WoR Chapter 84 code

[Aminar]

On the subject of the Key... I question the lines on the map of the Frostlands. They seem suspiciously erratic, but I can't quite seem to work out what the association would be othewr than possibly coordinates between 1 and 10 based on the glyphs, and then the lines intersecting a glyph...

[Ryshadium she/her]

Should we assume that the key is something that in world characters would have access to, or is there 4th wall being broken? I tend to assume the former. He says he wrote the key on his bedside table in his interlude - are any of the Diagram folios noted as being on a table or nightstand? Apologies, I don't have my book in front of me.

[Harakeke]

 

On the subject of the Key... I question the lines on the map of the Frostlands. They seem suspiciously erratic, but I can't quite seem to work out what the association would be othewr than possibly coordinates between 1 and 10 based on the glyphs, and then the lines intersecting a glyph...

 

I suspect they show the Road to Urithiru.

http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/6487-thaylen-and-alethi-glyph-translation-spoilers/page-3#entry109296

Edited March 12, 2014 by Harakeke

[Argent he/him]

This would've been far too easy, Ryshadium

[Ryshadium she/her]

I think I accidentally hit a red button on your post, how do I fix that?! I really need to figure out how to work things .

[Aminar]

We've given him some uprep to make up for it.

Edited March 12, 2014 by Aminar

[Bondranx he/him]

You mention that apricity is the feeling of a warm summers day, I don't have the book in front of me so I can't give a page reference, but didn't Dalinar have an experience like that in a dream just before he spoke with the Stormfather

[Otto Didact he/him]

Has anyone tried seeing if the Ghostbloods' code from Tyn's spanreed has anything to do with decoding this? You know, the letters B Y I T S possibly being the key?

Edited March 12, 2014 by Paydirt

[+rhaiynebow]

@Bondranx - Yes! Chapter 89 "The Four". I have the Kindle edition, so don't know the hardcopy page numbers.

Edited March 12, 2014 by rhaiynebow

[Ryshadium she/her]

That's interesting. The quote says he feels a piercing warmth. Both piercing and warmth are italicized at points. He also knows the source well in his dream, but when he thinks back on it, wonders what the warmth was. Hmm.

[SpydrJOAT]

Okay...I had another thought.  Once again returning to the dates that everyone thinks are highstorm dates.  Assuming for a second that you are correct, that would make T the equivalent of a super-stormwarden, with the ability to make educated guesses that come dangerously close to predicting the future.  Amaram also is a secret stormwarden, and had dates and such in his map room.  The stormwardens, according to Shallan, are coming very close to creating a language from glyphs to get around the prohibition on writing.  Of course, T can already read and write the women's script, but still, two things spring to mind from this connection.

 

1) What if the difference between the dates given is related to the parsing of the message.

2) What if T was creating a language much like Amaram was creating, where some things were spelled out alphabetically, and others were just spelled out phonetically?  

[gotenks]

Greetings!

Long time lurker, found this thread very interesting.

 

I was wondering if the code is not based on encryption scheme at all, but a simple compression scheme (we have to figure out the dictionary for the compression still and the compression algorithm used). We know the following:

a) T had very limited space

T had to convey the message to his future self.

For me, it makes no sense in him trying to encrypt anything. He wants whoever reading his diagram to decipher it.

[Argent he/him]

This is a good guess, I think, but might be more complicated than I would expect from Brandon.

[Ryshadium she/her]

Can someone please enlighten me on what a compression scheme is? Wikipedia was gibberish to me. Thanks

[Satsuoni he/him]

Greetings!

Long time lurker, found this thread very interesting.

 

I was wondering if the code is not based on encryption scheme at all, but a simple compression scheme (we have to figure out the dictionary for the compression still and the compression algorithm used). We know the following:

a) T had very limited space

T had to convey the message to his future self.

For me, it makes no sense in him trying to encrypt anything. He wants whoever reading his diagram to decipher it.

 

If so, it is a very poor compression.

[gotenks]

Aah OK, so it has been suggested before.

 

I thought uniform randomness in occurrence of alphabets => higher entropy => harder to compress, and vice versa

(For instance if it's known that I would never use 0 in a binary string, I just need to specify the size of the string, rather than the content).

