OT - Decryption puzzle
 

Here is a puzzle, which is to some degree inspired by Jim’s recent offering. Rather like his, this puzzle has multiple steps involved. And, rather like his, this puzzle begins with a seemingly incoherent mess of data - which is yours to resolve…

637951887212909
599648104919488606221
646357525333102500
793564912100774
928546777828300401
026100680310561320
101100734202
568776100875540771770
694695693555581421

These look like they should be grouped in 3's....at first I thought maybe area codes, but some don't look like area codes.

My first glance got the same thoughts as cuervo, grouped in 3s and a lot of area codes, but then you have 100, and 026 and a few others which appear to clearly not be area codes. Country codes perhaps?

any significance to the line breaks?

I doubt QS will answer this, but anyways, I think there has to be. There are a different # of digits in each row, and QS doesn't tend to include arbitrary line breaks like that in his puzzle.

Puzzling by profile. I love it!

There's nine lines. Whatever occurs is going to end up being mapped to telephone buttons. Book it.


Edit - or a tic-tac-toe grid.

(Wonders which will come first, the obligatory "2/3" joke or the obligatory "Churchill" joke.)

Maybe you just made it a dead heat?

broken into groups of three, for reference:

Started to track these by area code, but through the first three lines, only six of the 18 have area codes that match (951, 212, 909, 919, 606, 646).

If you add the three numbers together and tie them to a letter of the alphabet the words are rower, wrestle, police, solar, source, handle, band, station, strong

310 is an area code here in the Los Angeles area.

The number 100 repeats alot.

Zip Code prefixes don't work either, but I think Tim's got it.

So we have:

Remember to drink your Ovaltine?

Checked the 5x3 lines for possible zip codes instead of area codes, no matches at all.

Heh. Someone beat me to it.

Egad. I just found a typo in the original puzzle - gladly, it didn't seem to impede your progress.

Make that very first digit of the first line a 6 rather than an 8.

My sincerest apologies.

So Power instead of Rower. Still works.

Quite fortunate that the typo still generated a valid word, otherwise that would have made it much harder to stumble across.

Darn. Googling the old list (with rower) came up with one single hit - http://polish.slavic.pitt.edu/other/minimum.pdf

Excerpt: "TEXTBOOK GLOSSARY AND POLISH LEXICAL MINIMUM - This glossary contains the words appearing in the glossaries at lesson-ends of First Year Polish and, in addition, incorporates a "Polish Lexical Minimimum," a list of most important Polish words..."

I really thought we had something there. :D

Hoooo yeah.

And back to thinking...aside from Wrestle and Police, there's a definate theme to these words, something along the lines of radio signals, or frequencys, or something like that, perhaps?

Could be. Also, breaking them up into three word sets, each set has two words that start with the same letter:

POWER
WRESTLE
POLICE

SOLAR
SOURCE
HANDLE

BAND
STATION
STRONG

Also, it seems that those match each of the three possible locations for an 'AAB' type distribution (AAB, ABA, BAA). Not sure if that means anything.

Edit: and not just the first letter, but each of those share the first two letters (PO SO ST).

Solar Power Source = sun

perhaps combining the words somehow?

Tried combining em a few different ways, they don't flow together real well though. A few of them turn into known phrases (Solar Power, Police Station), but not all.

Wrestle Band didn't inspire you?

How about Strong Source Handle

Wrestle Band did indeed not inspire me. :)

Perhaps it's another word pyramid? For example, you could group BAND, POLICE and STATION into RADIO.

But somehow that seems too simple.

Wrestle, Strong and Handle = Hold

Solar Power Source = Sun

what are you from the department of redundancy department

Wrestle and Handle could go together.

you're kidding

Somone's handle is their nickname... and wrestler's names are really nicknames.

Well, POWER STATION and POLICE are rock groups :) (I know, no help there)

POWER
WRESTLE
POLICE

... clearly refers to the Big Bossman.

now that was funny.

Just a bump in case someone might want to top this one off.

It's not too simple.

is this it? Man - Police, handle, power
Arm - Strong, wrestle, band
Power - Station, source, solar

And then Fire - Man, Arm, Power

I'd just like to assume that the answer was Big Bossman.

That'll work. Nicely done.

Nicely done :D
I can never solve Quik puzzles :(

SI

Me either.

Good work guys.

I can't even solve these puzzles with all of the people on this board helping. I used to think I was a fairly intelligent guy, but these puzzles have proved that wrong. I continue to read them though, I guess I'm a masochist.

I think it was but it was assumed we'd never get it...now the secret is out...