Which Cipher?

By Abhi

Task: Find which cipher works best

By this stage of Relic Recovery, we have finally discovered an efficient strategy for the glyph game. At this point, it is important to get consistent driver practice. While doing so, it is important to think of the cipher patterns. Seeing that world records are being set by teams who can double cipher efficiently, it is important that we can complete ciphers at Worlds. But which pattern should we choose? At first glance, all the ciphers seem just as hard (or easy) to do. However, after some analysis, we found some will work better for our team than others.

Based on our current design, the bird cipher is the easiest to complete for drivers. This is because of the pick up pattern of our grippers. For each column, each pair of glyphs can be picked up with the same color order. For example, if we start with a gray glyph during autonomous and put it into the center column, after placing a brown one on top in teleop, we can pick up another gray then brown. Then, when we go to the left column, we pick up brown then gray for first two rows then brown gray again. This makes it easy on our drivers to remember which glyph colors to pick up.

The next easiest cipher is the snake cipher. Though this may conventionally seem hard since mirror snakes are not allowed, it is easy for us because we have the ability to pick up stacks. We would start the same way as the bird in the center column and then pick up pre-stacked same color glyphs.

Finally, we have the frog. The frog is the hardest to do because though the first two rows are the same as the bird, the final two rows have flipped pickup of glyphs. This can cause a high chance of error for our drivers. This is why we will try to stray away from this cipher but can do it if necessary.

General Advice:

Though we focus on specific ciphers, we can setup our cryptobox to allow multiple ciphers. The best thing to do is setting up the center column in a 1221 pattern (each number represents either gray or brown). This sets us up to do either a bird or frog cipher, our two favorite ciphers to do. If this isn't possible or if we are focusing on rows, we have to set them up with an alternating glyph pattern, like the frog and bird bottom two rows. This allows us to set up the cipher for our alliance partner if they choose to complete both cryptoboxes.