The Domino's V/W Cipher
Overview
Today's oddball comes from a fresh r/codes post about an old Domino's Pizza Japan puzzle campaign:
https://www.reddit.com/r/codes/comments/1tje98x/code_that_has_been_made_about_15yrs_ago_by/
Context: roughly 15 years ago, Domino's Pizza Japan ran a cipher contest where the first solver for each puzzle could win a year of free pizza. Most puzzles were solved during the campaign, but this one was apparently one of the stragglers. The post also says MENSA Japan was involved in creating the cipher - neat!
The Prompt
The original ask is:
Please decode the following cipher and provide the last two words. Separate the words with a single space.
The transcription:
WvVwwwVvV VVwVwWVWVWwv
vvwvWwvWwVvVVWw WvwWWw
wwVwvWVvvVwv WvWWwVvvWvvw
wwWwVw wWWVVvWWvWvV
WWwvVWwVWVwvwWW WVwWVW
WVW vWvwvvVwvVvvVWwWVwWVw
wvWwVWvWWVwW
There are only four visible symbols: v, V, w, and W.
That is immediately tempting as binary, base 4, or a Bacon cipher (the latter is a nice red herring with pizza in mind, I think...).
The V/W Layer
For fun, lets treat the lowercase letters as valid Morse and figure out the segmentation later:
vorVbecomes.worWbecomes-
That produces:
-..---.. ..-.---.-.--.
...-.-.--....-- -.----
--.-.-....-. -.---...-..-
---.- --...--.-..
--..--.-.-.--- -.--.-
-.- .-.-....-...---.--.-
-.--.-.--.--
Lets remove the spaces so it's a single long Morse stream:
-..---....-.---.-.--....-.-.--....-- -.------.-.-....-. -.---...-..----.- --...--.-..--..--.-.-.--- -.--.--.- .-.-....-...---.--.--.--.-.--.--
Now, because Morse letters and numbers can be 1-5 symbols long, we need to do a little bruteforcing/guessing at the beginning of each Morse stream.
Morse logic (from the Morse code reference chart above):
- shortest = 1 symbol
- longest letters/numbers = 5 symbols
Using the first mini-stream:
-..---..
The first decoded character can only be one of the valid Morse prefixes below:
| Candidate | Morse meaning |
|---|---|
- | T |
-. | N |
-.. | D |
-..- | X |
-..-- | invalid |
From here, we want to see the next-character possibilities for each branch.
Branch 1: T
Remaining:
..---..
| Next chunk | Letter/number | Remaining |
|---|---|---|
. | E | .---.. |
.. | I | ---.. |
..--- | 2 | .. |
So possible starts:
TE...
TI...
T2...
Branch 2: N
Remaining:
.---..
| Next chunk | Letter/number | Remaining |
|---|---|---|
. | E | ---.. |
.- | A | --.. |
.--- | J | .. |
So possible starts:
NE...
NA...
NJ...
Branch 3: D
Remaining:
---..
| Next chunk | Letter/number | Remaining |
|---|---|---|
- | T | --.. |
-- | M | -.. |
--- | O | .. |
---.. | 8 | empty |
So possible starts:
DT...
DM...
DO...
D8
The D8 branch is the most tempting of the lot, because it consumes the first mini-stream exactly:
-.. ---..
D 8
If we keep parsing, a few branches briefly look English-shaped. For example, forcing DO instead of D8 can lead into:
DOESNT MAP
Ha!
After that probably coincidental dead end, the next possible Morse chunks turn into awkward fragments instead of a readable phrase.
Current Read
The stronger structural clue is the one Reddit commenters were already circling: every whitespace-separated chunk is divisible by three. That makes the cipher look less like Morse and more like a 64-symbol alphabet:
4 possible characters ^ 3 positions = 64 possible triplets
So the next serious attempt should probably treat each three-character group as one encoded symbol:
WvV www VvV / VVw VwW VWV Wwv / ...
I tried something different, and it was worth doing, but the answer doesn't seem to be hiding in Morse. The vVwW alphabet seems more likely to be a triplet-based encoding, base-4-ish symbol table, or custom substitution layer.
For now: no last two words yet - can YOU figure it out?