## HOPE XI Badge lanyard contest

Like many hacker conventions, HOPE XI had a puzzle on the badges. I like puzzles, so I took of my badge during the first talk to see if I could get started on the challenge. There are spoilers on the page, so close the tab now if you want to solve it on your own!

Rough frequency analysis looks like a normal English distribution and word lengths, so I assigned each symbol to a letter, which results in:

ABCD CD ABE FGDDFBHGDE: IHJKKEHD


I guessed at the orientation since the ":" looked like a colon instead of a different symbol. The first observation is that "CD" shows up with the first two words and "AB" shows up in word one and three, which made me think that it is likely "THIS IS THE". Running the code through a solver like quipquip.com produces several possible results that confirmed my guess:

Rank Score       Solution
1 -1.86 THIS IS THE PASSPHRASE: DRUMMERS
2 -1.928 THIS IS THE PASSPHRASE: DRUBBERS
3 -1.928 THIS IS THE MASSMHRASE: DROPPERS
4 -1.94 THIS IS THE PASSPHRASE: GRUBBERS
5 -1.947 THIS IS THE MASSMHRASE: CROPPERS
6 -1.971 THIS IS THE MASSMHRASE: PRODDERS
7 -2.004 THIS IS THE BASSBHRASE: DROPPERS
8 -2.009 THIS IS THE LASSLHRASE: DROPPERS
9 -2.01 THIS IS THE MASSMHRASE: DRUBBERS
10 -2.018 THIS IS THE BASSBHRASE: DRUMMERS

The first one seems the most likely. I almost ran down to the info desk with the passphrase, but noticed that some of the other badges had different markings.

The attendee sitting next to me had one with numbers instead of symbols. I took a quick photo and typed in the symbols:

20 08 09 19  09 19  20 08 05  11 05 25:  19 20  15  14 05 08 05  14 07 05


There might be spaces, but I had trouble telling, and there is definitely a color. Again the distribution looks roughly englishish, so I wrote a quick program:

perl -e 'print chr(ord("A")+\$_) for @ARGV' \
20 08 09  19 09  19 20 08 05 11 05 25  19 20  15  14 05 08 05  14 07 05
UIJTJTUIFLFZTUPOFIFOHF


Noting that this has the same starting pattern as the first badge, I guessed that the leading words are the same pattern "this is the". Splitting it that way and putting UIJT JT UIF LFZ: TUPOFIFOHF into produces some possibilities:

Rank Score       Solution
1 -2.064 THIS IS THE PER: STONEHENGE
2 -2.064 THIS IS THE FEW: STONEHENGE
3 -2.092 THIS IS THE RED: STONEHENGE
4 -2.127 THIS IS THE KEY: STONEHENGE
5 -2.129 THIS IS THE LED: STONEHENGE
6 -2.13 THIS IS THE BED: STONEHENGE
7 -2.174 THIS IS THE FED: STONEHENGE
8 -2.178 THIS IS THE WED: STONEHENGE
9 -2.181 THIS IS THE DEY: STONEHENGE
10 -2.186 THIS IS THE BEL: STONEHENGE

The one that looks most promising is that the key is STONEHENGE. Interesting that we have two clues, one with a passphrase and one with a key.