#how to break ciphers

[presswoodterryryan]

Unlocking Ancient Secrets: Master Code Creation

By Ariel Imagine you’re a spy in ancient times, carrying an important message that must stay hidden from enemies. How would you keep it safe? Have you ever wanted to send a secret message to a friend? Or crack a hidden code like a real-life detective? Secret codes have been used for thousands of years to protect important messages. Today, I’m going to take you on an adventure through history,…

[blabberoo]

"You have 72 hours."

Left alone in the consequences of his obsession, he let desperation get hold of his intellect and come up with a plan. For the world. For himself.

[sunclown]

Looking for comfort in odd places

[dookiespooky]

Making different fords meet eachother is very silly and very fun

crossover with lost stars au by @/nox_027 on twitter and dreamcaptor au by @neonross

[the-barefoot-hatter]

30 years ago- AGAINST ALL ODDS, before agreeing to any deal to build the portal, Ford managed to be smooth and told Bill to buy him dinner first

and the triangle went "...OH?!"

and some infinite empanadas later, some minor rips into the multiverse, you got a much more chill party-but-still-semi-feral Bil

[spirited-splashes]

Sea otter

[oneshotgremlin]

Up and Down

Thoughts on how beings generally perceive their world one spatial dimension lower than the dimensionality of the space they inhabit:

In the flatlands, the way people perceive the world around them is through lines, and so visual receptors HAVE to be on the edges of their shapes

Otherwise by all accounts the person would be effectively blind

So Mrs.Red and Mr.Blue have this strange yellow boy

Who appears to be born with no eyes

(It’s directly in his center, but without tests and doctors nobody can see it)

And for all intents and purposes, the boy is blind

He has to feel his way around buildings and people (in his hand a black cane that his parents bought to aid him)

And he doesn’t know what his parents look like, and only knows them by their voice as they guide him

They love him all the same, regardless

(Meanwhile, he stares up at the infinite expanse of the night sky. But the thing about infinity is that it makes where you stand so infinitesimally tiny in comparison, and no matter how far you run side to side the stars do not move an inch for you. And if they’re all someone sees, the only logical conclusion that can be drawn is that where they are is unspeakably, claustrophobically small)

(It doesn’t matter if the kids at school bully him and the adults look at him with pity and disdain that he can’t even see, because don’t they know how SMALL they are? Don’t they know how small EVERYTHING is?)

And so, with years and years and nowhere else to go, Bill reaches UP

(And no-one else has tried before, because why would they? There is no up or down to conceive, only forwards and backwards and left and right.)

It takes unimaginable amounts of energy to punch a rift into a dimension. In a time and space unmeasurably far away, a six fingered man and his five fingered twin would learn that lesson well

In the flatlands, it’s less of an interdimensional portal looming ominously in a metal room and more of a calculation

l is for length. w is for width. h is for height

And like a computer told to divide by zero, everything falls apart

Did you know that when energetic particles that erupt from the stars collide with a sufficiently nitrogen rich atmosphere, it produces the color blue?

Did you know the only reason the flatlanders didn’t drift off into the freezing cold yet boiling hot void of space, despite not having a planet with the volume and mass needed to produce a gravitational field, is their dimension’s lack of third dimensionality?

Like insects pinned underneath glass, yet the glass protected their corpses from falling apart?

They scream. He cries. He laughs. They die.

It’s an old saying: “When gravity falls and earth becomes sky beware the beast with just one eye”

And when little Billy looks away from the stars, looks down to finally see his tiny, minuscule home

For the first and last time, he sees a blue triangle with a hat, and a red triangle with a bow.

[drstrangelovr]

Guys I think the billford brainrot is getting to my head beacuse even "Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me" reminds me of them.

[tinkrtailrsldrspy]

How Does This Even Happen?! - Part 10

So, I already had this written up and decided I'd post it before the anxiety about my dog's slipped disc and surgery renders me incapable of doing anything but laying on the floor and crying.

Edit: He made it out of surgery, he doesn't have nerve damage, and everything is looking good. I'll be able to visit him this week and hopefully take him home next.

The next update will probably not be for at least a week for two. There is a lot of shit I gotta get done in the real world to prep for him coming home, then I've gotta take care of him until he's better, and adding the move on top of that...

I'm not panicking. Not yet, anyways.

It was a month after he’d slipped so easily into Stan’s dreams that Bill snapped his fingers and two fully-packed bags appeared on the bed beside Ford. He raised a brow as he looked to his beloved, the loss of their little girl still hanging heavily over him.

“We’re going dimension-hopping,” Bill claimed as he yanked the silk sheets from his human’s body. “You’re going to get cleaned up, I’m going to make you immortal, and we’re going to explore the multiverse like I promised.”

“Wha- Bill, you can’t honestly expect-” Ford attempted to reason with the deity.

“I can and I do,” Bill stated, tone offering no chance for argument. “We can’t stay here, not with reminders of her everywhere. So, we’re going out.”

Ford rolled his eyes as Bill ushered him from the bed and towards the luxurious bathroom in the suite. “Fine,” Ford muttered. “But we’re talking about the whole ‘immortal’ thing.”

“Haha!” Bill pretended to wipe a tear from his eye before staring at the scientist far too seriously for Ford’s comfort. “You’re not getting a choice in the matter, Sixer. There are a lot of dangerous things out in the multiverse, and I’m not going to let you put yourself at risk. I-” the triangle hesitated a moment before he floated down to clutch at Ford’s hand. “I can’t lose you, too.”

The earnest anguish in his voice broke Ford’s heart anew. Without hesitating, he pulled Bill into a lingering kiss, hands clutching tightly to bricked sides. Bill didn’t hesitate, reciprocating with a desperate need to reassure himself that his scientist was truly still there, still whole, still alive. They separated with a shared dazed sigh. Bill moved forward, pressing his front plane firmly against Ford’s chest, the two wrapping arm around each other.

“…I’ll give you access to some of my lower powers,” Bill muttered reluctantly. “And I’ll just… pause time for you… You can still visibly age, if you want, and you can choose if you want to be mortal again someday, but… I need to know you won’t leave me alone, Starshine.”

“Thank you,” Ford murmured, laying a soft peck to Bill’s top angle.

“It… it’ll also, ya know… help stabilize you,” Bill added, his numerous arms tightening the coils they’d wound around Ford’s entirety. “If-… if you wanna, maybe… try again… Someday.”

The human felt the sting of tears in his nose, sniffling as the most delicate of smiles lifted his lips. He didn’t say anything, but knew his Muse could feel the gratitude that flooded his mind. There were times when sharing a mental connection came in handy - like when uttering a single syllable threatened to break the dam he’d built.

[qkmlh]

Lalalalala~🎶

Progress Update on Baby Billy~ I am. Contemplating. Making him either a squeaky toy or a jingly toy and giving him little blushie cheeks before I close his side completely (*´∇｀*)

[askingtherapybill]

He has a laptop? How is that allowed? What is the story here

[flufflecat]

listening to 96 tears from bills reddit ama and thinking about how funny it is that 10 years later this random song choice can now be recontextualized to perfectly fit his canonical messy breakup

[riff-is-on-a-fucking-crisis]

Bill!Ame sketch

might make digital art on this but i school art to do

[review-anon]

what would be worse Bill Cipher teaming up with Miu or Bill teaming up with Ibuki?

Miu. End of question.

Are you so sure Saihara? Didn't brainwashing music cause the Concert to go wrong?

I know...both of us got brainwashed by it but that's ALL Bill can do with Mioda. Create brainwashing music which yes its bad but we can handle it like with the Christmas Concert.

Miu though? She could create the device that Bill needs to invade other worlds and cause Weirdmageddon.

Not to mention Bill would be VERY destructive here due to the nature of the Voidship so...please don't summon him here, as he would just break the Voidship apart for a laugh.

Y-yeah on that note I can see your point.

[black-and-yellow]

Oh unfortunately I mainly play on Playstation otherwise I'd totally offer to online play with you!

The PS online play isn't much better. It's pretty hard to get matched up but I have had a few successful ones.

I think Playstation is probably the most popular platform honestly, that and Steam.

Well if you - or anyone here - ever gets your hands on the Steam version, let me know, because I am in dire need of icons and backplates and I like it when the little heart number on my profile goes up. I'm really bad at it so you can get your ranked score up too.

[briarpatch-dragon]

5e’s “plain language” approach to writing rules is such a goddamn headache and today I would like to complain about Eyes of the Rune Keeper, a poorly written warlock invocation, as an example of why this approach to rules text sucks.

The complete rules text is:

You can read all writing.

What does that mean? Good luck! No one knows.

Many people assume it’s meant to be an at-will Comprehend Languages for text only. However, the rules text a) doesn’t mention a spell, which other invocations (e.g., Eldritch Sight) do, and b) Eyes of the Rune Keeper doesn’t mention any of the limitations that Comprehend Languages has.

So now we have to look at each individual word and try to parse meaning out of it.

A normal person would see the word “read” in that sentence and parse it as “understand”. The dictionary definition of “read” supports this. However, it is precisely vague enough that technically, it could be taken to mean that you can read all written language, but not understand it (e.g., I can read Hangul but am not 100% fluent in Korean, so I regularly read words I don’t understand.)

However, that would make the invocation functionally useless, which is the usual response on threads where DMs try to pull these shenanigans out, so let’s move on.

The next word is “all.” And now this is what prompted my irritation. “All” is pretty clear, to me. It means “the whole amount”. If it is written, you can read (i.e., understand) it. There are no special exceptions.

And this brings us to the last word, “writing.” Writing does not mean language. They aren’t synonymous! And this makes the ability hideously vague. Is an arcane rune writing? Is mathematical notation? Are symbols in Thieves’ Cant writing? Well, gee, no one knows—so good luck figuring it out!

The big offender here is “can Eyes of the Rune Keeper read a cipher as plain text?”

My argument would be: yes. Comprehend Languages specifically states it only imparts literal meaning and doesn’t solve a cipher for you. However, Eyes of the Rune Keeper just says that you can read all writing. “You can read it, but only the literal meaning” is a bizarre approach considering that, as outlined above, an ability that lets you read without understanding is functionally useless. So this instead would become an edge case where Eyes of the Rune Keeper changes how it functions depending on the type of text.

It’s also weird in the sense that ciphers are usually meant to be solved. What’s the difference between saying “you read it magically” and “you make some Investigation checks to crack the code”? Ultimately, the GM wants the cipher to be read—this is a magic means of solving a puzzle, the same as using Levitate to float over a spike pit. But in this specific edge case, it’s suddenly not kosher to solve puzzles with magic and class abilities.

Plain text rules create an odd dynamic of allowing those shifting interpretations by letting a DM rule, however inconsistently, on what a phrase means. More words are, unfortunately, better. “as Comprehend Languages, though you do not need to touch the surface” would be a perfectly acceptable clause to clear things up, but it doesn’t say that. People just decide that’s what it means, even though nothing in RAW supports that.

And finally—frankly, Eyes of the Rune Keeper just isn’t that powerful. It’s a niche ability with limited applications. Taking away the one puzzle that it can solve that Comprehend Languages can’t is frustrating—especially since that spell is on the Warlock list. You may as well just pick it up and go on with your day, because literally any other invocation is better at that point.