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You have been taken prisoner and thrown in a dungeon. You have escaped your cell, are standing in front of two identical doors. One will lead you to freedom, the other to a place where you will die a painful death. Luckily, you have a friend that has agreed to help you. He has smuggled you a code inside of a fake record, but had to encode it in case of them finding out that he was helping their POW to escape, tracing who had sent it and taking him prisoner as well. The message reads this: 38 23 53 48; 38 23 53 50 --- 38 23 53 48; 38 23 54 53 --- 38 23 53 48; 38 23 54 55 --- 38 23 53 49; 38 23 54 55 --- 38 23 53 49; 38 23 53 50 Which door should you go through: Left or Right?

Note 1: This puzzle requires a certain degree of computer knowledge.

Note 2: This CJam program may help: q'[,65>Dm>_el+_$er

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    $\begingroup$ I have no idea how to solve this, but 38 23 53 are a leitmotiv in the sequence, for sure not a coincidence. $\endgroup$
    – leoll2
    Jun 25, 2015 at 17:43
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    $\begingroup$ The CJam code is a ROT-13 decoder. Try it here or try a different encoder here $\endgroup$
    – Engineer Toast
    Jun 25, 2015 at 17:44

2 Answers 2

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The initial decoding:

38 is ascii decimal for '&', and 23 is ascii hexadecimal for '#', which makes me think every 4 numbers are a html encoded ascii character (starting with "&#").

53 is ascii decimal for '5' and 48 is ascii decimal for '0', thus the first four numbers are "&#50", or the character '2'.

Proceeding the same way with all numbers we get:

The sequence 24 2A 2C 3C 34, which is hexadecimal scan code for a PS/2 keyboard (used in one of OP's previous puzzles).

The resulting characters are E V T U G.

Then applying ROT-13 results in the answer:

the R I G H T door.

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  • $\begingroup$ Getting there... $\endgroup$
    – user9377
    Jun 26, 2015 at 14:51
  • $\begingroup$ @Noel - Hope it is ok that I added a little more detail to your answer ;-) $\endgroup$
    – Len
    Jun 27, 2015 at 2:45
  • $\begingroup$ Nice job, my next one will be harder and not use any previous methods! $\endgroup$
    – user9377
    Jun 27, 2015 at 6:17
  • $\begingroup$ The next in my series of cryptograms is also a riddle! Here $\endgroup$
    – user9377
    Jun 27, 2015 at 15:51
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Here's an answer without having decoded it:

Go right. There are 5 blocks of code:

38 23 53 48; 38 23 53 50
38 23 53 48; 38 23 54 53
38 23 53 48; 38 23 54 55
38 23 53 49; 38 23 54 55
38 23 53 49; 38 23 53 50
And the word RIGHT has 5 letters.

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  • $\begingroup$ Correct answer, wrong method! I'll mark as correct if you get the correct method. $\endgroup$
    – user9377
    Jun 25, 2015 at 18:23
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    $\begingroup$ Well, there was a 50/50 chance of it being right, to be fair. I'm not really sure where to start. There are several repeated chunks and ROT-13 comes into play at some point and that's all I've got. $\endgroup$
    – Engineer Toast
    Jun 25, 2015 at 20:19
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    $\begingroup$ @Kslkgh Besides, your last similar question contained a leap of knowledge that I never would have made. $\endgroup$
    – Engineer Toast
    Jun 25, 2015 at 20:34
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    $\begingroup$ If I were a prisoner, I probably wouldn't have access to a computer or any kind of reference chart so unless I was intimately familiar with the encoding algorithm, this is probably exactly the kind of thought process I would use to guess. $\endgroup$
    – aleppke
    Jun 25, 2015 at 20:53
  • $\begingroup$ @aleppke Yeah, I know. I'm useless with storylines. $\endgroup$
    – user9377
    Jun 26, 2015 at 14:52

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