# Spaces and numbers

I need to decrypt the following code. I wasn't given much context, so here is the code as was given; I'm not sure what may be significant or not (specifically in regards to spacing).

 9,18,26
2
9
1
6
4
5
2


I've tried converting to letters and using some sort of transformation from the top numbers, but to no avail.

• Welcome to Puzzling.SE! I've edited your question to put in a more appropriate tag and make it clearer what you're asking for. Hope you don't mind :-) – Rand al'Thor Mar 30 '15 at 8:09
• @Edison - Your code has no resemblance to any of these 50+ types of ciphers. Without more information, decoding is very unlikely. – Len Mar 30 '15 at 20:02
• Can you give us a hint, or don't you know the solution too? – leoll2 Mar 31 '15 at 6:30
• What is the result that you expect? An English word? A phrase? A number? – Ian MacDonald Mar 31 '15 at 19:44
• I expect a phrase or word. – Edison Apr 2 '15 at 16:27

A possible solution is the word

harmony

The first line gives a list of three offset values. The following lines have one letter each with some indentation, which indicates which of the values to use: No indentation refers to the first offset value, 9; one space of indentation refers to the second value, 18, and two spaces refer to 26.

This gives us two lists:

 9   9  18  18  18  18  26
2   9   1   6   4   5   2


After subtracting the values in the bottom list from the values in the top list, we get:

 7   0  17  12  14  13  24


Interpreting these numbers as zero based indices to letters yields:

 7   0  17  12  14  13  24
H   A   R   M   O   N   Y


I think there is not enough information to solve this, but it appears that the numbers (or letters of the alphabet) are being positioned on an 8x10 grid as follows, or perhaps a 10x10 grid which would be more common for a board game.

• Battleship, perhaps? – Joe Z. Apr 1 '15 at 7:09
• It's a bit more like the edit I added, perhaps a 5x8 grid or a 3x8 grid depending on whether you count the 29 and 2 as being below 9 and 26 respectively or one row over. – Edison Apr 2 '15 at 16:30