

323233331112132

333231322123312

111331132312233

333212123213113

311333313331111

211333323232211

232313331121231

33231312





2 3 = 2 10

22 3 = 8 10

222 3 = 26 10

2222 3 = 80 10





use strict;

use warnings;



my $top = $ARGV[0];



$top =~ tr/321/abc/;



my @chunks;



while ( $top =~ s/^([abc]{3})// ) {

push @chunks, $1;

}



my @digits = ( '0', '1', '2' );



foreach my $d0 (@digits) {

foreach my $d1 (grep {!/$d0/} @digits) {

foreach my $d2 (grep {!/[$d0$d1]/} @digits) {

print "($d0$d1$d2) ";

foreach my $c (@chunks) {

my $v = 0;

my $m = 1;

foreach my $d (reverse split( //, $c )) {

$d =~ s/a/$d0/;

$d =~ s/b/$d1/;

$d =~ s/c/$d2/;

$v += $d * $m;

$m *= 3;

}

print chr( 64 + $v );

}

print "

";

}

}

}





323 233 331 112 132

333 231 322 123 312

111 331 132 312 233

333 212 123 213 113

311 333 313 331 113

113 333 232 322 133

231 333 112 123 133

231 312





31211112111312

32213123123331

12213111332312

23333333233123

12313123332311

33223232312312

112



16

A story appeared on Slashdot about a mysterious fax received at Fermilab written in an unknown code. The full story is here . I looked at it and immediately noticed a few things:1. The first part looked like ternary (base 3) with digits 1 (|), 2(||) and 3(|||).2. The last part looked like binary with digits 1(|) and 2(||)3. The middle bit looked like either a weird substitution code, or I wondered if it might be machine code.4. In the last part the digit 2 (||) never occurs more than once, perhaps it was actually a separator and the last part is not binary.The first step was to convert the bars into numbers. Here's a copy of my marked up print out:The first part has the numbers (or at least I thought):Noticing this had 113 digits (which is a prime number) I went off on a wild goose chase around primes, and then around the interpretation of this number in hexadecimal as a string in ASCII, Unicode or binary... waste of time.Then I started thinking about ternary again and wrote down the largest ternary numbers that can be expressed with 1, 2, 3, ... digits:One of those stood out: with three digits the maximum number is 26 and there are 26 letters in the alphabet! Then the only question was was how to map the three digits used in the code (1, 2, 3) to the three ternary digits (0, 1, 2).To simplify things I wrote a small Perl program that tries out all the possible mappings and outputs the ternary interpreted as a string (with 001 = A, etc.):With my initial interpretation of the top part of the coded message I got the following output:A ha! The 021 block (which corresponds to the mapping 3 -> 0, 2 -> 2, 1 -> 1) seems to have a partial message: [email protected] @WOULD and then it's garbage. Going back to the original message I realized that 113 is not divisible by three and that I'd either missed a symbol, or had two too many.After much fiddling around I discovered that the correct interpretation of the top block is that two of the threes are wrapped from one line to another (there appears to me some indentation in the message that indicates this, take a look at the original, but this could be just random).Rerunning my Perl program output the full message:So much for the first part. The second part took me off into Z-80, 6502 and 6809 machine code wondering if it was a program and then nowhere. I still don't understand what this part is trying to say.The third part looked initially like binary but on closer examination I decided that the 2s (||) were actually separators and the message should be interpreted as number separated by 2s by counting the 1s (|). That yields:(Once again there was a wrapping 'problem' in the message where a run of 8 |s was actually 3 |s then 1 || and 3 more |s.) Using the little Perl program reveals:So, the same mapping between digits is used.That leaves some final questions:1. Who is Frank Shoemaker?2. Why is base spelt incorrectly?3. Is the extra S in BASSE a reference to the middle section where three symbols start with S.4. If #3 is correct, then those three symbols could be intepreted as FCwhich is 252. Could this be the employee number of the author?5. Why is the letter A missing from the middle section when all the other hexadecimal digits are there?

Labels: pseudo-randomness