Decode a Message

[Alex Shultz]

I need help decoding this message for a friend of mine - any ideas? I wanna be able to give her the answer but I'm stumped. The answer should give coordinates to a location:

nXIGTvM{qODN#O5dT2fZ/3?B57lHcD]W}O<Cm9a@;7,#^7eeNo<C%w:MS5Jb9Mvb+"q]iYL5ge7w
"o$MrtoA7FRtlBQcRa@G(W>ur7lH`)*ZBPg+zz`B06IU*wiY`"m]"dnX[D73=d9F`dpw_cBMfZD3
tBf5<I|OiLnX(d%wTXR5$Zc7ZdPD@GUH$A;C2W<cm6dfz+gLHrpza7J`+6jtaOGZF5=vyz=d!yHN
$77dT2fZ]teYF

[araver]

Well, it looks like an encoding, the code is similar to base64, but it has more than 26x2+10+2=64 chars.

Once you determine how many chars it actually has, it should get easier to figure out the base.

Little fiddling led me to this (spoiler):

Spoiler

It has almost all ASCII printable characters in it, except for -, ', \

And no, it's not an obscure encoding. It's actually called basE91, developed by Joachim Henke, released as free software under the terms of the BSD license. Check it out here: http://base91.sourceforge.net/

The actual message is:

THE COORDINATES YOU SEEK ARE TWENTY-SEVEN DEGREES AND TWENTY-EIGHT POINT THREE FIVE SIX MINUTES SOUTH, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THREE DEGREES AND ELEVEN POINT ONE EIGHT NINE MINUTES EAST

27º 28.356' S , 153º 11.189'  E

which roughly translate to somewhere around Brisbane - https://www.google.com/maps/place/27°28'21.4"S+153°11'11.3"E

 

Edited July 22, 2016 by araver