Symbol Font Recognition

[LMNOP]

'Cause you people are the only ones I know who will know this, that's why...



These rows of symbols are each a series of three numbers in a symbol/dingbats font. Anyone recognize it? I suspect that it's not ridiculously obscure but it's not on my computer here at work.

[Tonamel]

If you know what numbers they are (371484?), you could try What the Font

[LMNOP]

Thanks for that. I don't know the numbers (that's actually what I'm after) and that site says it only works with upper- and lowercase letters but I tried it anyway, identifying one character, in turn, as the ten different numerals. It seemed like it was trying to work but ultimately I got no match.

[LMNOP]

Oh wow, my first double post!

[jimtyrrell]

None of my fonts match these. But if I had to make a wild guess, I'd say:

349
121

[drë]

'Cause you people are the only ones I know who will know this, that's why...

Not sure, but it looks to be very meaningful and deep.
I’ll bet if I tattooed it on my body, people would be like “wow! That guy is deep”

[LMNOP]

349
121

"Vialog Signs Arrows One" looks to be a near miss and would give me "506 232". [Note: Period outside the quotes]

Jim, one of us sucks at this. *grin*

[jimtyrrell]

My thinking: The characters seem to be arrows, and we can assume (hopefully) that there are 8 versions of these. My guess was based on the characters overlaying a number grid like this:

123
456
789

There could be an X character to represent 5, and maybe a square to represent 0. But it's pure conjecture, really.

[LMNOP]

Well, sure, your way makes more sense if you have an appreciation for fancy-pants inductive reasoning and all that, but you can't deny that it has very little basis in blindly shotgunning the internet, like my way.

Next you'll be pointing out that the "less than" appears to be vertically centered relative to its neighbors but the "caret" does not, or something like that...

[fluffy]

'Cause you people are the only ones I know who will know this, that's why...



These rows of symbols are each a series of three numbers in a symbol/dingbats font. Anyone recognize it? I suspect that it's not ridiculously obscure but it's not on my computer here at work.

Are you sure they're numbers?

7CJ
FAF

What is the context in which you're trying to ascertain the meaning of these symbols? Is it a logic puzzle or something?

[LMNOP]

Yeah, they're numbers - it's a geocaching thing. These two strings respresent the thousandths (ooh, nice consonant cluster) of minutes north and west in a set of coordinates. The rest of the coordinates were printed in two other symbol fonts.

[fluffy]

And the deciphering task is supposed to be in the form of finding the specific font in use and not some other sort of deductive reasoning?

[LMNOP]

The deciphering task is undefined. I got two rows of symbol-symbol-space-symbol-symbol-dot-symbol-symbol-symbol and I need to find something. That's pretty much the whole puzzle.

I've figured out that if I "translate" the symbols before the space with Webdings and the symbols between the space and the dot with ITC Zapf Dingbat, I get the basics of coordinates that are in the right general area. To get in the right specific area, I need the rest of the numbers. Because it's a rural area, Google Maps/Earth haven't been useful in assessing any guesses (lots of trees and I'm looking for something in or near an old cemetery). So, yeah, I'm just assuming it's another font rather than Jim's clock or your leet. I could be wrong.

I know that the guy who made the puzzle is a Mac guy and I'm not so that's one reason I appealed for help -- thought there might be some fonts that are more Mac-centric. But, again, just a thought.

Oh, and I'm not physically in the general area but I will be next week. But then I may not have convenient internet.

[fluffy]

Well I'd still think of maybe it not being a simple substitution cipher. Maybe you're supposed to put the things together end-to-end and look for that shape in the 1x1-degree area? Maybe there's a hint in the layout of your keyboard? (like ^ is shift-6 for example) Maybe you're supposed to look those symbols up in Unicode and use the terminal digit of the code point? Maybe it's a reference to the graphic-drawing characters on the C64?

If it's a substitution cipher, there are exactly 30240 possibilities for which digits are what. Time to get cracking.

[LMNOP]

Maybe you're supposed to put the things together end-to-end and look for that shape in the 1x1-degree area?

Maybe I'm supposed to, but since I have no idea what this means, I probably won't.

C64

Heh, one of the first things I did was look up the C64 character map!

[Sober]

Numbers only?

I see:




7 (2 or 4) 9
(5 or 6) (4, or 6 if they're being snarky and using the 'carrot' symbol (shift+6)) (5 or 6)

I'm looking at major defining shapes, and how one might generalize them down. I like my guesses.

[Mal]

It looks like it could be a variant of the old pigpen cypher, also known as the Masonic or Freemason's cypher, which itself was adapted from the Hebrew Aiq Bkr cypher. The pigpen/masonic cyphers substitute symbols of cross-hatch and X shaped grids for letters while the Aik Bkr allowed for any of three letters in a cross-hatch chamber to be substituted for any other letter in the same chamber.

Anyway, adapting that to numbers might give you 491 606, but it depends on how the numbers are arranged. The cross-hatch is usually straightforward, but the X grid lends itself to variation.

But if it's font based, you might try the Aiq Bkr Cipher, Royal Arch Cipher, or Alphabet of Nug-Soth fonts on this page.