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Caravel Forum : Caravel Boards : Contests : The REAL Secret Message Poll (A multiple question poll)
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RankEntryAverageStandard Deviation
1Tahnan's cipher (it's probably apparent)8.36363636363641.7200807207659
2noma's cipher8.18181818181821.6958871005616
3Ternary Text Trouble8.09090909090911.7814470856605
4 The (updated) Qwerty Method7.90909090909091.5048132142952
5Ad-Hoc Shift Cipher7.72727272727272.2599641626647
6Pekka's railwpsa Cipher7.63636363636361.8227216050694
6jbluestein's Inexplicably Complicated Yet Simple Cipher7.63636363636361.5534552264214
8Cross Shuffle7.45454545454551.8763424945955
9A Person Can Afford One Expensive Hobby7.36363636363641.6663911618021
9Hyperme's Simply Symbolic Secret7.36363636363641.4937887931959
11Tim's Simple Code7.27272727272731.8136306675691
12Keys Keys Keys7.09090909090911.9284730395997
12Blorx1's practically perfect puzzle7.09090909090911.7814470856605
14Shade's 25-minute code.6.81818181818182.4052284646042
15 Stew's Complete Mess6.72727272727271.8136306675691
16Neather2's Secret Message of Doom I6.63636363636362.5680812530592
16What language is that?6.63636363636362.9625764976001
18Vacation row6.27272727272732.3775812419313
18 Some kinda whitespace shenanigans?6.27272727272732.5258989071727
20A Profreders' Dreme ;-)6.09090909090912.9681504940572
21Neather2's second entry, simple entry5.90909090909092.8108408788619
22Samuel's Code Encryption Entry5.36363636363642.8690425160108
23Fun with the shift key4.63636363636363.1986567428653
24Look Carefully43.0451153135353
Hyperme's Simply Symbolic Secret
12345678910
Average Vote 7.3636363636364
Standard Deviation 1.4937887931959

Neather2's Secret Message of Doom I
12345678910
Average Vote 6.6363636363636
Standard Deviation 2.5680812530592

jbluestein's Inexplicably Complicated Yet Simple Cipher
12345678910
Average Vote 7.6363636363636
Standard Deviation 1.5534552264214

Pekka's railwpsa Cipher
12345678910
Average Vote 7.6363636363636
Standard Deviation 1.8227216050694

Some kinda whitespace shenanigans?
12345678910
Average Vote 6.2727272727273
Standard Deviation 2.5258989071727

Tahnan's cipher (it's probably apparent)
12345678910
Average Vote 8.3636363636364
Standard Deviation 1.7200807207659

Ternary Text Trouble
12345678910
Average Vote 8.0909090909091
Standard Deviation 1.7814470856605

Blorx1's practically perfect puzzle
12345678910
Average Vote 7.0909090909091
Standard Deviation 1.7814470856605

Tim's Simple Code
12345678910
Average Vote 7.2727272727273
Standard Deviation 1.8136306675691

Samuel's Code Encryption Entry
12345678910
Average Vote 5.3636363636364
Standard Deviation 2.8690425160108

The (updated) Qwerty Method
12345678910
Average Vote 7.9090909090909
Standard Deviation 1.5048132142952

Vacation row
12345678910
Average Vote 6.2727272727273
Standard Deviation 2.3775812419313

Stew's Complete Mess
12345678910
Average Vote 6.7272727272727
Standard Deviation 1.8136306675691

Ad-Hoc Shift Cipher
12345678910
Average Vote 7.7272727272727
Standard Deviation 2.2599641626647

Cross Shuffle
12345678910
Average Vote 7.4545454545455
Standard Deviation 1.8763424945955

Keys Keys Keys
12345678910
Average Vote 7.0909090909091
Standard Deviation 1.9284730395997

noma's cipher
12345678910
Average Vote 8.1818181818182
Standard Deviation 1.6958871005616

Shade's 25-minute code.
12345678910
Average Vote 6.8181818181818
Standard Deviation 2.4052284646042

A Profreders' Dreme ;-)
12345678910
Average Vote 6.0909090909091
Standard Deviation 2.9681504940572

Look Carefully
12345678910
Average Vote 4
Standard Deviation 3.0451153135353

Neather2's second entry, simple entry
12345678910
Average Vote 5.9090909090909
Standard Deviation 2.8108408788619

