Question

Problem set 4:Decrypting the fable
This is how my program decrypts it:
(.txt file below)

Answer 1

Is the decryption correct?

Answer 2

Well, it seems to have made something that is sensible, rather than senseless.
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/FlyiMach.shtml

Answer 3

But how will the program know which sentences make sense and which do not?

Answer 4

For instance how will it know that 'people came forward' is the correct sentence rather than 'people came ox ward' since 'ox' and 'ward' are both valid words present in the wordlist

Answer 5

If it is like most decryption, it is not looking for one word to be right. It is looking for several. So what would decrypt some words will not get others, so the end result can fail testing.

I have not looked at this particular code, so i can not say for certain how it is doing that.

Answer 6

choosing 'ox ward' instead of 'forward' will not cause the end result test to fail because by applying some combination of shifts it is still possible to get the sentence 'with subscriptions to build a second machine' which follows 'ox ward'/'forward'

Answer 7

this is the shift combination that it uses:

Answer 8

I got something similar by printing s and letting it run for about an hour, but it still hadn't finished running. How long did yours take to run?

Answer 9

It didn't take long, only a couple of seconds.

Answer 10

Thank you, I think something might be wrong with my algorithm.