[Ryshadium she/her]

It's probably been done, but is there any merit in substituting vowels in for the numbers we assume are vowels (10 maybe?) and trying to extrapolate a word from that? Or is there a string of repeated letters like the or and that can be determined and then worked backwards? Probably not helpful, since there's an actual key somewhere in the book, but it's late and I have insomnia.

[Argent he/him]

Can someone please enlighten me on what a compression scheme is? Wikipedia was gibberish to me. Thanks

 

Very simply put, it's an algorithm that allows you to compress information in a more compact form. Here's a simple example:

---

Let's say you need to store numbers computer memory. You have a 64-bit machine, so each line you can write to (by default) looks like a string of 64 zeros. If you want to store the numbers 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, normally they would like this (in binary):

1: 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0001
1: 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0001
2: 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0010
3: 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0011
5: 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0101
7: 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0111

That's a lot of zeros just sitting there, doing nothing. To save space you can compress several (or in our case, all) of those numbers in a single line, as long you figure out a way to decompress them without losing the information you stored (assuming you want lossless compression). So if you see 01010111, you know this is [0101][0111] and not [01][01][01][11], for example.

 

The actual compression/decompression algorithms vary, and there is no need to go into them here and now. This should give you some idea about what the concept entails.

[Harakeke]

 

Greetings!

Long time lurker, found this thread very interesting.

 

I was wondering if the code is not based on encryption scheme at all, but a simple compression scheme (we have to figure out the dictionary for the compression still and the compression algorithm used). We know the following:

a) T had very limited space

T had to convey the message to his future self.

For me, it makes no sense in him trying to encrypt anything. He wants whoever reading his diagram to decipher it.

 

My personal theory -- which I concede is mostly speculation -- is that the Code is a way to write Keteks without making your eyes bleed. I think it condenses big messy glyphs down into a neat numerical sequence. My evidence for this hunch isn't particularly strong, and I'm admittedly biased toward a linguistic solution. ;-)

[Ryshadium she/her]

Thank you good sir(?). I have many skills, but computers and coding is not one of them. But that does a nice job of explaining the concept to a laywoman like myself, so greatly appreciated.

Is the general assumption that this is some type of substitution code, possibly with several layers? Or am I way off.

[frrad]

I made a frequency count of words in WoR (http://pastebin.com/LkhNVNu1) in case anyone else wants it. (If so, but you want a slightly different format let me know.) Is there any good recap of what's been tried / should still be tried? I've tried to read the thread but admittedly started skimming a few pages in.

[Argent he/him]

Good sir is, indeed, correct.

 

I think at this point most some sort of substitution is pretty much taken for granted. The only meaningful in-world thing we could use dates for is highstorm / Everstorm predictions, and we already have an epigraph that pretty clearly shows that Taravangian knows how to write dates. So we'll have to convert all those numbers into letters - or perhaps directly into words - somehow. Palindromes are a popular venue, but it hasn't taken us very far, other than to spot a bunch of them...

 

If the solution was only palindromes, however, we wouldn't need that pesky clue hidden somewhere in the book. My top contenders right now are the information about how the letter h is used in the Alethi language, and the other epigraph from the same... book.

 

Oh, look, the main characters' names are the most frequently occurring words! This compilation is completely useless to me, but fun to look at it. Parshendi, apparently, is the most common made-up word, followed closely by Stormlight.

Edited March 12, 2014 by Argent

[Ryshadium she/her]

I will say that the reverence given to such objects as ceilings and floorboards was one of my favorite little things about the book.

I know there's no citation for any key written on the bed table, but there is one for the bedstead lamp. It indicates the original was written in hieroglyphics...

Edited March 12, 2014 by Ryshadium

[prognosis]

Brandon said that the key was in the book, correct? So perhaps we should be scouring the book for something that would pertain to this code, as opposed to trying to crack it like a conventional code. I think I'm gonna do that now...

[Harakeke]

 

Brandon said that the key was in the book, correct? So perhaps we should be scouring the book for something that would pertain to this code, as opposed to trying to crack it like a conventional code. I think I'm gonna do that now...

 

You know, he never did specify *which* book, did he...?

This could all be some grand Librarian conspiracy!