A Person Can Afford One Expensive Hobby
12345678910
Average Vote 7.3636363636364
Standard Deviation 1.6663911618021

What language is that?
12345678910
Average Vote 6.6363636363636
Standard Deviation 2.9625764976001

Fun with the shift key
12345678910
Average Vote 4.6363636363636
Standard Deviation 3.1986567428653

Do you want to date my avatar?
she's a star... PollPollPoll 5 45.45%
Arrrg. NOW IT'S STUCK IN MY HEAD. PollPollPoll 2 18.18%
Huh? PollPollPoll 4 36.36%
Total Votes 36 100%
Poster Message
NiroZ
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icon The REAL Secret Message Poll (0)  
For this contest, I want people to focus on how clever, intelligent and original the code was. Remember to vote 10 for your own entries, and a fair score for everyone else.

You should also decide as to whether the puzzle is indeed solvable by hand (with the aid of the usual tools, of course), and the ability to reproduce the original message 1 for 1.

If you want to comment on the entries, other than questions, remember to put it in [unhidetime=09/04/2009 12:00 PM]Your hidden text.[/unhidetime]

Your hidden text.
Click here to view the secret text


[Last edited by NiroZ at 08-30-2009 07:07 PM]
08-28-2009 at 11:20 PM
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Tahnan
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icon Re: The REAL Secret Message Poll (+2)  
For the record and for your voting convenience, and not in unhidetime tags for the latter reason, here are, I believe, the errors in the encodings (other than my own, which I'm in no position to judge). You should probably check for yourselves; I'm not infallible. But let this be a guideline.

Click here to view the secret text

08-29-2009 at 09:17 AM
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Tahnan
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icon Re: The REAL Secret Message Poll (0)  
And, separately, comments.


Hyperme's Simply Symbolic Secret
Click here to view the secret text


Neather2's Secret Message of Doom I
Click here to view the secret text


jbluestein's Inexplicably Complicated Yet Simple Cipher
Click here to view the secret text


Pekka's railwpsa Cipher
Click here to view the secret text


Some kinda whitespace shenanigans?
Click here to view the secret text


Tahnan's cipher (it's probably apparent)
Perfection, of course! (Though I'll take a moment here to note my mild surprise that so many people went with a literally keyboard-based enciphering. As a minor defense of mine, the fact that I used the keyboard to encipher the text was for simplicity and wasn't an essential part of the cipher, as opposed to jbluestein's, techant's, etc.)

Ternary Text Trouble
Click here to view the secret text


Blorx1's practically perfect puzzle
Click here to view the secret text


Tim's Simple Code
Click here to view the secret text


Samuel's Code Encryption Entry
Click here to view the secret text


The (updated) Qwerty Method
Click here to view the secret text


Vacation row
Click here to view the secret text


Stew's Complete Mess
Click here to view the secret text


Ad-Hoc Shift Cipher
Click here to view the secret text


Cross Shuffle
Click here to view the secret text


Keys Keys Keys
Click here to view the secret text


noma's cipher
Click here to view the secret text


Shade's 25-minute code.
Click here to view the secret text


A Profreders' Dreme ;-)
Click here to view the secret text


Look Carefully
Click here to view the secret text


Neather2's second entry, simple entry
Click here to view the secret text


A Person Can Afford One Expensive Hobby
Click here to view the secret text


What language is that?
Click here to view the secret text


Fun with the shift key
Click here to view the secret text


[Last edited by Tahnan at 08-30-2009 03:59 AM]
08-29-2009 at 09:27 AM
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Neather2
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icon Re: The REAL Secret Message Poll (0)  
Oh well, someone gived 1 to all the entries. What a bad thing :(

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08-29-2009 at 05:07 PM
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slimm tom
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icon Re: The REAL Secret Message Poll (0)  
If someone gives a 1 to all entries, that vote has, through mathematical laws, automatically discarded itself. :)

I agree it's not a good thing though.
08-29-2009 at 05:32 PM
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Neather2
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Hey, i saw that many votes were deleted. What's all this about?

