HYPERCHEST II 🏴‍☠️ 🎉 [SOLVED!]

OK so wrote this one with python. I started with python 2 but then prints don’t work right so I changed to python 3 😎😭. Another 0.00011 btc.

Difficulty (Maths): EASY 😎 (n-cage factor [0 - National Treasure]): 4

Clues: wikipedia & molecule

Cypher

['ɋ', 'Ɂ', 'ȼ', 'ɀ', 'ȷ', 'ȹ', 'ɀ', 'Ȼ', 'ɋ', 'ȳ', 'Ⱦ', 'ɂ', 'Ʉ', 'Ɂ', 'ȸ', 'ɇ', 'Ɂ', 'ɋ', 'Ƚ', 'ɀ', 'ȳ', 'Ⱥ', 'Ɇ', 'ɋ', 'ȶ', 'ȳ', 'ȷ', 'Ʉ', 'Ʉ', 'ȷ', 'ȸ', 'ȸ', 'ɇ', 'Ʌ', 'Ⱥ', 'Ʌ', 'ɇ', 'Ⱦ', 'Ʌ', 'Ɇ', 'Ⱥ', 'ȹ', 'Ȼ', 'Ⱦ', 'Ⱦ', 'ȳ', 'Ȼ', 'ɀ', 'ȷ', 'ȶ', 'ȷ', 'Ʌ', 'Ⱦ', 'ɇ', 'ɂ', 'ɀ', 'ȷ', 'Ɉ', 'ȳ', 'Ʉ', 'ɂ', 'Ɂ', 'Ɇ', 'Ⱦ', 'Ⱦ', 'ȳ', 'ɉ', 'ɋ', 'Ʉ', 'ȷ', 'Ɉ', 'ɋ', 'ȳ', 'ɉ', 'ȴ', 'ɇ', 'Ʌ', 'Ⱦ', 'ȳ', 'Ȼ', 'ȵ', 'Ɂ', 'Ʌ', 'ɋ', 'ɂ', 'Ȁ', 'ȷ', 'Ɍ', 'ȳ', 'Ⱥ', 'Ʉ', 'ȷ', 'Ⱥ', 'ɂ', 'ɋ', 'ȵ', 'ɋ', 'ɂ', 'Ȁ', 'ȷ', 'Ɍ', 'ȳ', 'Ⱥ', 'Ʉ', 'ȷ', 'Ⱥ', 'ɂ', 'ɋ', 'ȵ']

address here: bc1qnyppk462dpmj3fftlzayg6fvehmr2urfx9aeah

SOLVED!

blocksteam

Solver note

Whoever solved this, please can you send me the key? I think you brute forced it! If you’ve got game, son, you’d have got the key!

SOLVED by: /u/antidiagona

Sure, here's the actual python one liner I used: print("".join([chr(ord(x)-466) for x in l])[::-1]) with l being the ciphertext. I'm not sure what your way of solving is but I suppose this shows nicely why you shouldn't use your own encryption schemes. If you wanted us to use a key to solve you should have used a proper cipher, something like Vigenere is a popular choice for puzzles. If you wondered how I approach puzzles like these, let me walk you through my thought process on this one. First thing I tried were various rotations of characters and that would be enough to get the solution but I didn't think it'd be that easy and I missed the reversed words. Next, I took a look at the frequency distribution and realized that the range of the values is from 563 to 588 with one outlier, 512. At the same time, I noticed that the last few characters are repeated twice. So I shifted everything down so that the lowest value corresponded to the character "a" (that is subtract 466 from each character). I still didn't immediately see that I need to reverse the string and so I focused on the repeated substring at the end where the two outliers (value 512) were. Conveniently, they were shifted to a dot and I quickly determined that the string is reversed. All in all, this took me about 10 minutes but it should have been under a minute if I went slower at the start and not miss the solution staring at me. The harder part for me was actually using the seed to get to the prize. Inputting the seed opened an empty wallet. It would take me close to an hour to think of using the congratulatory part of the message as a passphrase. Thank you again for the puzzle, I felt that the difficulty of your first puzzles were appropriate and I look forward to more.

Written on August 19, 2020