDIT6

never mind, using pastebin now for extra space

so i'm thinking that we need the illustrator or Herbert P.'s last name from a spring issue in 1924

EDIT7

using the keyword Paus like Patrick said gives us: http://pastebin.com/LdrNHPq4



another type of encryption...

EDIT8

34 horizontal... = 34 across?

horizontal means the same thing as across, so what does it mean?

i'll try and figure it out tomorrow, i'm too tired right now

EDIT9

looks like the next two passwords were figured out by James (houdini & hindenburg)

when you use hindenburg you get this:

http://pastebin.com/4MvaJrXK

In the circumstances, it seems pretty obvious that only one of these could now be our mole in the present day — but I wanted to confirm with you before taking any action.



so we need to find the author of one of those articles or some one in that the article or even the illustrator/photographer is about that happened after may 6th 1937



EDIT10

using the keyword 700cotton30 posted by Asia gets you:

http://pastebin.com/ctkbKA5H

looking at the underlined portions it says

rich eli eu grille frequency visualizer keyword stealth 200 1

out of that i get use keyword "stealth" in the The Popular Science Archive Explorer word frequency thing in the year 2001. There are 37 total listings in 2001: 1 in April and August, 2 in January February and June, 3 in May, and 26 in November. From there maybe there is something in the some of those articles we need.

Answer 6

Person above me the letters i got for this problem are

i

u

a

c



s

d

i



r

f

f

e





1925



34 horizontal... = 34 across?







hukzn gztvr lqoel trvot bymri nvemb bseew qavza

lnvps vuxeq qltrt jbrnz rrpts beynn upafa erbvr

mrada tmzfu qdpem qeemy cratn emoar lllha qenzt

npzpa fqygn teeek ltvwy wvbsi akwuo mdprk taytj

cbvne evtnt kcasb auexz srveh uiydb bseea qaiwc

hhuln vblrv iyogp prfel rgqxe nxalv kltvw y



this one is confusing any ideas thus far?

the two things ive tried have failed



Could the numbers for each of these be the numbers that are wrote in blue randomly across the 1925 archives.

Answer 7

Next answer: cogswarm. Its a combination of the "bad boy of robotics" next project cog, and the robots that fly in pelican formation, project SWARM. I have to say I'm now interested



edit for guy below me: I tried letters on the page and it made no sense whatsoever. I tried it counting the title as letters and without counting the title as letters, neither worked. Maybe I just did it wrong.



edit for cal: same as i got

Answer 8

The question after answering "clear" and "theseus" gives reference to Condor and Perseus aircraft. They both seem to be UAVs, so the popsci people are apparently wanting another type of UAV. They also mention that the program they were looking for was "closed (in) 2008 despite the completion of (a) working prototype." It also mentions Trident missiles and submarines. I can't make much of it, but hope I can help find an answer eventually.

Answer 9

It's the word Clear. "The Future Is Near, All In The Clear". Head to te website and put clear in and then you'll get a message about unmanned aircrafts. The answer to this one is Theseus. From there, I can't figure it out. Hope this helps.

Answer 10

Looking at the underlined words and numbers in the most recent ("700cotton30") answer:



rich

Eli

EU

grille



These combined become "Richelieu grille", a reference to a cryptography device (Cardan grille) attributed to Cardinal Richelieu. Seems to fit with the theme so far.



"frequency visualizer" - perhaps a tool to visualize the frequency of occurrences of letters in cipher-text? no hits on a PopSci search for the combined terms, and too many hits for each word individually.



"keyword stealth" might be exactly what it implies

"200" & "1" probably means the "2001" hit in a search. Searching the PopSci archives for "stealth" yields one and only one hit from 2001 (October) -- an article on cellphone signals unmasking stealth aircraft.



Why do I feel like I'm almost there?



EDIT 1:

David - did you mean "steganography" (hiding message in plain text)? "Stenography" is short-hand writing.



EDIT 2:

Tried removing the letters of THAT WONT GELL from the prior phrase:

d raiin ff, iout xpanaion



Trying to find meaningful combinations of words there but not having much luck

drain if fix out pan ai on





EDIT 3

Great work, Steven!



EDIT 4

After Steven solved the ANGEL clue the rest came quickly. I won't post the answer just yet but will keep tabs on this answer and try to help anyone who is still struggling. I *would* like to know how some of the others solved the tough cryptography puzzles. I'm just not skilled enough at cryptanalysis.

