Codebusters C

rafaelnadal
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Re: Codebusters C

Post by rafaelnadal »

It takes me 3 hours to finish a 19 question test how do i get faster :,,,,,,,)

also my partners never do anything on the actually test but they seem to get things in practice idk how to help them

i usually end up doing like 5-6 questions and my partners do like one question :,)

advice is appreiciated uwu

we usually split up they do aristocrat/paristrocrat, i do the rest :,) i finish and then try to help them but theres not much time

im better at math so i took affine/hill but should i try splitting it up differently >.< we rly need to get better but idk how to help my partners, and i myself can do all the codes but need to get much faster
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Re: Codebusters C

Post by Vortexx »

rafaelnadal wrote:It takes me 3 hours to finish a 19 question test how do i get faster :,,,,,,,)

also my partners never do anything on the actually test but they seem to get things in practice idk how to help them

i usually end up doing like 5-6 questions and my partners do like one question :,)

advice is appreiciated uwu

we usually split up they do aristocrat/paristrocrat, i do the rest :,) i finish and then try to help them but theres not much time

im better at math so i took affine/hill but should i try splitting it up differently >.< we rly need to get better but idk how to help my partners, and i myself can do all the codes but need to get much faster
I don't know the strengths that you and your partners have but I can give some suggestions. It seems like your partners aren't that good at aristocrats and patristocrats, so I would suggest giving them ALL of the simple codes (Caesar, atbash, vigenere, baconian, affine) so you have more time to work on aristocrats and patristocrats. You can also have your partners do a lot more practice aristocrats and study letter frequencies and such so they can be more useful for the test. You shouldn't worry how fast you can do a test by yourself but instead try to improve your time on the codes that you excel at. People will be better at some codes than they are at others, and you need find out what these codes are for you and your partners. As for actually getting faster, make sure you are solving the code in the fastest possible way. Other than that, just practice. A lot. Good Luck!
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Re: Codebusters C

Post by Scrambledeggs »

Does anybody have good suggestions on patristocrats and baconain with 4 or more different symbols?
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Re: Codebusters C

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Scrambledeggs wrote:Does anybody have good suggestions on patristocrats and baconain with 4 or more different symbols?
You can look for a pattern in determining A/B. For example vowels might be A and constanents might be B. Or i've seen it where A is A B is B C is a D is B etc. A is also more common then B (around twice as common). Also they could give you a couple of plaintext where you can get some of the A and Bs and fill in the rest of the cipher, kinda like a elaborate monoalphabetic.
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Re: Codebusters C

Post by Araluen »

Could someone answer my question about RSA? How exactly does encryption work? I know how to decode based on the toebes site, however all the examples on the site use numerical values for the ciphertext. Is it possible to send a message as the plaintext or does it have to be numbers? For example, how would i go about sending the word "codes"? Would I simply convert it to the numerical string "2143418" and encode that or do i have to mod it by the provided n value prior to encoding? Sorry for the string of questions.
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Re: Codebusters C

Post by UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F »

Araluen wrote:Could someone answer my question about RSA? How exactly does encryption work? I know how to decode based on the toebes site, however all the examples on the site use numerical values for the ciphertext. Is it possible to send a message as the plaintext or does it have to be numbers? For example, how would i go about sending the word "codes"? Would I simply convert it to the numerical string "2143418" and encode that or do i have to mod it by the provided n value prior to encoding? Sorry for the string of questions.
Since the rules don't specify a system to convert letters to numbers for RSA and there are multiple ways you can do it, I believe the State and National tests will ask you to encrypt numbers and not words.
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Re: Codebusters C

Post by pepperonipi »

UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F wrote:
Araluen wrote:Could someone answer my question about RSA? How exactly does encryption work? I know how to decode based on the toebes site, however all the examples on the site use numerical values for the ciphertext. Is it possible to send a message as the plaintext or does it have to be numbers? For example, how would i go about sending the word "codes"? Would I simply convert it to the numerical string "2143418" and encode that or do i have to mod it by the provided n value prior to encoding? Sorry for the string of questions.
Since the rules don't specify a system to convert letters to numbers for RSA and there are multiple ways you can do it, I believe the State and National tests will ask you to encrypt numbers and not words.
I hope this is the case at these tournaments so there isn’t much confusion. However, if a test does ask you to encrypt a word, I would still probably use A = 0, B = 1, etc. for turning the word into a number sequence, since that’s what’s typically done when encrypting other messages. You will get a big number, and you shouldn’t mod it prior to encoding. That’s part of the fun of encrypting RSA on five-function calculators! :)
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Re: Codebusters C

