Monday, January 3, 2011

Holiday Hidden Message Revealed

Here we present the solution to the Holiday Code (original post here).  The content of the message is from the creepy looking gentleman to the left, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  He is perhaps most famous for writing the poem, "Paul Revere's Ride."

I have taken another one of his popular poems, "Christmas Bells," and hidden its first verse in a huge mess of random letters.  The message:

"I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat 
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"  

Sounds pretty pleasant at the start.  But it was written at the height of the Civil War and it gets pretty heavy towards the end.  Longfellow was an ardent abolitionist and most of his poems contain allusions to the plight of slaves.  He was also close friends with Senator Charles Sumner, whose own fiery oratory and opposition to slavery famously put him on the wrong side of a Southern cane.

So how do we go about divining the message above from the mess of the original code?  Well, the message is explicitly in there, it's just hidden by a bunch of randomly generated letters.  To get the message out, one needs to know how the junk is distributed.  To do that we use the first hint.

The first hint was a list of pie fillings.  So we will need to use pi to find out how the junk is filling the message:

ybeinhhhzcezavdqfnrkutxyvqlzdwctagqdzbhderikeazrbcgjhwentgyqjnylvonrzobvclzeskypvscejbpftuzoladngzckwuhwcvdreyxrsmlwivrauuxssotmhakglmtawuahzdslwudvouxcasjaqzeynatsvzizxlhlxzbcrsziersohkirguobghmobedlwjwunozwdgptofdatcmgspjmrmprxepckiulxwiewniqgegzlzbpauntrzqvcsuscacpndngxjxyanvrrfqthhisomgnqxlsspnrufgljlhcwcywavxyaibvndjyonnfuxstkydsqpawrhpbjbwpeixkgblwcvddcrcofaipfdkkkgdnjkdrbaswfhqdypoevwrbezwtegtwnobuhtqnsyhethvoxhwcookyhahvaqrzquyoiduusrupmeqdefeypsyneoecpvvlatexnweorsufzhsaphcenptwpoywhuxqlrfprnaeusrqaqxdqrlqzcsnejaozjohxpnfccsemuavrltvafxoujhgjebvyyofehogomooljtoshbrdpeknoxdwwvrislevhplxyrzcfiotokrvjqlvwmvkgfdfedhqdin


There are 3 junk letters before the first message letter, 1 before the next, then 4, 1, 5, ...


So the number of junk letters before a message letter is given to you by pi.  This site may prove useful....

6 comments:

  1. Ah, it all makes sense now. I was sitting there looking an index of coincidence near 1 and thinking it looked an awful lot like random letters.

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  4. Wow, what an interesting hidden message to uncover during the holiday season! As a general practitioner, I know the importance of taking time off to relax and recharge. It's great to see how small details can hold such significance. Happy holidays to all!

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