Chapter 4: Tips and Tricks to Solve Puzzles

Welcome to Chapter 4! This is a tutorial on the tips and tricks to solving puzzles! Ready? Let us begin!

First, I'd like to state the difference between this and the previous section just to remove confusion. The methods used there are meant for general use, so for just about any puzzle. These ones are more specific, and will generally be for ciphers due to their relatively 'predictable' patterns compared to the infinite possibilities of logic puzzles, hindered only by human creativity.

Now, onto the actual tips.

One very useful thing I've made use of is a list of URL lengths and types - for example, a YouTube video's URL 'length' - that is, the bit at the end - is 11 characters, while Imgur and Pastebin are both 8 letters. How this can be useful is when ciphertext decodes to seemingly-gibberish words, which could simply be a link.

URL IDENTIFICATION REFERENCE GUIDE:

YouTube: 11 alphanumeric characters, case sensitive.
Imgur: 7 alphanumeric characters, case sensitive.
Streamable: 5 alphanumeric characters, NOT case sensitive.
Ibb.co: 6-7 alphanumeric characters, case sensitive.
Tinyurl: by default 7 or 8 alphanumeric characters, NOT case sensitive, but can be virtually anything, custom URLS.
Pastebin: 8 alphanumeric characters, case sensitive.
ProtectedText: virtually anything, custom URLs.
FreeTextHost: 10 alphanumeric characters, NOT case sensitive.
Tumblr: 12 numbers.
Instagram: 11 alphanumeric characters, case sensitive.
Discord: 10 alphanumeric characters, case sensitive for a never expire link. 8 alphanumeric/case sensitive for time sensitive link.
bit.ly: virtually anything, custom URLs.
justpaste.it: virtually anything, custom URLs.
imgbox.com: 8 alphanumeric characters, case sensitive.

This one isn't really a trick per se, it's more of a recommendation, but still - there are many cipher-decoding sites, but I've personally found 5 of them to be extremely useful - dCode for general solving and obscure ciphers, Boxentriq for its autosolve, Rumkin for its alphabet-editing ability, Cyberchef for its ability to easily solve layered ciphers (that is, more than one form of encryption) and Quipqiup for its very impressive auto-decoding.

Another trick is to just use a cipher identifier - dCode's, for example, contains a large number of ciphers, most of which were not covered in my list. After all, I only decided to list some of the simplest ciphers.

Next are some tools for other types of ciphers - not encoded by changing or rearranging the message, but in other ways such as through hidden data in images, also known as steganography.

Outguess is a very well-known decoder, though admittedly its interface is very confusing. There are many tutorials online, but still. Also, there is an online version if running it is too difficult for you (like me). This, however, only works for files that have a .jpg file extension.

Another app is called 7Zip, which can check for hidden zipped files in images. Once again, there are plenty of tutorials online that can explain it far better than me.

Lastly, photo editing websites such as 'Image Steganography - James Stanley' (or simpler sites) can also find secrets edited into photos.

Let's try one puzzle!

King of Kings from Percy; 42, 29, U, 18, 75, 44, 1, 97, 22

The solution is here!

Ready?

Well done! You finished Chapter 4! Click here to head to the puzzles!