Answer 11

Paus >> Huidini >> ?



EDIT

Huidini cypher was gronsfeld. the key was the number of occurances of the word airplane in the 1936 monthly issues. This was then shifted right one letter to produce the key "xlqjsrxvnqum"





Gronsfeld Sequence: Word Frequency of "Airplane" Each Month of 1936



may nineteen thirty seven my fellow daedaleans

i think i speak for all of us when i say that the

events of this day have been a source of sadness and

horror a tragedy on this scale must touch any person

with a common claim to humanity let us give our

thoughts and prayers to the families of those who

were lost nonetheless there can be no doubt as to

our own way forward in the circumstances until today

two paths have lain before us each holding the allegiance

of some of our most dedicated members one path the path

chosen by our illustrious forebear houdini has been closed by

fire the other must be the way forward the airplane not

the dirigible must be our tool yet we must not be

deterred any disaster any loss of life reminds us of the

noble motives that spurred our enterprise to better the

lot of man providing a guardian of the air

xxx



[Following was handwritten at the bottom of the scanned document —Transcriber.]



so they get what they were hoping for and our side

gets nicknamed icarus and soundly laughed out of town

cant help wondering if someone actually took a hand in

making that happen



23 = X

11 = L



EDIT 2

houdini >> hindenburg



EDIT 3

I'm getting the feeling they may be using this to pre announce info regarding the US military's giant dirigible... supposedly its going to be ENORMOUS!



EDIT 4

great job finding Speed Weed and 700cotton30



My thoughts on the next puzzle are as follows.

1) its probably a richelieu grille. Which means we need a grille.

2) the rest of the clue seems to point to using the keyword frequency search for the word stealth in 2011

Conclusion: the grille is the 3 x 4 matrix made by the months in 2011.

XXOX

XXOX

OOXO

cut out the O's and you get a perfect grille for

THAT

WONT

GELL



XXAX

XXOX

GEXL



next password is angel =]



EDIT 5

angel leads to a clue that keeps referencing someone named AE. Given the nature of this hunt we can conclude rather simply that the next password will be this AE person.



Amelia Earhart. earhart is next password =]



EDIT 6

References to a symbol for seven stars group logo on the cover of pop sci in 1961. Its a little star with letters S and M



sm is next password



EDIT 7

Article referenced in the SM document refers to pirate radio. There is a mention of one specific station from 1961 (notice a pattern?) called "swan"



swan is next password



EDIT 8

this one gives you two choices. ANGEL or PLEIADES.

ANGEL is a reference to the Deadelus group

PLEIADES refers to the seven sisters or seven stars



Pick one and click confirm =]



EDIT 9

That is apparently it! i picked Pleiades cause id love more info on airships. ive always found "outdated" tech to be more interesting than the latest and "greatest"



Hope you guys enjoyed it all



PS: here is the complete list of passcodes in order

clear

theseus

cormorant

cogswarm

electrolyzer

Youmans

Lowell

Nikola

Paus

Houdini

Hindenburg

Speed Weed

700cotton30

angel

Earhart

SM

swan

Answer 12

So I looked up the issue on cmbeke's third edit. An article about ciphers... how fitting.



Anyways, the article's here: http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=-iYDAAAAMBAJ on page 86

It's a Viginere cypher



And for those of you just joining us, the passwords so far are



clear

theseus

cormorant

cogswarm

electrolyzer

Youmans

Lowell

Nikola

Paus

houdini



EDIT 2: So from the plaintext on the Lowell puzzle, there's a ref to Feb 1901 letter to the editor, which is one of two starting on p 434 of http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=6iEDAAAAMBAJ

(the answer is Nikola)



EDIT 3:



Minutes of meeting of spring 1924



NT promoted concept for protective fleet of drone aircraft.

Argument concerning best direction for Daedalus' effort — the expansion of human knowledge, or the protection of men on Earth?

Former PL contingent strenuously insisted on value of contacting possible inhabitants of Mars for the betterment of humankind and expressed eagerness to visit the canals.

Motion to engage Herbert P, illustrator, to realize the imaginings of the Daedalean society and function in the way of propaganda. May be available as cover artist for the magazine at some future time as well.

Motion passed without dissent.



Thanks to Patrick for the password... Herbert Paus was an illustrator.



