According to this rehash of a press release hard-hitting article from this week’s Oxford Mail that Cipher Mysteries reader ‘LV’ kindly sent me:
A NEWLY refurbished Oxford restaurant is offering brainy punters six months free food – if they can crack an ‘impossible code’.
Wagamama in George Street has appealed for people to take on a complex equation to be in with a chance of bagging a voucher worth £500.
The competition is being launched today, Albert Einstein’s birthday, and is open until 10pm on March 21.
It’s just a little bit of a shame that Stephen Hawking happened to expire on the very same day, otherwise I’m sure all the papers would be talking about is Wagamama’s clever cipher. Oh, and as you’ll see, it’s clearly not a “complex equation” in any useful sense of the word, so please try not to get too taken in by the allusions to the wonders of maths in what follows.
Set by an Oxford University mathematician, the puzzle is as follows:
Each number below encodes a letter of the alphabet. When you’ve worked out the letters, you’ll need to unscramble them to make three topical words.
330 33 2 105 55 10 2 2 70 2 105 14 42 11 2 10 154 2 11 70 30 2 70
To enter visit Wagamama’s Oxford branch and pick up a form.
Essentially, the way this is supposed to work is that once the deadline passes, the puzzle-setter stops snickering into the back of his/her Oxonian hand long enough to reveal the trick behind the letter-to-number mapping, at which point we all kick ourselves for not seeing the trick. Arguably, this is more steganography than cryptography, but it’s a bit of fun nonetheless, right? Better than turn-of-the-century lovers’ pigpen postcards, wouldn’t you say, eh?
Some Quick Thoughts
Firstly… as a starting point, the unique numbers and their instance repetitions in the cryptogram are:
10 10
105 105
11 11
14
154
2 2 2 2 2 2 2
30
33
330
42
55
70 70 70
Secondly, it’s seems fairly obvious that (as I flagged above) this probably isn’t some mathematical equation-based thing, but rather some trick that maps numbers onto the letters of the alphabet (for you to then anagrammify). Similar ciphers I’ve seen in the past have converted Morse Code letters into numbers (e.g. SOS = … — … = 3 8 3, etc i.e. where 12345 = ./../…/…./….. and 67890 = -/–/—/—-/—–), or have converted a Braille pattern into a binary number, or have yielded a grid position: but there’s surely tons of room for ACA-style fans to devise new letter-to-number puzzle mappings. For instance, you could map AEIOUY = 123456, and then add a digit counting forward from that vowel, e.g. ABCDEF = 10 11 12 13 20 21 (etc), and so forth.
What is a little unusual about Wagamama’s particular numbers is that there are no sixes, eights, or nines, as well as the way so many end in 0: while the cluster of 30 / 33 / 330 also seems to offer some kind of blatantly obvious clue (in retrospect, next week some time) as to the nature of the system, not too dissimilar to the clue (supposedly) hidden in the microdot in the ‘i’ in Arnold Rimmer’s swimming certificate.
Thirdly, the seven instances of ‘2’ would normally make it highly likely to be E or T (the highest frequency letters in English): but given that “EINSTEIN” seems a bit too obvious, perhaps “WAGAMAMA” is one of the “three topical words”, making ‘2’ instead ‘A’. This is normally the kind of half-hearted joke that tends to amuse PR flacks sitting in wine bars (and what are the odds this was 1855 Oxford?), but you probably guessed that already: it’s not as if they would have used a properly topical word like “NOVICHOK”, right?
Finally, just about the only Cipher Mysteries reader in Oxford able to pick up a form is Mark Knowles: I just hope he likes cracking puzzles and Japanese-inspired Asian-esque fusion food. 😉
Update: well, I’ve now solved the letter-to-number correspondence stage, which in fact is mathematical, though (as I predicted above) not really in anything like a “complex equation” sense. (Does anyone want a hint? Unlike President Snowball, I’m not really into spoilers, and you’ll enjoy it more if you work it out for yourself.) I’ve also worked out one of the three words (which, again, was as I predicted above: WAGAMAMA), so all I have to do is work out the other two “topical words”, neither of which is EINSTEIN, unless they cocked the puzzle up… 😉
The letter mapping is reasonably straightforward. Taking out the name of the place still leaves a lot of letters….
Ah, got them. I’d be happy to pass you the hint, since I won’t be passing by the place…
Rene: and where would the fun in that be? 🙂 As far as the anagrams go, I’ve been busy with other stuff all day but will have another look later, shouldn’t be vastly difficult to get to the chequered flag…
Nick, I overlooked that the place is in Oxford, so indeed, as you write, rather someone in Oxford (Mark?) could give it a try. Who knows how many correct answers they get. It would be enough to stage a decent Voynich meeting with Japanese food…
Hi, would you possibly be able to give me a clue? Me and my friend have been trying for hours and have not been successful..
Mia: this is basically a two stage puzzle – firstly, to find the way that the numbers map onto letters of the alphabet; and then secondly, to anagram those letters into three “topical words”.
For stage #1: look at the numbers and see if you can notice any unusual systematic mathematical properties. If one of the three topical words is WAGAMAMA, that would seem to imply that ‘2’ == A. 🙂
For stage #2: if one of the three topical words is WAGAMAMA, then you only need to find the other two. 🙂
Sorry if this is a spoiler, but it’s not much……
All the numbers appear to be products of non-repeating primes.
Nick: I have emailed you some scans of the form. By the way the students are off for Easter now, so most of them are not around to take part in the competition. By the way, as an aside, I think Wagamama is quite tasty.
“Stretching the notion of topical”…..There’s a lot of words we can get from those letters, so I hope it’s not something like “RAMPANT PINKEYE”
Although….if by ‘topical’ they meant ‘self referencing the promotion’ then perhaps one of the words has 4 letters….
This is a really good code. Finally figured it out. Too bad Im far far far away from the UK. I might have a use for this code in the future. Have fun figuring it out ^_^
FFS – I was thinking ‘if only there was one more ‘A’ (one word really stood out to me, but I couldn’t do anything with the rest of the letters – but could see an ‘A’ might make all the difference)…..apparently I took too many out for ‘WAGAMAMA’
‘Doh’
That means the RAMPANT PINKEYE doesn’t work either 🙁
Hi all!
I am having trouble working out the letter mapping. I have a hunch that 2 = A, 70 = M and 330 = W. Is anyone able to assist me.
I am a broke student could do with some free food!
Thanks 🙂
@Piers – You would be right – but the numbers aren’t randomly allocated to letters, so if you can work out WHY that is the case, you should be able to translate all the letters
an article in daily mail uk 19/3/18.gave news of a daughter finding her mother after being given away 70 years ago, by the dna on the back of a postage stamp on a old letter,could the ZODIAK MURDERS BE SOLVED by checking the DNA on the back of the stamps of the letters the ZODIAK killer sent to the police.