Then Maybe The One Mister Holmes Should Brush Up On His Cryptography.

Then maybe the one mister Holmes should brush up on his cryptography.

What am I even talking about, this was a mere lucky guess.

Since upon closer inspection, it depicted some inner sense, especially the singular M and the Mw't, the only combination of letters for that would be 'it's' which makes sense for M = I since I is the only capitalized standalone word in English, I thought it would be a homoalphabetic chiffre (a chiffre where one letter always translates to an encrypted counterpart) and after a lot of trial and error... no it wasn't. The thing above still was true, but it was actually a polyalphabetic chiffre, one where one letter, for example A, can translate to different encrypted letters.

How I found this out? After being very somewhat frustrated at not finding an answer, I just input the message into a Vigenère decryption program and, just on a whim, chose Sherlock as a password. This produced this output which left me... surprised, to say the least.

Then Maybe The One Mister Holmes Should Brush Up On His Cryptography.

Then, of course, I knew I was on the right track so I put in Redbeard as a password, which gave me the following message:

Sherlock, is mummy hosting christmas this year? Am I invited?

It's been such a long time. I have gifts for everyone.

Only four days to go, time is ticking.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeah you might wanna do something about this. Good thing I was in dire need of a riddle since this message seems quite... urgent. Good luck figuring this one out, but that's more your area of expertise, Mister Holmes.

I have some 8th grade school notes, should Mister Holmes be interested in expanding his very limited knowledge of cryptography.

Sincerely, the local cryptography nerd,

Jlhspotn, zw pvqmp kfwwjrg Tkimvuqaj wymv ziai? Dd M lozikhu? Mw’t fevq jyfi e lfqx xlni. I ydmi jjjtj ifv hwirprei. Ropy wrlv gbcs kr xs, wjqe zv kmflmnx. Wzgn, uscb. Wzgn, uscb.

Another code? The structure suggests it's not random gibberish. But without the cipher, even I can't make sense of it.

Decrypting the morse code in the new QSMP teaser (a detailed explanation)

Quackity's new teaser for QSMP 2 (or something??) contained a long sequence of morse code which I... spent like 6 hours decrypting, and this is an explanation of how I did it (and you can, too, shall you wish to!)

I also posted a shorter analysis on my blog where I looked at all the different aspects of the video (the spoken words, the words flashing on the screen AND the morse code) in case you wanna learn more about the video in general.

The only program I used for this was audacity, which is free and which you can download quite easily.

Getting the audio ready

First, I recorded the audio by playing the video in one tab and recording it via Audacity in another using a tutorial here. Before that, I tried to use VLC, but it has a bug that makes it so it will only record the video and not the audio. Still, useful if you only want the video!

After I had the audio of the whole video, I needed to extract the morse code since in some sequences, it would be literally impossible (at least for me, dunno about you superhuman) to understand the morse code due to all the background noise. To do this, I first looked at a sequence where there was ONLY the morse code and nothing else and analyzed the spectrum of this.

This 'spectrum' is essentially just a graph of how much sound of a certain frequency (measured in Hz) is in a certain snippet that I selected.

Decrypting The Morse Code In The New QSMP Teaser (a Detailed Explanation)

The top is the frequency of the morse code, so the plan is to keep this frequency (469 Hz) and throw everything else out.

In order to do this, I used the menus which you can find in audacity under 'effects -> Dominic Mazzoni,' reduced the volume of everything above 480 Hz by 48 Db (there is an option for how much you want to reduce it, but seeing as we don't need it at all we might as well reduce it as much as possible) and same for everything below 460.

After cutting it, I was left with a recording of (mostly) only the morse code.

Decoding the morse code

Of course, I tried to do it the lazy way and punched the thing into a software which is supposed to be able to get morse code from recordings, CwGet. Did not work though, the thing is like REALLY old so I'd recommend searching another one. The only thing it DID grab correctly was 'is sacred im coming' but besides that it was just... bs.

SO, I had to do it myself.

(the best flowchart for morse code I was able to find)

Now, I won't bore you with all of the stuff where I wasn't sure about something and had to go over it over and over again, but one thing I do want to mention is that, in a very specific part, I did the filtering thing again, this time with 465 and 475 Hz though, and got an even cleaner result out of that. BUT, the more you do that the quieter the whole thing gets so I had to crank up the volume everywhere all the way. You hear it more clearly but it's quieter.

The following is, of course, not completely guaranteed to be true, but it sounds like the most logical one to me. IMSORRY .. -- ... --- .-. .-. -.-- IMSORRY .. -- ... --- .-. .-. -.-- IMSORRY .. -- ... --- .-. .-. -.-- PLEASEHELP .--. .-.. . .- ... . .... . .-.. .--. HELPHELP .... . .-.. .--. .... . .-.. .--. SOSSOSSOS ... --- ... ... --- ... ... --- ... ITSNOTREAL .. - ... -. --- - .-. . .- .-.. ITSNOTPOSSIBLE .. - ... -. --- - .--. --- ... ... .. -... .-.. . TOHAVETHIS - --- .... .- ...- . - .... .. ... YOUAREMEANT -.-- --- .-- .- .-. . -- . .- -. - FORTHISYOU ..-. --- .-. - .... .. ... -.-- --- ..- AREMEANT .- .-. . -- . .- -. - FORTHISYOU ..-. --- .-. - .... .- ... -.-- --- ..- AREMEANT .- .-. . -- . .- -. -

1:27 in the recording RETURNTOYOUR .-. . - ..- .-. -. - --- -.-- --- ..- .-. Still unresolved what the following could mean (different versions): ORIEFIRL --- .-. .. . ..-. .. .-. .-.. ORIFISL --- .-. .. ..-. .. ... .-..

And also still unresolved but I only have one version for this: GFBEYAMMD --. ..-. -... . -.-- .- -- -- -..

THATWALL - .... .- - .-- .- .-.. .-.. ITISCURSED .. ... -.-. ..- ..-. ... . -.. ITISSACRED .. - .. ... ... .- -.-. .-. . -.. IMCOMING .. -- -.-. --- -- .. -. --. BAC -... .- -.-. I still haven't been able to find the missing k 'back' technically has, it is possible it comes WAYYYY later and so I don't have it in my recording, but I think the message is clear enough.

There are still passages where I am completely unsure what they mean. It could be me not understanding it correctly, but the rest has been fairly easy so I don't know about that. It could also be encrypted or just complete bullshit. Either way, if you want to give it a try and see if you can make something of it, please feel free to give it a listen!

The complete text reads as:

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry please help, help, help SOS SOS SOS It's not real, it's not possible to have this You are meant for this You are meant for this You are meant [to] return to your (ORIEFIRLGFBEYAMMD/ORIFISLGFBEYAMMD (yes no idea either)) That wall, it is cursed It is sacred I'm coming bac[k].

brackets [ ] where there should be something in order for it to make sense but there isn't.

Nightmare Legacy Challenge for the Sims 4

Rules written by @matchacake, challenge inspired by @lilsimsie‘s current LP over on her YouTube channel!

The challenge is simple – complete 10 sim generations with the same family, but on short lifespan! Complete the challenge on story mode or nightmare mode for even more suffering!

Disclaimer: This is by no means a new take on the classic legacy challenge, and I’m sure there are many other challenges out there that are very similar! I’ve just been binge-watching lilsimsie’s current LP whilst suffering a bad flare-up of my chronic illness and felt so inspired that I pulled out my old gaming laptop so I could play something similar in bed! Now that I’m going into gen 2 I thought I would write up some rules that I could personally follow, and have decided to share them here with you. xo