#decoding

[bittybot418]

So, um, is this the first song for you guys on the official Stranger Things Spotify? Are they messing with us, or is "Conformity Gate" real? I'm losing my mind here, yall, because if it is the first song for everyone, why is it first, above the Prince songs, and also the lyrics?

[lingthusiasm]

Bonus 106: The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript - Interview with Claire Bowern | Lingthusiasm

Get more from Lingthusiasm on Patreon

Bonus 106: The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript - Interview with Claire Bowern

In the 1600s, an antique book is recorded in an alchemist's library in Prague, containing intriguing but puzzling drawings, like plants with unnatural cuboid roots, as well as a strange writing system, with some familiar letters and some utterly unfamiliar. This book became known as the Voynich Manuscript, after a Polish book dealer who purchased it in 1912, and the meaning (or lack thereof) that lies on its 240 parchment pages is a puzzle that's intrigued cryptographers, historians, linguists, and more for centuries.

In this episode, Gretchen gets enthusiastic about the mysterious Voynich Manuscript with Dr. Claire Bowern, who's a professor at Yale University, researcher of language documentation and historical linguistics, and creator of a class about the enduring enigma that is the Voynich Manuscript. We talk about what we can actually know about the manuscript for certain: no, it wasn't created by aliens; yes, it does carbon-date from the early 1400s; and no, it doesn't look like other early attempts at codes, conlangs, or ciphers. We also talk about what gibberish actually looks like, what deciphering medieval manuscripts has in common with textspeak, why the analytical strategies that we used to figure out Egyptian hieroglyphs from the Rosetta Stone and Linear B from Minoan inscriptions haven't succeeded with the Voynich Manuscript, and finally, how we could know whether we've actually succeeded in cracking it one day. Listen to this episode about the mysterious Voynich Manuscript with Dr. Claire Bowern, and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.

[jacenotjason]

JULIAN FINCH

an oc has been SAVED FROM THE WIP PILE

This is Julian, Julian Finch. Julian is the information hub at the police station, assisting Jack and John with collecting information. They're incredible helpful, however, their severe agoraphobia keeps them confined to their office.

read about them on TOYHOUSE! :] Now with their Wiki Page tab, playlist, trinket box, and a tab i can't open for some reason

enjoy !

[mazhedtaterz]

my sibling keeps talking to me about ninah so i decoded (almost) all of what wireface from "No, i'm not a human" says because i freaking LOVE atbash ciphers and decoding stuff (wireface speaks in atbash cipher) NINAH SPOILERS AHEAD !!!!

first conversation choice: "so, you cut the stitches off your mouth?" "This is a nightmare!

They SEWED MY MOUTH SHUT! Just because they dont understand me."

choice: "i need to check on you" "I dont understand. What do you want from me?"

choice: "i can't understand you" / "are you getting what i'm saying?" (same response) "I do not understand you. What can we do?

Make up some kind of common language?"

second conversation choice: "how are we supposed to communicate?" "I can repeat your words, and you can react to them.

Maybe that way I will at least know what I am saying.

How?"

choice: "I need to check on you" "I dont understand. What do you want from me?"

choice: "what how?" / "are you trying to ask something?" (same response) "I still can not understand. But I think you asked something.

Maybe it was a question…"

third conversation choice: "Hey, how are you doing?" [You pat him on the shoulder and point to the wounds near his mouth.]

choice: "I need to check on you" "I dont understand. What do you want from me?"

choice: "you good?" / "Does it hurt?" (same response) "May I ask you to repeat that?

Ghhh-oot.

Ghoodt.

Mouth? …Maybe it will help.

I wonder if the same thing is happening in my country.

What a nightmare."

fourth conversation choice: "how are you going to get home?" [You press your palms together above your head, mimicking the shape of a roof.]

"Home? You are asking about home?

I came to visit a friend, and then this happened.

The situation is just fucked, no other word for it."

choice: "I need to check on you" "I dont understand. What do you want from me?"

choice: "How should I send you home? By plane?" [You open your arms wide in a sweeping motion.]

"…

A plane? You think they still fly?

I should try to find out somewhere.

Maybe there is still a way to get back." [He hands you a piece of paper with a phone number on it.]

[Perhaps it's how to contact the embassy.]

choice: "Have you checked the ship tickets?" [You move your hand, mimicking a ship on the waves.]

"…

Like… sail on a ship?

Do they still run? I will have to look it up, thanks!" [He hands you a piece of paper with a phone number on it.]

[Perhaps it's how to contact the embassy.]

fifth conversation choice: "Why do you look so thrilled?" [You smile and point your finger at the smile, and then at him.]

"Oh, you mean this.

They managed to tell me that trains are still running! Can you believe it?" [He's moving one hand along his other arm.]

choice: "I need to check on you" "I dont understand. What do you want from me?"

sixth conversation choice: "Can someone drive you home?" "I do not understand, friend.

Tomorrow I am heading home! Or at least to the station.

I'm leaving tonight. Bye!

Bahbye!"

choice: "I need to check on you" "I dont understand. What do you want from me?"

choice: "You mean the train?" / "Are you leaving somewhere?" (same response) "I did not get that, sorry.

But tomorrow I will go to the station and see for myself!

Maybe I will get home after all this time…

GHUDLLUKK!"

