A&G code breakers

[diamondlistings]

Buzzkill on the Aries Ares theory... I wasn't close though either so I shouldn't at all be talking...

 

[mnmike]

I've been going nuts after I got the email response from code@topps.com 1 week ago. I did a letter frequency analysis of the 401 characters and found they mesh fairly closely to that of the English language (i.e. e o s t most frequent). I also made the 401 connection to the 350 base + 50 rip card minis + 1 strasburg. It had to be a strait up anagram phrase with 349 alphabet characters hinged to some ordering of the 401 cards.

I sent the letters to various anagram engines on the internet and a professor in a computer science department to try the brute force method - too many results.

I then input every ginter card's birthday into a spreadsheet and ordered by birthday ignoring the year and mapped that ordering to the ordering of the characters in the email code. nothing. Problem is I didn't know what to do with the non baseball cards since they had no birthdays...

I also tried forward and reverse mappings by alphabetical lists, birthdays with year, subset sorting by astrological signs... nothing.

I tried a back end approach to focus on the "q" and "u" uniques relationship in the English language, no patterns found. same with the word "congratulations."

I tried focusing on a subset of 20 base cards that changed from the original checklist to look for clues (i.e. 108 changing to Paul Konerko) - nada.

Now I await the answer and am bummed out it is already solved...

 

[zep33]

seems like it's 1 character from each card. Putting that together to mean something is beyond me though.

Warmer...

must be able to put it together by the checklist then, cause there's no way you could have access to every card back, including the extended minis that quickly. But that doesn't explain the non-letter characters

hmmm

 

[njlw226]

I've been going nuts after I got the email response from code@topps.com 1 week ago. I did a letter frequency analysis of the 401 characters and found they mesh fairly closely to that of the English language (i.e. e o s t most frequent). I also made the 401 connection to the 350 base + 50 rip card minis + 1 strasburg. It had to be a strait up anagram phrase with 349 alphabet characters hinged to some ordering of the 401 cards.

I sent the letters to various anagram engines on the internet and a professor in a computer science department to try the brute force method - too many results.

I then input every ginter card's birthday into a spreadsheet and ordered by birthday ignoring the year and mapped that ordering to the ordering of the characters in the email code. nothing. Problem is I didn't know what to do with the non baseball cards since they had no birthdays...

I also tried forward and reverse mappings by alphabetical lists, birthdays with year, subset sorting by astrological signs... nothing.

I tried a back end approach to focus on the "q" and "u" uniques relationship in the English language, no patterns found. same with the word "congratulations."

I tried focusing on a subset of 20 base cards that changed from the original checklist to look for clues (i.e. 108 changing to Paul Konerko) - nada.

Now I await the answer and am bummed out it is already solved...

Unbelievably close my friend...

 

[marterburn]

I've been going nuts after I got the email response from code@topps.com 1 week ago. I did a letter frequency analysis of the 401 characters and found they mesh fairly closely to that of the English language (i.e. e o s t most frequent). I also made the 401 connection to the 350 base + 50 rip card minis + 1 strasburg. It had to be a strait up anagram phrase with 349 alphabet characters hinged to some ordering of the 401 cards.

I sent the letters to various anagram engines on the internet and a professor in a computer science department to try the brute force method - too many results.

I then input every ginter card's birthday into a spreadsheet and ordered by birthday ignoring the year and mapped that ordering to the ordering of the characters in the email code. nothing. Problem is I didn't know what to do with the non baseball cards since they had no birthdays...

I also tried forward and reverse mappings by alphabetical lists, birthdays with year, subset sorting by astrological signs... nothing.

I tried a back end approach to focus on the "q" and "u" uniques relationship in the English language, no patterns found. same with the word "congratulations."

I tried focusing on a subset of 20 base cards that changed from the original checklist to look for clues (i.e. 108 changing to Paul Konerko) - nada.

Now I await the answer and am bummed out it is already solved...

