Saturday, December 03, 2011

Person-of-Mystery



Welcome to Cipher Saturday!
You've found the home of everyone's favorite weekend pastime, where a stylized photo of a somewhat famous person from history is provided for you to identify.

If you've been following this blog, you know that I consider the Person-of-Mystery contest the PhD of all weekly photo identification contests.  I believe they are solvable within a day, but I wouldn't consider them easy.  That is, unless you can identify slightly obscure historical people by sight.  And if you've been following this blog, you may have noticed that Brian and Amy seem to be rather adept at solving the puzzles.  Determined to end this streak, I thought long and hard about how to up the game and give it a little lift... maybe by using a more difficult cipher, perhaps even the Great Cipher!  But after a little thought, I decided against it as I still want to make these solvable within a day and the Great Cipher took centuries to crack, so I stuck with a substitution cipher today.

Whether you can identify the images in a flash or if the solution leaves you in the dark, I hope you enjoy the contest.  I personally enjoy reading your posts and virtually meeting so many great people, so either way feel free to just say hi.



So, who could I be?  That's the mystery!  Go ahead and take a guess and then go enjoy your day.  Check back tomorrow and I'll reveal the answer.  The first correct post will be declared the winner.
Additional clues may be found in the cipher below:

NO JO VKTV HXV KJ XOSPJXKQO YO HSPUOVVTPJ, WXTV IOVQ KJO EOBBO TWXDO, JOVQ-IO HXV?


I know he was hard to see in the first photo under the top hat, so I included a closeup as well.  If you'd like to make sure that your guess is correct, enter his name into Google Images and the first photo will be found on the first page of image results.



18 comments:

Unknown said...

There are more weekly photo identification contests? I'm googling now. At least this weeks Cipher Saturday is doable without the cipher. I tried substituting z=a etc but that didn't help. I won't spoil the fun, I just say I like his photos of a famous French actress.

DADD said...

samuel Clemens

Brian said...

Good job, Rob! I wasn't able to solve it without the cipher clue. I won't spoil the fun, either.

Nate Maas said...

DADD, sorry, it is not Samuel Clemens, but timely guess seeing how his birthday was November 30th. I think Rob had it, but he was too modest to guess.

Anonymous said...

You all must be smarter than me. I don't recognize the person and I haven't solved the cipher. It isn't Thaddeus Lowe is it?

Nate Maas said...

Anon, I'm sorry, it's not Dr. Lowe.

mary said...

What is this not saying the answer thing? I THINK I know by looking at the photo, but now I won't try??? Hmmm... I'm probably wrong (as usual) anyway.

Nate Maas said...

Mary, you can go ahead and give it a try. I'm pretty sure based on Rob's personal interests and his cryptic response that he knew this one, but you're right, it's more fun when people actually guess.

Brian said...

Not to spoil the fun, but to hopefully augment it - if you enter the three primary words from the decrypted clue into Google Images (no translation to English even necessary), at least one of the original images should appear within the first few pages. Wikipedia could also be of help for letter frequency analysis for the language of the cipher. It's slightly different from English.

Mary - remember, you can always check your guess with Google Images prior to posting.

DADD said...

Maksymilian Faktorowicz

Nate Maas said...

DADD, the pictures today are not of Maksymilian Faktorowicz, but if you just got last week's person, good job!

Anonymous said...

Could this be FĂ©lix Nadar, the
great French Photographer,
the first person to take aerial
photographs.
rayuk

DADD said...

Good job rayuk

Anonymous said...

Thanks Dadd. Rob threw me with
the 'famous French actress.'
Have still to work that one out.
rayuk

Unknown said...

His photos of Sarah Bernhardt are famous. Still can't decipher the cipher though.

mary said...

Well, I would have guessed wrong anyway. I recognised the image but erroneously thought it was Louis Daguerre.

Nate Maas said...

Rob, perhaps it would help to know that yesterday's cipher, when decoded, is in the French language.

Nate Maas said...

Mary, it is hard to tell with the stylized photos and Daguerre looks a bit like Nadar, so that's why I included the one of Nadar in the gondola too. At least that was my intention.