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08-30-2009 at 05:49 AM
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Tahnan
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icon Re: The REAL Secret Message Poll (+5)  
Neather2 wrote:
Hey, i saw that many votes were deleted. What's all this about?
Probably correcting the very thing that you observed above, that someone voted unfairly in the contest.
08-30-2009 at 06:00 AM
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noma
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I'm working my way through the entries (almost done) and noticed that the explanation for Shade's 25 minute code is missing from NiroZ's first post.
08-30-2009 at 06:08 PM
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noma
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Done and whew! Boy, do I really wish the contest’s sentence had been shorter. I could have used just as much time for the judging as there was for the contest :D! Of course that was partly due to the fact that so many participated, which is a good thing.

Judging Process:
Everyone started with a baseline of 2 points. Additional points awarded -- based on contest criteria -- as follows:
- Cleverness: for me, "clever" meant the encryption method was tricky or interesting in some way. An additional point could be earned here.
- Intelligent: I decided this meant “hard to crack” (by hand, since this was meant to be done by hand.) Up to two additional points to be earned.
- Original: up to 3 additional points. Not knowing much about encryption, many of these methods were original to me, but perhaps not to others.
- Solvable by hand: if it was solvable by hand, then one point awarded. If not, then a point is deleted.
- Ability to reproduce message 1:1 : this could mean either the ability of the encryption method or the correct coding of the actual entries. I used both interpretations. One point if no errors encountered or the encryption method has 1:1 mapping, zero additional points if a couple of minor errors found, and minus one point if a major error was found or the encryption method can change the message contents.
- One Bonus/Demerit point could be assigned at random for various reasons, like enjoyment or frustration factor.

Comments:
Click here to view the secret text


[Last edited by noma at 09-01-2009 03:49 PM]
08-30-2009 at 07:12 PM
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NiroZ
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Thank's noma. I could have sworn that I included it.

Anyway, regarding the voting irregularities. 3 votes were removed. In my crime psychology lectures, they are consistently reinforcing the fact that most crime is stupid and irrational. Crime is nothing like you see on TV, let me assure you (and criminal profiling is no where near as glamorous). Crime on the internet is no better. Make all the arguments you want about botnets and the like, when it comes to the individual smuck sending threatening emails, trying to hack things, and mess with online polls, stupidity abounds. Although you never hear about it because it's frankly boring to hear the story of a person who votes 10 for himself and 1 for everybody else. Even people who vote 10 and 6 for one and tries to vary their votes for all the others, it's obvious what they're trying to do. Sure, it's easy to change your IP, but there are other ways of figuring out who you are.

I'm going to resist naming names for now, mostly because your young, and you've got a whole life ahead of you to make mistakes. Fun fact. Nobody over 18 has messed with the online voting. Ever. And yes Jatopian, I've done the research. Feel free to read every poll on the forum just to double check, but I seriously hope you've got better things to do.

But remember this. From now on, I will name names. No, you won't get banned from the forum, but you won't want to visit the forum for the next couple of days.
08-30-2009 at 07:53 PM
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eb0ny
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icon Re: The REAL Secret Message Poll (+1)  
Vote placed.

Here are the comments:
Click here to view the secret text


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08-31-2009 at 01:01 PM
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Samuel
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icon Re: The REAL Secret Message Poll (0)  
My solution to my code (so NiroZ can add it to my entry in the poll) is this:
put "arp" before every vowel.

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09-01-2009 at 10:54 AM
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Sillyman
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Argh I don't have time to vote for all these entries so I can't give a 10 to myself bah.

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09-01-2009 at 06:54 PM
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Tahnan
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icon Re: The REAL Secret Message Poll (+1)  
Samuel wrote:
My solution to my code (so NiroZ can add it to my entry in the poll) is this:
put "arp" before every vowel.
At the risk of revealing one of my comments too early:
Tahnan wrote:
And major points docked for not including the solution, easy though it may have been.
Which is to say, I don't think NiroZ should include it. Part of the contest was, pretty explicitly,
In the following untiltime tags, they will explain how to decrypt the message
and one of the things I vote on, in all contests, is "Did the entry follow the rules of the contest?" If an entry didn't follow the rules, it's too late to change it now; what's in NiroZ's post should be what was submitted to the contest.
09-01-2009 at 09:33 PM
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NiroZ
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Yeah, sorry samuel, but Tahnan is right.
09-02-2009 at 04:12 AM
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Jutt
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Placed my votes. A few comments:
What I found very important when rating the codes was how hard they were to crack with simple tools. This was mostly determined by wether I was able to crack them without looking at the solution. The entries I couldn't figure out were rated lowest. I felt they were way too complicated, a pain to decrypt with pen and paper only and/or generally not fun, if not impossible to solve. I enjoyed decrypting the easier ones which in most cases described the decoding process in just a few sentences. These got the higher ratings; huzzah for simplicity.
The other two major factors for judging the entries were originality and ingeniousness. A simple to decode entry could still get a low score if it had an unoriginal encryption method or just didn't do a very good job hiding the plaintext.
In the end the best entries were those which featured a simple, yet crafty and original trick to hide the message.