The 50 rip card minis are all players, so they all have birthdays.

non player cards = punctuation and numerals?

 

[Footsteps]

I've been going nuts after I got the email response from code@topps.com 1 week ago. I did a letter frequency analysis of the 401 characters and found they mesh fairly closely to that of the English language (i.e. e o s t most frequent). I also made the 401 connection to the 350 base + 50 rip card minis + 1 strasburg. It had to be a strait up anagram phrase with 349 alphabet characters hinged to some ordering of the 401 cards.

I sent the letters to various anagram engines on the internet and a professor in a computer science department to try the brute force method - too many results.

I then input every ginter card's birthday into a spreadsheet and ordered by birthday ignoring the year and mapped that ordering to the ordering of the characters in the email code. nothing. Problem is I didn't know what to do with the non baseball cards since they had no birthdays...

I also tried forward and reverse mappings by alphabetical lists, birthdays with year, subset sorting by astrological signs... nothing.

I tried a back end approach to focus on the "q" and "u" uniques relationship in the English language, no patterns found. same with the word "congratulations."

I tried focusing on a subset of 20 base cards that changed from the original checklist to look for clues (i.e. 108 changing to Paul Konerko) - nada.

Now I await the answer and am bummed out it is already solved...

The 50 rip card minis are all players, so they all have birthdays.

non player cards = punctuation and numerals?

Somewhat warm...

Oh, and the frequency analysis isn't going to lead you anywhere. But, great start.

 

[jeff550]

are the letters posted in card number order, like 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9


also, doest the code have anything to do with the back of the card

 

[Footsteps]

are the letters posted in card number order, like 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9


also, doest the code have anything to do with the back of the card

Maybe they do!

 

[shepsspot]

Nevermind, I should have read the thread!

Shep

 

[TomMurry]

Hey everyone...Nick Jacoby here. I did ultimately crack the code but I have reason to believe I was not the first to do so. I wish I would have been, but I've had my time so it's time to pass the torch so to speak. I'm sure when the time is right (ie, after Topps notifies the official winner), they will come forward. For now, I wanted to give you guys the actual code each of you are looking for, in case you'd like to continue trying to crack this one your own. Have at it!

,pliww0oD,iskrsmdcohG!eomatyOreedoaoo2ec
omaytt.glsndf.urnenarahmatt,bcrdKibn&-e1
suhrTrysheeotektoh.adyEp9hleijoBe!d-,ycb
,scwuah,gtpoeah.aoTsuneMohw!ioe?cbro.oey
dsrk!ohdkrlriioshoeoauehKosGhwd4,oirbt?e
naUu,nelpeeteH,WhpuiiaforTrhdsr.voc,.atk
l"Let,eiIluenylrdytthes,r20Cg0A.wAmd?eoG
P,g.e.Ferh"tswosaelsmiearrsisns’brhesirn
ecwcahtnoistetdsaneoispytdepasdSCfty!.gL
dwy.treupiconfjg4sT?gE!2ukdGhqpsrqkAdne6c

 

[vwnut13]

I was just talking to Nick Jacoby(last years winner) and he said that he broke this years also!

Shep

...Seven Pages ago...

 

[shepsspot]

I was just talking to Nick Jacoby(last years winner) and he said that he broke this years also!

Shep

...Seven Pages ago...

Yeah just saw that, sorry didnt really want to read 14 pages about people guessing on ****.

Shep

 

[bmc398]

I know Nick said not to say the answer, but the answer was: Send in the card that is coveted most, he's only a rookie, but sells like a pro.

So you had to spend $300 on a Strasburg to crack the code?

Haha, no he was playing on that answer...I will give a few more clues:

Jeter (or the Yankees) had nothing to do with it...although I'm still confused as to how you leave the most popular player in baseball (arguably) out of the base set.

Having the Celestial Stars cards (or analyzing the backs) have nothing to do with it.

None of the sailors have anything to do with it.

I'm shocked that no one in this thread came up with the code I gave in the earlier post.

