The end-game cryptogram

An encrypted text can be seen on a YouTube video of unknown origin. Can a reader decipher it?

Deutsche Version

First of all, I would like to mention that the blog of the skeptic organization GWUP, of which I have been a member for 20 years, has reported about my new comic book. I’m happy about that, of course.

End Game

Meanwhile, Neale Murden, a reader of my book “Codebreaking: A Practical Guide” (which I wrote with Elonka Dunin), alerted me to a very different web resource: a YouTube channel called “End Game”. This has only been around for 12 days, and so far just one video has been posted there.

Neale Murden himself runs a YouTube channel called “YNP Solve,” which features numerous videos on the Forrest Fenn treasure. The end-game video might be related to this story, according to Neale. It is not known who is behind the video.

Here is the end-game video:

Of particular interest to us is a (presumably) coded text that is shown starting at 1:24:

Quelle/Source: End Game

Here is a transcription that Neale provided me:

PMYMXAZ53WCT51ETL2SWEI7XB0KN45
E3WBLDFWQQK6EJZBS9XM0NMZ5PEUS
Z8BN45E728YMAGG546M9XET4O2RY91YY
7H9CXDG0CJZ8TX1VXET5OWMBW894QZ
A76C8PIV4G0XDIL1PRYR62E2OVWVV339F

There are also some binary sequences in the end-game video. According to Neale, you can see from these that the solution will be released on December 31, 2021. So there are still a few days left for my readers to crack the encryption themselves. There is probably no prize to be won.

Otherwise, the end-game video talks about the U.S. space program, the moon landings, John F. Kennedy, and the Wright brothers. There are several analyses of this puzzle on Neale’s said YouTube channel.

A polyalphabetic cipher?

Among other things, Neale examined the cryptogram using CrypTool’s Neural Cipher Identifier. The result was that it is probably a polyalphabetic cipher.

Since it says “P.S.” above the text, it could of course be that these two letters form the key, for example for a Vigenère cipher. Another possibility would be the key END GAME. In both cases, however, it would be unclear how to handle the numbers in the cryptogram.

One letter in the cryptogram is colored red. This could also be a clue to the key.

Can a reader find out more?

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Further reading: Die sieben bedeutendsten Zodiac-Killer-Trittbrettfahrer

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