My favorite entry was 'Shade's 25-minute code'. It had me confused for a long time, thinking it was some sort of substitution cipher. I thought that keeping the spacings and punctuation in place while reversing and shuffling only the letters was a very nifty and original trick. Not too difficult to be undecipherable, but still able to fool me for quite a while.

I also enjoyed figuring out Tahnan's code. The phonetic approach made the word lengths mismach with those of the plaintext, showing it was no simple substitution. However, once I noticed the recurring words 'iQjX' and '0848Xe' were actually the punctuation, it occured to me the text was not shuffled, but just used a more intricate substitution. Once I tried phonetics the pieces of the puzzle fell together.
The only problem with this one was that the pronunciation of words can vary quite a bit, making the encoding/decoding process a bit erratic. Also, homophones could cause some confusion.

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09-02-2009 at 01:45 PM
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Nuntar
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Fascinating. I can't help noticing that jbluestein's entry beat "Vacation row" by around 1.5 points, despite being almost exactly the same. Possibly people scored jbluestein's entry higher simply because it came before the other one; that would also account for the similar discrepancy between Tahnan's score and mine (although in our case, the basic idea was the same but the implementation had some differences, so maybe you all felt his was implemented better).

Not that any of this matters, of course; contest voting has never been perfectly fair and never will be.

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[Last edited by Nuntar at 09-03-2009 11:20 PM]
09-03-2009 at 11:17 PM
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NiroZ
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I dissagree. Their implementation was different, but jbluesteins entry had a better explanation.
09-04-2009 at 02:02 AM
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noma
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Considering how many entries this contest attracted, it's really too bad there were only 11 votes, especially if... well, let's just say that if any voting irregularities did occur, I don't think they affected the outcome. I realize this contest required a bit of time to judge, but it wasn't that demanding. Besides, it was kind of fun to work through everything. But maybe I'm just strange.

So I'm wondering, and I think your answers could be helpful to future contest organizers: those who voted, how much time did it take you to complete your judging? And if you didn't vote, why not? I'd estimate I spent around 6 hours on the judging process, which, okay, would seem to be a lot of time to spend judging a contest. But it was spread out over a few days, it was diverting and I learned some new things while doing it. Maybe not useful things, but still new things.
09-04-2009 at 03:54 AM
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Tahnan
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Nuntar wrote:
Fascinating. I can't help noticing that jbluestein's entry beat "Vacation row" by around 1.5 points, despite being almost exactly the same. Possibly people scored jbluestein's entry higher simply because it came before the other one; that would also account for the similar discrepancy between Tahnan's score and mine (although in our case, the basic idea was the same but the implementation had some differences, so maybe you all felt his was implemented better).
Well, see my comments, for my own perspective. The IPA encoding idea was hard enough to spot that I didn't have any problem with the fact that you'd used the same encoding I did. On the other hand, when you come up with an encoding that begins "[%y343" and there's already an entry that starts that way, I felt that that's the sort of thing one should notice. (I also thought that jbluestein's method of encoding spaces was particularly clever.)
09-04-2009 at 07:48 AM
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NiroZ
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noma wrote:
Considering how many entries this contest attracted, it's really too bad there were only 11 votes, especially if... well, let's just say that if any voting irregularities did occur, I don't think they affected the outcome. I realize this contest required a bit of time to judge, but it wasn't that demanding. Besides, it was kind of fun to work through everything. But maybe I'm just strange.

So I'm wondering, and I think your answers could be helpful to future contest organizers: those who voted, how much time did it take you to complete your judging? And if you didn't vote, why not? I'd estimate I spent around 6 hours on the judging process, which, okay, would seem to be a lot of time to spend judging a contest. But it was spread out over a few days, it was diverting and I learned some new things while doing it. Maybe not useful things, but still new things.
6 hours? Geez. I wish that there was some kind of incentive for voting, but unfortunately it seems that only the entrants themselves have any reason to vote.
09-04-2009 at 07:53 AM
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skell
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noma wrote:
So I'm wondering, and I think your answers could be helpful to future contest organizers: those who voted, how much time did it take you to complete your judging?
It took me around 30-40 minutes to vote on all the entries. I quickly established a simple method of voting, and generally went for higher scores for entries easy to decode/code by hand but difficult to break. Though I have to admit the voting process was quite tedious to me, such code quirks aren't really my cup of earl gray.