What else do you want to know without me just giving away the answer??

I second the shocking, with all the time I spent on it, if I bought a case, I could have solved it 10 times

Yeah but you didn't even solve it once....

 

[Footsteps]

I know Nick said not to say the answer, but the answer was: Send in the card that is coveted most, he's only a rookie, but sells like a pro.

So you had to spend $300 on a Strasburg to crack the code?

Haha, no he was playing on that answer...I will give a few more clues:

Jeter (or the Yankees) had nothing to do with it...although I'm still confused as to how you leave the most popular player in baseball (arguably) out of the base set.

Having the Celestial Stars cards (or analyzing the backs) have nothing to do with it.

None of the sailors have anything to do with it.

I'm shocked that no one in this thread came up with the code I gave in the earlier post.

What else do you want to know without me just giving away the answer??

I second the shocking, with all the time I spent on it, if I bought a case, I could have solved it 10 times

Yeah but you didn't even solve it once....

Maybe the man did. We don't know.

 

[bmc398]

[quote="mnvikingstwins":1thvf0ic]I know Nick said not to say the answer, but the answer was: Send in the card that is coveted most, he's only a rookie, but sells like a pro.

So you had to spend $300 on a Strasburg to crack the code?

Haha, no he was playing on that answer...I will give a few more clues:

Jeter (or the Yankees) had nothing to do with it...although I'm still confused as to how you leave the most popular player in baseball (arguably) out of the base set.

Having the Celestial Stars cards (or analyzing the backs) have nothing to do with it.

None of the sailors have anything to do with it.

I'm shocked that no one in this thread came up with the code I gave in the earlier post.

What else do you want to know without me just giving away the answer??

I second the shocking, with all the time I spent on it, if I bought a case, I could have solved it 10 times

Yeah but you didn't even solve it once....

Maybe the man did. We don't know.[/quote:1thvf0ic]
THen you don't know him very well. His reputation preceedes him.

 

[proitalian]

Maybe all of you can explain something to me. This code was supposed to be a lot harder to crack since it was done so quickly last year. You would think that Topps would spend months coming up with the code this year. If that is true, how could the Strasburg card have anything to do with the code? Strasburg was added very late to this set, this of course being the reason why his card is number 401. They obviously had already started printing the cards for the set since they made his card the very last number. The code would already be hidden in the cards they had printed. I'm sure Topps decided at the last minute to totally change the code, so Strasburg could be a part of it, threw away all the cards that had already been printed, and started over from scratch. Yeah right. Those 401 characters in this thread are most likely total BS, either posted by someone who just thinks it funny, or is trying to buy themselves more time to work on the code.

If the code has really been cracked, and you have already emailed in your answer, then post the answer here and how you came up with it.

Keep working people, I bet you it hasn't been cracked yet.

 

[diamondlistings]

Or they've been planning to have the strasburg in there for awhile. But you could be right. It could explain errors in other parts of the set

 

[Guest]

I know Nick said not to say the answer, but the answer was: Send in the card that is coveted most, he's only a rookie, but sells like a pro.

So you had to spend $300 on a Strasburg to crack the code?

Haha, no he was playing on that answer...I will give a few more clues:

Jeter (or the Yankees) had nothing to do with it...although I'm still confused as to how you leave the most popular player in baseball (arguably) out of the base set.

Having the Celestial Stars cards (or analyzing the backs) have nothing to do with it.

None of the sailors have anything to do with it.

I'm shocked that no one in this thread came up with the code I gave in the earlier post.

What else do you want to know without me just giving away the answer??

I second the shocking, with all the time I spent on it, if I bought a case, I could have solved it 10 times

Yeah but you didn't even solve it once....

I know the answer now, and how easy it was

 

[Johnny G]

Anyone coming up with something "electric" in the phrase?

 

[Footsteps]

I assure you the code has been cracked. Stras isn't part of it. The code that was posted here was, in fact, the real code.

Mnvikings - it wasn't easy.