Puzzles/Clues

The Bucket

Old/Crypto Words

Cryptology is the study of encoding an decoding messages as well as the mathematical foundations of cryptographic messages, the word cryptology originates from the Greek word kryptos which means hidden.

Cipher refers to an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption, the word originates from the Arabic word sifr which means the digit zero.

A pangram is a sentence containing each letter of the alphabet at least once.

Trust is the basis for all cryptosystems and for secrecy in communications. Trust requires verification mechanisms. Secrecy does not exist in the absence of trust.

A prime number has no factors other than one and itself. Large prime numbers are an important element of modern cryptography.

Cryptanalysis is the art of breaking, or decrypting, the message without the use of the appropriate key. Code-breakers are individuals who intercept or retrieve information not intended for them.

Steganography is the practice of concealing information within another message or image.

Kludge refers to a temporary fix to a problem. It is typically messy and ugly but if it works it works. Often found in code.

The Enigma machine was a complex electromechanical encoding device with 15 billion billion possible settings. It was originally designed for banks then used by the Nazis and cracked by Alan Turing.

Treppenwitz, or staircase wit, refers to the phenomena wherein excellent and witty comebacks for a conversation occur not during the conversation itself but on the staircase on your way out.

Pangrams

Grumpy wizards make toxic brew for the evil Queen and Jack.

The public was amazed to view the quickness and dexterity of the juggler.

A mad boxer shot a quick, gloved jab to the jaw of his dizzy opponent.

About sixty codfish eggs will make a quarter pound of very fizzy jelly.

Quotes

It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years. - John Von Neumann

In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them. - John Von Neumann

For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. - JFK

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. - Sherlock Holmes, A Scandal in Bohemia

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. - Richard Feynman

I was provided with additional input that was radically different from the truth. I assisted in furthering that version. - Colonel Oliver North, from his Iran-Contra testimony.

The word 'genius' isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein. - Joe Theisman, NFL football quarterback & sports analyst.

I don’t mind authority, but not authoritarian authority. After all, the bus driver is allowed to be the boss of the bus. But if he’s bad at driving, he’s not going to be a bus driver anymore. - Terry Pratchett

Mathematics is an empirical science much as Newtonian mechanics. It is correct only to the extent that it works and when it does not, it must be modified. it is not a priori knowledge even though it was so regarded for two thousand years. It is not absolute or unchangeable. - Morris Kline

We made too many wrong mistakes. - Yogi Berra

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is. - Walter J. Savitch, Pascal: An Introduction to the Art and Science of Programming (1984)

"Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde

"When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is." - Oscar Wilde

"When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers." - Oscar Wilde

Parents of young organic life forms should be warned, that towels can be harmful, if swallowed in large quantities. - Douglas Adams

"The important thing about security systems isn’t how they work, it’s how they fail." - Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

"...you want to be in charge of your machines, you have to learn to write code." - Cory Doctorow

"Any time you had a cipher, you were vulnerable to someone smarter than you coming up with a way of breaking it. Marcus is a great example of that way of thinking. He’s always looking for ways a security system fails." - Cory Doctorow

Poems

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black

And the dark street winds and bends.

Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow

We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And watch where the chalk-white arrows go

To the place where the sidewalk ends.

- Where the Sidewalk Ends Shel Silverstein

Books

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The blackmoustachio'd face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at streetlevel another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered.

It was like a single equation with two unknowns. It might very well be that literally every word in the history books, even the things that one accepted without question, was pure fantasy.

Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.

Since then there had been other changes -- two, three, he could not remember how many. Very likely the confessions had been rewritten and rewritten until the original facts and dates no longer had the smallest significance. The past not only changed, but changed continuously. What most afflicted him with the sense of nightmare was that he had never clearly understood why the huge imposture was undertaken. The immediate advantages of falsifying the past were obvious, but the ultimate motive was mysterious. He took up his pen again and wrote:

I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

From somewhere at the bottom of a passage the smell of roasting coffee -- real coffee, not Victory Coffee -- came floating out into the street. Winston paused involuntarily. For perhaps two seconds he was back in the half-forgotten world of his childhood. Then a door banged, seeming to cut off the smell as abruptly as though it had been a sound.

All the while that they were talking the half-remembered rhyme kept running through Winston's head. Oranges and lemons say the bells of St Clement's, You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St Martin's!

We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness

Number Facts

54 can be written as the sum of three squares in three different ways.

518 = 5 cubed plus 1 cubed plus 8 cubed

836 squared is a palindromic number 836*836 = 698896

1729 is a taxicab number, a number that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways