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SubCracker is a utility/toy for cracking simple substitution ciphers
over the 26-letter English alphabet. It includes a somewhat crude
interface with which the user can interactively crack the cipher.
More interestingly, it also has a probabilistic model over English
words and a stochastic optimization routine that allows it to help with the
cracking procedure, and often completely cracks the cipher autonomously
in a short amount of time.
It requires:
- Either a version of Sun's Java Plug-in or a browser/applet-viewer that supports Java 1.3 (alas, yours probably doesn't).
- A computer that doesn't suck. (A Pentium with a couple hundred megahertz will probably do.)
- At least 64 MB of RAM. (I'm not sure how well it'll run if you only have 64 MB, but it might work. 128 MB makes everything hunky-dory.)
Click here for the version that requires
the Java Plug-in for Internet Explorer or Netscape.
Or click here for the version that requires
a naturally Java 1.3-happy applet-viewer / browser. (Hint: not IE or
Netscape.)
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A screenshot of a successful autonomous crack.
(The extra-special bonus Bogoword
Generator is also shown bottom right.)
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SubCracker can generate semi-amusing puzzles for the user or itself
to solve by grabbing sayings from
the Cube
and then scrambling them. Note that:
- Some of these sayings may be too short to be unscrambled unambigiously,
in which case you should just try another one.
- Some of these sayings are almost complete gibberish even when
unscrambled, which makes unscrambling them hard, if not downright impossible.
And of course you may not be able to tell that from the scrambled text.
Bwah hah hah hah hah.
- Some of these sayings are not for the squeamish.
You've been warned.
SubCracker is still in its infancy and is thus currently undocumented.
Consider the question "How am I supposed to use this
damn thing?" as a puzzle in its own right.
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