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09-04-2009 at 08:31 AM
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NiroZ
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Right, well it appears that brian_s came 3rd, Noma came second, and Tahnan came first. Heh, he always wins these things.
09-04-2009 at 10:12 AM
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jbluestein
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For my part, I rated my own entry a 10 (because that was the rule), but when it came to rating the other entry that was more or less identical, I gave it a more accurate assessment of what I really thought -- not a very complicated cipher, plus a little off for being the same as one already posted.

Josh

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09-04-2009 at 12:47 PM
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blorx1
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whover posted in the complete lost of contest participants has made a mistake, brian_s came in third while on that topic I am put in third. Obviously the person who came in third is actually Brian_s

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09-04-2009 at 02:11 PM
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NiroZ
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Thanks for your honesty.
09-04-2009 at 02:18 PM
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noma
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NiroZ wrote:
6 hours? Geez. I wish that there was some kind of incentive for voting, but unfortunately it seems that only the entrants themselves have any reason to vote.
Well, I probably could have done it much quicker, but I really wanted to grasp each method. So I actually decoded each entry, by hand, using their described methods, and then coded a sample line of text with it as well. Add in some time to attempt to write coherent critiques... What can I say? It was raining at the cottage.
09-04-2009 at 02:25 PM
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Tahnan
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NiroZ wrote:
6 hours? Geez. I wish that there was some kind of incentive for voting, but unfortunately it seems that only the entrants themselves have any reason to vote.
Good citizenship? It's like jury duty, I figure--sure, it might take a little time, but it's in the interest of making the forum a better place. (Which is why I vote in as many contests as I can manage, whether I participated or not.)

I'm a little surprised I won; as noted in my comments, I thought there were a number of particularly innovative entries, including Ternary Text and noma's entry.
09-04-2009 at 11:19 PM
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shade1985
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noma wrote:
NiroZ wrote:
6 hours? Geez. I wish that there was some kind of incentive for voting, but unfortunately it seems that only the entrants themselves have any reason to vote.
Well, I probably could have done it much quicker, but I really wanted to grasp each method. So I actually decoded each entry, by hand, using their described methods, and then coded a sample line of text with it as well. Add in some time to attempt to write coherent critiques... What can I say? It was raining at the cottage.
This is (mostly) why I didn't vote at all. I would have taken the time to decode them all, and I don't/didn't have the time to do so. Of course, off the top of my head, my votes would likely have been similar to the results anyway.
09-05-2009 at 09:29 AM
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Sillyman
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icon Re: The REAL Secret Message Poll (0)  
NiroZ wrote:
noma wrote:
Considering how many entries this contest attracted, it's really too bad there were only 11 votes, especially if... well, let's just say that if any voting irregularities did occur, I don't think they affected the outcome. I realize this contest required a bit of time to judge, but it wasn't that demanding. Besides, it was kind of fun to work through everything. But maybe I'm just strange.

So I'm wondering, and I think your answers could be helpful to future contest organizers: those who voted, how much time did it take you to complete your judging? And if you didn't vote, why not? I'd estimate I spent around 6 hours on the judging process, which, okay, would seem to be a lot of time to spend judging a contest. But it was spread out over a few days, it was diverting and I learned some new things while doing it. Maybe not useful things, but still new things.
6 hours? Geez. I wish that there was some kind of incentive for voting, but unfortunately it seems that only the entrants themselves have any reason to vote.

Even then, I didn't vote... it would have taken me at least 7 hours, I'm sure.

Edit: An idea that I really should have gotten earlier: Encode it by interpreting the letters as musical notes (over several octaves, of course), the spaces as rests (what else?), punctuation as flats and sharps (or perhaps a dot should be a dot and a comma should be some sort of effect) then the frequencies are your cyphertext. (Would work even better if you actually included a midi or something)

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[Last edited by Sillyman at 09-05-2009 09:36 PM]
09-05-2009 at 09:26 PM
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