who can help with the octal number system?

Question

I´ve got a message in letters, kind of confusing, but that someone who sent the message said I should use the Octal Number System to find out what it says... Please help... I have tried so much already... Is it even possible to convert numbers into letters from the octal number system? The message is: foe wow gladly effort buck mossy mop thie actux...

Answer 1

Hexadecimal (base-16) uses letters and numbers (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E and F), octal uses just numbers (0,1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7)

Octal is the number system using base-8. There is no 8 (you write 10 instead) and no 9 (you write 11 instead) in octal. The "tens" position indicates how many "eights" there are in the number and the "hundreds" position indicates how many "64s" (8 squared) there are.

Thus 123 in octal is 83 in base-10 (1 sixty-four + 2 eights + 3 units).

You can convert the other way too (from base-10 to octal) by dividing by successive powers of 8 in descending order: to convert 139 (base-10) to octal you divide by sixty-four and this gives you 2 in the "hundreds" position and 11 left over. Divide the 11 by eight and you get 1 on the "tens" oosition and 3 left over which gives you 3 in the units position:

Answer: 139 in base-10 is 213 in octal,

So that's octal. But what you seem to have is a problem in codes and cryptograms and I don't immediately see how octal can address that problem. There are no letters in octal notation. Your cryptic message is probably going to remain an unsolved mystery, unless the messenger cares to impart rather more clues as to how to translate it.

Answer 2

Octal is base 8 number system rather than our system of decimal numbers

Octal is closely related to binary as 8 = 2³ and is easily interchangeable (as hexadecimal (base 16) is too)

For example

= 65 (base 8)

Now 6 (base 8) = 110 (base 2) and 5 (base 8) = 101 (base 2)

So if you break up the binary every third digit you get this

53 (base 10) = 110,101 (base 2) and lo and behold

= 6,5 (base 8)

So vice versa (base 2 to base 8)

eg 10,111,001 (base 2) = 2,7,1 (base 8) = 271 (base 8)

Now 10111001 (base 2) = 1 * 128 + 0 * 64 + 1 * 32 + 1 * 16 + 1 * 8 + 0 * 4 + 0 * 2 + 1 * 1
= 128 + 32 + 16 + 8 + 1
= 185 (base 10)

271 (base 8) = 2*64 + 7*8 + 1
= 128 + 56 + 1
= 185 (base 10) = 10111001 (base 2)

So if you know base 2 its easy to move to and from base 8
To move to base 16 just tick off every 4th place and in base 16 you need to use letters A, B, C, D, E, F as digits for decimal 10 through to decimal 15

So 1011,1001 (base 2)

1011 =11(base 10) = B (base 16)
1001 = 9 base 10 = 9 (base 16)

So 10111001 (base 2)
= 1011,1001 (base 2)
= B,9 (base 16)
= B9 (base 16)

Now B9 (base 16) = 11*16 + 9*1 (base 10)
= 176 + 9
= 185 ...... WOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

Answer 3

The message "foe wow gladly effort buck mossy mop thie actux..." is not an encryption, neither strong nor even a simple transposition.

Reason: It is way to Anglo-Saxon biased to be a transposition or encryption (which looks as pseudo-random). There is not even a chance in a billion to get such a thing randomly! It is just bubble created by some not very skilled English speaker. Try to read a real encrypted message and compare.

Answer 4

Try the ansII system of machine language.