36
$\begingroup$

The following image appears on the profile page of leoll2:

leoll2

It appears to be a binary code, which I've transcribed as follows:

(left-hand side) 

01001110 01100001 01110100 01110101 01110010 01100101

(within the prism) 

[...]    01101100 01110100
[...]    01101111 01110101
[...]    01101000 00100000
[...]    01101110 01101001
[...]    01101101 01100001
[...]    01101001 01100011

(right-hand side, in the order red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple)

01110010 01100101 01110110 01100101 01100001 01101100 01110011 00100000 00100000
01101001 01110100 01110011 00100000 01100011 01101000 01100001 01110010 01101101
01110100 01101000 01110010 01101111 01110101 01100111 01101000 00100000 00100000
01101001 01101110 01100110 01101001 01101110 01101001 01110100 01100101 00100000
01110110 01100001 01110010 01101001 01101111 01110101 01110011 00100000 00100000
01100001 01110011 01110000 01100101 01100011 01110100 01110011 00100000 00100000

What is this mysterious Italian trying to tell us? How can the code be decrypted?

(For obvious reasons, I ask leoll2 himself not to answer this question, at least unless it stays unsolved for a long time.)

Disclaimer: I don't know what the plaintext is. If it comes out to be something offensive, don't blame me - blame leoll2!

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
6
  • 7
    $\begingroup$ Of course I won't answer eheh! $\endgroup$
    – leoll2
    May 17, 2015 at 10:22
  • 19
    $\begingroup$ +1 for browsing people's profiles to spy on hidden puzzles. $\endgroup$
    – BmyGuest
    May 17, 2015 at 11:51
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @leoll2 Although I couldn't solve it, that's a pretty cool profile you got there... $\endgroup$
    – Gracelyn Rioux
    May 17, 2015 at 14:36
  • $\begingroup$ @BmyGuest Add a nice puzzle to your profile, and I'll make a question out of that too! :-) By the way, what is that picture on your profile? Looks like something in an Escher picture... $\endgroup$
    – Rand al'Thor
    May 17, 2015 at 16:09
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Beautiful puzzle presentation. The encryption method is pretty standard, but what really makes this puzzle stand out are the aesthetic choices: the prism art, the selection of message, the decision to put it in a profile rather than posting. @leoll2 $\endgroup$
    – xnor
    May 26, 2015 at 22:51

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
31
$\begingroup$

Well, taking a straight binary to ascii conversion you get:

Left: Nature
Middle: although enigmatic
Right: reveals its charm through infinite various aspects

(assuming there's no deeper riddle to be solved - I couldn't attribute the quote to anyone via google, so I assume it's a leoll2 original?)

To explain the conversion process, ASCII is one of the most common/basic ways of storing plain text digitally. Each character is stored in seven bits (usually padded to eight with a leading zero). The standard defines how each character is encoded, for example A is 41 in hex, or (0)100 0001 in binary. Characters are just stored in order (so for this text, left to right, line by line). So from there it's just a matter of either painstakingly looking each character up, or using one of many online converters.

The reason you see 00100000 repeated a lot, is simply because it converts to a space, as you can see in the table linked above. So it's just being used to pad things out to fit the image neatly (plus obviously appearing between words).

For completeness, the full binary within the prism is:

01100001 01101100 01110100
01101000 01101111 01110101
01100111 01101000 00100000
01100101 01101110 01101001
01100111 01101101 01100001
01110100 01101001 01100011
Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
6
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ This is correct! I expected a quick answer to this cryptogram :-) $\endgroup$
    – leoll2
    May 17, 2015 at 10:49
  • 6
    $\begingroup$ Yeah, I thought it wouldn't be too hard, but couldn't be bothered to solve it myself! Nice work, Alconja; and nice quote, @leoll2 :-) $\endgroup$
    – Rand al'Thor
    May 17, 2015 at 10:52
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ @randal'thor - I'd pick on you for being lazy, but if you hadn't have gone to the effort of typing out the digits, I wouldn't have been bothered doing the rest myself either. :P $\endgroup$
    – Alconja
    May 17, 2015 at 10:59
  • $\begingroup$ @Alconja Actually, could you elaborate on this answer a bit? Like how the conversion actually worked (I'm not too familiar with ASCII), and how you read off the letters (left to right? up to down?). I noticed the same code repeated lots of times near the end of the coloured bit - is this just a filler? $\endgroup$
    – Rand al'Thor
    May 17, 2015 at 11:03
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @randal'thor Yes, that redundant code corresponds to blank space. The message is left to right. The conversion is from binary to decimal, then from decimal to ASCII. And yes, if Alconja could include all these details in his answer it would be great! $\endgroup$
    – leoll2
    May 17, 2015 at 11:43

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.