EDIT:



1925



34 horizontal... = 34 across?



hukzn gztvr lqoel trvot bymri nvemb bseew qavza

lnvps vuxeq qltrt jbrnz rrpts beynn upafa erbvr

mrada tmzfu qdpem qeemy cratn emoar lllha qenzt

npzpa fqygn teeek ltvwy wvbsi akwuo mdprk taytj

cbvne evtnt kcasb auexz srveh uiydb bseea qaiwc

hhuln vblrv iyogp prfel rgqxe nxalv kltvw y



What are we thinking on this one? 34 horiz, 34 across. Why the question mark?

It uses the 1925 issues somehow.



EDIT: Also, they figured out that ^this^ password was "Houdini." I don't know how we got it, but that leads to another one that people below have also decrypted. What password do we think for the Houdini puzzle?

Answer 13

Next answer: Electrolyzer.

I'm thinking the next clue is in this format:

Issue month.issue year.page number.number word in the first article. I'll edit this more if it works.



Edit: Well that didn't work. Or maybe it worked, but not very good, because exactly what the last number is is a little bit of a mystery. Looking back, it could be the "n"th letter on the page, not the "n"th word. With words I get:

The

Stars

Mole (a, monthly)?

Of (active, the, under)?



Study (the)?

Seat

History (has)?



Start (creators)?

From (I'm, this, popular)?

First (glass, two)?

Here (the, editor)?



Basically, I'm clueless.

Answer 14

Hi! (BunnyP... may just have something there...) heh Insofar as Yapoo's "Guidelines" go.. HAH! The ones they post are a bunch of words strung together telling the user NOTHING! This "Site" is run by Trolls. Nothing more; nothing less. The idiots are in charge of the asylum. Like in anything else, talk is cheap, I watch what happens.. Here, NOTHING happens, except my friends and I get violations for stuff that doesn't qualify, and the trolls keep on keepin' on. Bah. Screw Trolls, and screw Yapoo. I will do as I like, as long as I like it. What? How will they prevent me? BWWaaaaa. Good Q, Bree. Keep giving them hell. }:> EDIT: **Ron... "Facists" sweetie... they are FACISTS. Not Communists. }:>

Answer 15

Hi,

If you are looking for a free download of Word Mole you can check here: http://bit.ly/1oh9dwy



it's a perfectly working link, no scam!

It's surely the leader game of its type.

Regards

Answer 16

I'm working on it now.



I am thinking:

The future is near, all in the __________. (Past? I mean, they do say History repeats itself!)

And the letters in parenthesis seem to be a, e, a, r, c.

I tried past aircraft, didn't work.

It probably is something to do with airplanes since that seems to be the main thing in this month's magazine.

Do the numbers under the volume mean anything? (like Vol. 223 #6)





Sorry, I'm probably not helping but I'm trying as well. If you get make sure to let me know! :)

Answer 17

after sm, its radio swan

Answer 18

after Earhart, its



sm

Answer 19

Well I have been checking and the frequency visualizer keyword made me look at the table for popsci that is based off hits in the magazines and whatnot and I then typed stealth for the search and checked when it appeared in 2001 cause THAT WONT GELL fits for the 12 months of the year but i got "THTWOTL" and I don't think that leads anywhere. I feel close cause I can't think of anything else for THAT WONT GELL and it fits so well but idk because I got so desperate and so off-track I compared the letters to the cell phone numbers and just got lost so hope this helps





Edit 1



I had it all wrong. THTWOTL are not the letters to keep they are the ones to eliminate leaving ANGEL which is the passcode. The next puzzle is much easier, my love who found the answer and who is typing this entry for me. After reading the entry ANGEL unlocked it was obvious who AE was and the next pass-code is Amelia Earhart.

Answer 20

perhaps the underlined segments are to form a grill and the bottom phrases are a hint at what to apply the grill to?

Answer 21

As for the 700cotton30 page

I have figured out the 3 words can make "TOTAL LENGTH" with a left over "W"

Can't figure out what that could mean, if anything...

Answer 22

I've been at this awhile now, thanks for everyone's help by the way. I can't help but notice that the punctuation is fine until the last three capitalized words. If it is "wont" instead of "won't" then the meaning changes. Also, there are too many "L"'s in "gell". There is a scientist by that name(Murray Gell-Mann, physicist) I guess it's the first part of a hyphenated name anyway. Unless it's supposed to be "gell" then it's German for "correct". It's also entirely possible I have just been staring too long at this.



