# A “Puzzling” Cipher

I thought I'd put together a simple cipher for all of you Puzzling lovers out there. If you need help, you can always look to the wisdom of the past for guidance. The answer is a single word, and each number below corresponds to a single character:

6, 7, 56, 10, 62, 21, 1, 43, 19, 27, 28, 61, 35, 48


Good luck!

Off by one errors abound:
Apparently I need to go back to primary school and learn how to count again.
All the numbers above 21 in the original puzzle were 1 too small. I've fixed the list, updated it, and double checked my counting this time, so it should be solvable now.

Hint 1:

Like any good puzzle, this relies on the wisdom of those who have come before, reaching back to the earliest foundations.

Hint 2:

While a society may define themselves by their wealth or status, what really counts is their overall character and the questions they ask.

Hint 3:

What do we really want? Fame and reputation are fine, but it's the title's we earn that are worth the most.

• Is the solution word actually 14 non-repeating letters of the alphabet? – Dr t Dec 12 '17 at 19:57
• @Drt There are repeated letters in the final solution. With my method of encoding, each natural number (to a certain limit that will be clear upon solving) corresponds to a single letter, but each letter is represented by multiple numbers. – DqwertyC Dec 12 '17 at 20:04
• Edited my answer after Hint 2 ... I feel like I'm even closer, but still not quite there yet. – Rand al'Thor Dec 15 '17 at 17:38
• darn just realized this was never solved – Quintec Feb 14 '18 at 1:53
• @thecoder16 Yeah, there were some issues... It is doable (since I caught the off by one error), but it is also a bit of a mess. The "timey wimey sci-pher", published a bit later, revisited the same concept, but was better executed. – DqwertyC Feb 14 '18 at 14:36

My guess, based on "look to the wisdom of the past for guidance" and strengthened enough to post an answer by the new hint, is that these numbers represent

early Puzzling.SE users with those numbers as user IDs.

6, 7, 55, 10, 61, 21, 1, 42, 19, 26, 27, 60, 34, 47

But I can't see how to turn each of those names into a letter. Maybe it's

posts instead of users?

6, 7, 55, 10, 61, 21, 1, 42, 19, 26, 27, 60, 34, 47

Edit after OP's comment: OK, it's

not post ID but question count that matters. Looking at this list of the 145 oldest questions on the site, we can pick out the ones indicated.

6, 7, 55, 10, 61, 21, 1, 42, 19, 26, 27, 60, 34, 47

Edit after Hint 2: now we should probably

count characters in these posts: the 6th in question #6, the 7th in question #7, the 55th in question #55, and so on.

Including spaces? Including markdown formatting like >? Including title text? I can't actually figure out any way to count which gives a meaningful answer.

• You're definitely on the right track, though I'll admit I didn't understand how the numbering of posts worked, so the path to the relevant information isn't as straightforward as putting the numbers into the URL. If I do a future puzzle in a similar vein, I'll keep that in mind. – DqwertyC Dec 14 '17 at 17:43
• Maybe it refers to posts created by DqwertyC themself. – J. Siebeneichler Dec 15 '17 at 17:21
• "not post ID but question count" what's "question count"? – FireCubez Nov 22 '18 at 10:22
• @FireCubez Count of questions. – Rand al'Thor Nov 22 '18 at 10:26
• ?? How ca you identify the questions by the count of questions – FireCubez Nov 22 '18 at 10:47