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Rap Emcee Drills and Freestyles

cashman — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:06:51 -0800

Best live rap freestyles or cyphers with multiple rappers? NOT BATTLES I'm looking for the best live show rap freestyles (not battles) featuring multiple rappers. One of the best is Mr. Lif's 12:44 long "Freestyle Session" (featuring Akbar and Akrobatik). Stuff like Supernat's performances on the Wake Up Show is great, but I'm looking for the best of groups of rappers freestyling live.

Passing the mic back and forth at a live show, doing themes, or even kicking the occasional written verse on stage - I just want to hear some incredible rap freestyles performed live.

Mystery on 5th Avenue - real life puzzle ideas?

ClarissaWAM — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:54:27 -0800

Please help me make a cheap but kick ass version of the amazing Mystery on 5th Avenue apartment for a friend. (recently on Mefi). If you don't know the link it will be best if you read it, or go through the slideshow.
Supershort summary: lots of puzzles elegantly integrated into an apartment, sending the owners on a very extravagant adventure game.

So I want to create something similar for my friend, who loves puzzles & games.

My limitations are pretty substantial:
- I (obviously) have a tiny fraction of the money
- I currently have no access to the house. I have enrolled her mum's help but will need to do all planning & preparing while in a different country.
- no irreversible alterations to the actual house / furniture etc.
- they already live there so changes shouldn't be too obvious, or if they are there should be a logical explanation mum can provide.
- ideally I'd carry all props with me when I fly there (in my suitcase, since unsuspecting friend will collect me!), tho larger items could be mailed to mum.
- I know friend's part of the house pretty well but changes will be easier to explain in mum's part so I'm pretty much working with a blank / generic canvas.

I will do lots of googling and researching, but I'm not much of a puzzler/gamer/cypherer myself so please lend me your wisdom & cleverness to make this a really cool experience for my friend. (she currently doesn't have Internet access so this was the perfect time to ask)

Apartment Code Puzzle

xz — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:29:51 -0800

Cypherfiler: Did anyone check out the NYT article about the amazing puzzle/scavenger hunt that was built into the NY apartment? possibly the coolest thing i've seen in years. i'm intrigued by the part of the cypher shown but i've got a little stuck... "The children’s bedrooms have radiator covers with poems written specifically for each child cut into them in code. The Caesar Shift cipher in the bedroom of the oldest child, Cavan, was broken by a friend."

Caeser Shift works by "shifting" the alphabet a set number of letters along, so F becomes C, G becomes D, etc.

the code translates to (with odd 'errors'):

cavan, the archer's child
curioM, bright--your
quicE Gind pivots and
leaps like a dancer.
curiouMity;s light
is to love the question
as much as the answer.

can anyone figure out the code within the code? seems inexplicable that they'd just screw up those 4 letters, especially as they are the RIGHT letters if you translate the cypher backwards (if C becomes F instead, so M=S, E=K, and G=M).

why MEGM? (or SKMS or...)

WWII book suggestions

JigSawMan — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 09:53:40 -0800

Long car trip coming up, I'm asking for book suggestions from others who enjoyed Leo Marks' "Between Silk and Cyanide : A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945". I really enjoyed the mix of light code breaking and the humanity behind this personal account. If you enjoyed this, what else would you suggest that would be an entertaining read? I'm not looking for a heavy cyphering text, more along the lines of the human story that this book described.

Can anyone identify this song from the movie Cypher?

martinrebas — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 03:25:39 -0800

Can anyone identify this song? (mp3 snippet, 154 kB) I heard it in the movie Cypher. It's played in the final scene, while the camera zooms around a sailboat. The movie's score was composed by Michael Andrews, but this song doesn't sound anything like the other music and it isn't on the soundtrack cd, so it might have been made by someone else. But who? The end credits give no clue, neither do the IMDB forums, and my attempts to contact people through the movie's web site have failed.

Help locating Vigenère cypher decoder

..ooOOoo....ooOOoo.. — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 15:50:13 -0800

I need help locating Vigenère cypher decoder. [more inside] I decided to give the Kryptos Sculpture a crack but need some technical help. I taught myself the methods of solving the first three sections using paper and pencil but that is pretty labor intensive and I was hoping to automate some of the tasks.

I have found and am using, Elonka's Vigenère Table Builder to create a double key table. Additionally, I am using a Vigenère encoder/decoder I found here, but it doesn't allow custom tables. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about computer coding to play with the source code.

I googled around but couldn't find a Vigenère decoder with ability to use custom tables. Any ideas where I could find one would be great.

Does anyone know of any famous codes or ciphers that have gone unsolved for lengthy periods of time or remain unsolved?

mokujin — Fri, 07 May 2004 01:46:41 -0800

Does anyone know of any famous codes or ciphers that have gone unsolved for lengthy periods of time or remain unsolved? I am thinking specifically of things like The May Day Mystery and the Voynich Manuscript (also here). So things more like those and generally less like the Beale Cipher. Maybe something to do with Art Brut or Outsider art or perhaps Kabbalic systems like Gematria. Or, if all else fails maybe something by the Rosicrucians or Freemasons?

Put another way, I am looking for cryptic and complex visual systems that maintain an internal logic (however faulty or suspect) and ESPECIALLY anything having to do with the interpretation and/or decipherment of such systems.