Post by UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F »

pepperonipi wrote:
UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F wrote:
Araluen wrote:Could someone answer my question about RSA? How exactly does encryption work? I know how to decode based on the toebes site, however all the examples on the site use numerical values for the ciphertext. Is it possible to send a message as the plaintext or does it have to be numbers? For example, how would i go about sending the word "codes"? Would I simply convert it to the numerical string "2143418" and encode that or do i have to mod it by the provided n value prior to encoding? Sorry for the string of questions.
Since the rules don't specify a system to convert letters to numbers for RSA and there are multiple ways you can do it, I believe the State and National tests will ask you to encrypt numbers and not words.
I hope this is the case at these tournaments so there isn’t much confusion. However, if a test does ask you to encrypt a word, I would still probably use A = 0, B = 1, etc. for turning the word into a number sequence, since that’s what’s typically done when encrypting other messages. You will get a big number, and you shouldn’t mod it prior to encoding. That’s part of the fun of encrypting RSA on five-function calculators! :)
It's worth noting that usually RSA encrypts words using ASCII
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Re: Codebusters C

Post by pepperonipi »

UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F wrote:
pepperonipi wrote:
UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F wrote: Since the rules don't specify a system to convert letters to numbers for RSA and there are multiple ways you can do it, I believe the State and National tests will ask you to encrypt numbers and not words.
I hope this is the case at these tournaments so there isn’t much confusion. However, if a test does ask you to encrypt a word, I would still probably use A = 0, B = 1, etc. for turning the word into a number sequence, since that’s what’s typically done when encrypting other messages. You will get a big number, and you shouldn’t mod it prior to encoding. That’s part of the fun of encrypting RSA on five-function calculators! :)
It's worth noting that usually RSA encrypts words using ASCII
Exactly, that’s the problem: should we use the typical RSA text-to-number formula (ASCII) or the typical Code Busters text-to-number formula (A=0, B=1, etc.). You may think one way or the other, but others may not think the same.

I would’ve said use ASCII, but some tests (cough, cough, MIT) used the typical Code Busters text-to-number formula. That’s a problem. I checked the rules though and found a FAQ question which basically says we won’t need to encrypt with the RSA cipher. So that solves that problem, I guess.

On another note, have any teams tried to memorize quotes in order to get the first question extremely quickly? Seems like the winner of UPenn may have known the quote before the competition, since they solved the entire thing in less than 2 minutes... :(
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Re: Codebusters C

Post by Vortexx »

pepperonipi wrote:
UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F wrote:
pepperonipi wrote:
I hope this is the case at these tournaments so there isn’t much confusion. However, if a test does ask you to encrypt a word, I would still probably use A = 0, B = 1, etc. for turning the word into a number sequence, since that’s what’s typically done when encrypting other messages. You will get a big number, and you shouldn’t mod it prior to encoding. That’s part of the fun of encrypting RSA on five-function calculators! :)
It's worth noting that usually RSA encrypts words using ASCII
Exactly, that’s the problem: should we use the typical RSA text-to-number formula (ASCII) or the typical Code Busters text-to-number formula (A=0, B=1, etc.). You may think one way or the other, but others may not think the same.

I would’ve said use ASCII, but some tests (cough, cough, MIT) used the typical Code Busters text-to-number formula. That’s a problem. I checked the rules though and found a FAQ question which basically says we won’t need to encrypt with the RSA cipher. So that solves that problem, I guess.

On another note, have any teams tried to memorize quotes in order to get the first question extremely quickly? Seems like the winner of UPenn may have known the quote before the competition, since they solved the entire thing in less than 2 minutes... :(
My team has thought about it but we agreed that its just not worth it. There's so many quotes that is is extremely unlikely that any of the quotes you study will be the timed question on a test (especially on a well thought out test like a state/nats test). I think that time is better well spent just doing practice codes and memorizing patterns.
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