There's also an Alfred Gell, but he's an anthropologist and I doubt it means him.





If it is steganography then how are we to know the typeset and where to punch the holes? I think the last three words are some sort of key. Maybe I need a break, not like it's life or death....

Answer 23

The first three,



rich

eli

EU



Put together makes Richelieu.



Cardinal Richelieu was fond of the Cardan Grille. A cyptography method used by using a grille to decode the message.



Frequency and visualizer I would interpret to mean a varied method of the grille called stenography. Using that method with the article from 2001 you

get your answer.



Update:



If I were to guess, I would say that the words on the bottom are the keys.

It is also possible that the comment before the three words contains the

to the grille.



Edit:



Yes, predicive text kills me. That is what I meant.



The statement " and trailing off, without explaination " is the part that doesnt fit. Think of how to decode using above statement with the three words as keys using the article, whatever the article is. Were all close to the answer.

Answer 24

What to do with the caps letters on the bottom?

And



http://books.google.com/books?id=VnsBuVJNwLQC&pg=PA86&dq=november+2001+popular+science&hl=en&sa=X&ei=5qqMT_KNC-TK2AWSm6nBCQ&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=november%202001%20popular%20science&f=false



that one has the most hits on Stealth, have a look anyone?



and what does the words before have to do with it?



UPDATE:

Eli seems like a name, and rich may describe the person?

can't make any sense of grille though.



David:

Thanks for the tip! that makes much more sense.



what to do with

THAT

WONT

GELL



hint as to where to put the grille?







Am I the only one that thinks the frequency visualizer is the popular science archive search

http://www.popsci.com/content/wordfrequency



UPDATE 2:



Cameron just made a good point

It spells at the bottom W TOTAL LENGTH



find the word frequency of "stealth" in the 2001 Nov. issue, and use that to somehow solve the grill cypher?



I'll screw around with some stuff. see what I get.



26 mentions of "stealth" in the issue



UPDATE 3:

What if the grille goes ON the 4x4 grid?

Answer 25

The underlined words after "keyword" are "stealth", "200", and "1". Together, that's "Stealth 2001". So a good place to search, I think, would be articles from 2001 about stealth airplanes and UAVs. The November issue, the one with the most instances of the word "stealth", has an article about a company called Roke manor research using cellphone signals to find stealth bombers. I can't make heads or tails of it, though. Any ideas?

Answer 26

Shared Document

Structural features — there's a rich

vein of material here but none we can

use. Eli minating this leaves us with

many usable technologies, however.

Solar energy conservation — adapt for

upper surface of Pleiades airship if

superior to existing tech, meeting EU

standards. Believe those involved would

give up their information if grilled.

Drone flight intelligence program — this

could be the link we've needed for the

Pleiades fleet, especially if the

communications frequency , surveillance

and ground visualizer programs are good

enough to automatically detect emergency

areas in need of humanitarian

assistance. Analysis of crisis

situations may even include keyword

recognition from worldwide

communications broadcasts.

Weaponry — sabotage! Unfortunately I

haven't been able to find definite

information on how they're planning to

arm the Daedalus planes; only evidence

for stealth , refueling, fuel

conservation, possible submarine launch,

and guidance systems. Over 200 files

I've seen but not 1 deals with missiles

or lasers. Whatever gives them firepower

must be under a higher level of security

than everything else.

Hang on, I think I've been detected.

Don't send anything more to my account.



THAT

WONT

GELL



there are words underlined here...



rich

Eli

EU

grille

frequency

visualizer

keyword

stealth

200

1



and what about the words at the bottom?

Answer 27

the next answer is 700cotton30

shenandoah was 700ft

goldbeaters bag usually lined with cotton

turtle dirigible held 30 passengers

do you think the next clue is about murray gell-mann?

Answer 28

I know the letters are aelrc, from gAllon, sEa gull, gLobe, and RasCal. It doesn't even give me a place to put any kind of password though. Any ideas?

Answer 29

Www.popsci

Answer 30

3 Try



Cormorant -



lockheed's MPUAV program cancelled (due to funding) in 2008.....



so onto to the next question.....

Answer 31

Pelicans Fly in a V-formation; hope it helps.