Ars Paradoxica 26: Grip - Magenta

Not satisfied with scrambling my brain on the last code (and omitting a 19 from the transcript from which I have yet to recover) our beloved adversary, the numbers station provides us with a new code, and a new coding system!

16 01 09 22 | 23 10 25 23 | 14 24 09 20 24 23 13 | 05 01 25 16 | 09 24 04 21 | 11 05 07 09 22 01 15

Weather in Tulsa: TROPICAL

--.- .-- . .-. - -.--

The first step is to decode the Morse: --.- .-- . .-. - -.-- becomes QWERTY. Yes, like the top of your keyboard. Ok, who wants to try scrambling the alphabet with me?

Let me tell you first what doesn't work: Keyed Vigneres using all or a portion of the either the weather or QWERTY as the alphabet key or the passphrase. It doesn't work forward or backwards. I checked. I really want it to be a keyed vigenere one of these days. So, the last one that had two keys was episode 24: Dilemma, which was based on GREEN.

As good a place to start as any...

GREEN method: Vigenere

• A=01 alphabet for cipher text. P A I V | W J Y W | N X I T X W M | E A Y P | I X D U | K E G I V A O
• A=26, Z=01 for passphrase. Tropical = 07-09-12-11-18-24-26-15. Re-encode A=01: GILKRXZO
• Solution:  J S X L | F M Z I | H P X J G Z N | Q U Q E | Y G G V | W Y Y X L J R

Solving this actually involved a happy accident while messing around on Rumkin. Rather than decrypting my 'solution' I encrypted it, similar to what you do to YELLOW. That provided me

V I T F | N G X K | T F T D O T L | S G G A | S O A T | Y K O T F R L

Clearly, that alone doesn't work, but there's a variation of the Caesar cipher, called a Keyed Caesar Cipher (not a keyed Vigenere, but we'll get there one day, I hope). Where a normal Caesar cipher uses the standard alphabet, a keyed Caesar Cipher uses a jumbled alphabet, similar to the Playfair cipher, where you start your alphabet with the code word. I was already playing around with it when I accidentally did the encoding instead of decoding on Rumkin.

In this case, the alphabet is entirely scrambled, in the order of the keyboard. No, you can't just type QWERTY - you have to type the entire alphabet in order of the keyboard: QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM, in case you want to copy/paste. 

Running V I T F | N G X K | T F T D O T L | S G G A | S O A T | Y K O T F R L against the full keyboard Caesar alphabet gets you:

W H E N | Y O U R | E N E M I E S | L O O K | L I K E | F R I E N D S

So, how do you solve a MAGENTA cipher?

MAGENTA method:

• A=01 alphabet for cipher text. 
• A=26, Z=01 for passphrase. Re-encode A=01. (Like GREEN)
• ENCODE the cipher text, rather than decode - add, rather than subtract, the passphrase. REMEMBER TO SUBTRACT 1 from each when you encode!!! (Like YELLOW)
• Run the encoded text against a Keyed Caesar Cipher alphabet, using the second passphrase as the key text

As always, a massive shoutout to Rumkin and dCode for their exceedingly handy coding tools! 

If you want the math method, see this table (again, many thanks to Tables Generator) 

Ciphertext	16	1	9	22	23	10	25	23	14	24	9	20	24	23	13	5	1	25	16	9	24	4	21	11	5	7	9	22	1	15
Z=01 Passcode	06	08	11	10	17	23	25	14	06	08	11	10	17	23	25	14	06	08	11	10	17	23	25	14	06	08	11	10	17	23
Encode (Addition)	22	09	20	32	40	33	50	37	20	32	20	30	41	46	38	19	07	33	27	19	41	27	46	25	11	15	20	32	18	38
Mod 26	22	09	20	06	14	07	24	11	20	06	20	04	15	20	12	19	07	07	01	19	15	01	20	25	11	15	20	06	18	12
Plaintext	V	I	T	F	N	G	X	K	T	F	T	D	O	T	L	S	G	G	A	S	O	A	T	Y	K	O	T	F	R	L
Keyboard Caesar Cipher	W	H	E	N	Y	O	U	R	E	N	E	M	I	E	S	L	O	O	K	L	I	K	E	F	R	I	E	N	D	S