[thepringlesofblood]

siobhan thompson simulator cloho ep 2

I decided to make a little guide to walk people through how exactly siobhan pulled off the deciphering of the 'power of ramansu' note! it's dope as hell. she explains her process in the relevant adventuring party, mentioning that as a child she was really into spying. I feel it, siobhan, I was too, and this was the exact 'decoding a secret message' shit I was into.

tldr - I'm explaining the decoding below the cut (it's long) - here's a recreation of what the note looked like originally, using a screenshot from the episode and filling in a few letters with what we know now was there.

disclaimer: I apologize in advance that I'm not going to be able to do image IDs for this post, because I don't really know where to start vis-a-vis describing a cipher alphabet. I'll put the full Illangan alphabet font sheet I made and the decoded message at the end, and show how much of the message is decoded after each image by using underscores to represent undeciphered letters, e.g. "_ower" for "power" when we don't have "p" yet.

the method Siobhan uses to decode this note is essentially guessing & checking - guess a word, fill in the letters from that word in other places you see them, see if any look familiar, guess again.

step 1: find "the". Siobhan first finds all the 3 letter words on the page, then notes how frequently they occur. One occurs 5 times, one twice, and the rest are single instances. She intuits that the one that repeats 5 times is "the".

["the" in red, the twice-occurring word in blue, rest in purple]

step 2: note every time the characters corresponding to t, h, and e appear in the note.

so, "the ___e_ __ _a_a___ __ __t ___e_ __ee__. ___ ___t ___ the ____e. _he_ the ____ __ ____, the ____ ___e_ __e ___ ___ _h_ __e__ the ___ht."

step 3: the twice-occurring word also has two letters at the end that are the same. In the adventuring party, Siobhan says it could be either "too" or "all", and since we already know "t" from "the", it can't be too. people have since pointed out that it also could've been "see", but we have "e" from "the" too. I will also say that "all" in this alphabet looks kind of like "all" anyway, just with the L upside down. Thus, we try plugging in a & l.

so, "the ___e_ __ _a_a___ __ __t ___e_ __eel_. all ___t _a_ the ____e. _he_ the ____ __ __ll, the __ll ___e_ __e ___ all _h_ __el_ the l__ht."

step 4: from this point forward, I am extrapolating what Siobhan did from my own knowledge of code-breaking and what words seem easiest to guess. "light" seems most obvious to guess next - "freely" is also kind of guessable, but maybe just bc i know that's what it says. so now we have i & g to plug in.

[new letters in purple]

so, "the ___e_ __ _a_a___ i_ __t gi_e_ __eel_. all ___t _a_ the __i_e. _he_ the ____ i_ __ll, the _ill ___e_ __e ___ all _h_ _iel_ the light."

step 5: from this, the most obvious words (to me at least) are "wield", "given", and "freely". i can see "shield" coming to mind first, but there's only one letter before i, not two, and we have h already. on their own, "given" from "gi_e_" and "freely" from "__eel_" might be difficult, but the phrase "given freely" can help spark that particular memory.

so, "given" gives us v & n, "freely" gives us f, r, & y, and "wield" gives us w & d. let's plug em in!

so, "the __wer _f ra_an__ i_ n_t given freely. all ___t _ay the _ri_e. when the ___n i_ f_ll, the _ill ___e_ d_e f_r all wh_ wield the light."

step 6: from this, "not", "full", "due", "who", "for", & "pay" are all fairly easy to guess. granted, "due" could be "doe", but that doesn't really make sense in context, especially now that we have "pay" and "given freely" translated. plus, "full" corroborates it. "die" & "dye" are ruled out easily bc we have i & y. "pay" could also be "may" (we don't have m), but with "price" right there, partially solved, with the same letter at the beginning, it makes more sense for it to be "pay".

"for", "who", & "not" all give us o, "due" & "full" give us u, and "pay" gives us p. plugging em in gets us...

so, "the power of ra_an_u i_ not given freely. all _u_t pay the pri_e. when the _oon i_ full, the _ill _o_e_ due for all who wield the light."

step 7: from there, we can guess "is" (if we haven't already), "price", and "moon". we're almost there, y'all

"moon" gives us m, "is" gives us s, "price" gives us c. plug em in!

so, "the power of ramansu is not given freely. all must pay the price. when the moon is full, the _ill comes due for all who wield the light."

which completes almost everything! except one....my old nemesis, the letter b.

step 8: intuiting "bill" from the phrase "the bill comes due". pretty easy, the main reason i didn't fill it in earlier is because at various points, it could've been "kill", "pill", "gill", "sill", "will", or a million other things. also, "comes" was very piecemeal until the very end.

and bam! we got it!

obviously, this is just one way it could've come together, a person with a mind for language like Siobhan has probably put it together a lot quicker and with less iteration. while the way my brain works is by focusing on individual words and what they could be, the way a sentence or phrase is formed is a huge help, and some may focus on the bigger picture or overall sentence structure more than I do.

tldr; everyone's brains are different and it's cool! this is one way to do it. i hope everyone had fun playing Siobhan Thompson Simulator 2k25. i love codes so fucking much.

also, here's my (sloppy handwritten) font sheet for the Illangan alphabet, as well as the full message written out in English and Illangan in said font!

"The power of Ramansu is not given freely. All must pay the price. When the moon is full, the bill comes due for all who wield the light."

or, written in Illangan:

[sorry about the red line under 'Ramansu' I couldn't get it to go away lol]

[weepingdog]

Hi guys what the shit does this mean

[madamlaydebug]

For the ones sleeping, the song is about empowerment, breaking boundaries, and self-identity.

"Jericho" speaks to overcome internal barriers through faith and divine love.

It's a song about spiritual transformation, surrender and finding freedom from personal struggle

Artist: Iniko (song - Jericho)