Dr Dvorak Document

Category: Keyboard layout    |    Points: 1    |    Difficulty: Easy

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🧠 Challenge Text

Hi Associate Researcher,

The National Research and Education Network (NREN) has many experts, such as is Dr. Simon Dvorak, Chair of the Committee for Strategic QWERTY Decommissioning, member of 17 working groups, editor of 42 draft documents, and self-proclaimed "Home Row Evangelist".

Yesterday, Dr. Dvorak briefly visited a shared workstation in the NREN office. Without looking at the keyboard, he quickly typed an important document, saved it, and left for following National QWERTY Transition Initiative meeting.

Unfortunately, the resulting document appears to be complete nonsense. Your task is to recover the correct document.

Stay curious!

Download the typed document. (SHA256 fingerpring 1b10f088e53772993ed6b628e9cb4f2846f848d203a4f94248ae90baeaa83fed)

🔍 Hints Text

1. Hint

• The workstation was configured with the standard QWERTY layout.

2. Hint

• Mr. Dvorak produced the document at an astonishing speed while several of Dvorak enthusiasts chanted in support "One layout! One home row! Dvorak Simplified!".

🎨 Solution

As the challenge text suggests the writer was unaware of the QWERTY layout. The task is to translate QWERTY layout back to Dvorak layout.

def dvorak_to_qwerty(text: str) -> str:
    dvorak_layout = (
        "',.pyfgcrl/="
        "\\"
        "aoeuidhtns-;qjkxbmwvz"
        '\"<>PYFGCRL?+|'
        "AOEUIDHTNS_:QJKXBMWVZ"
    )
    qwerty_layout = (
        "qwertyuiop[]"
        "\\"
        "asdfghjkl;'zxcvbnm,./"
        "QWERTYUIOP{}|"
        'ASDFGHJKL:\"ZXCVBNM<>?'
    )

    return text.translate(str.maketrans(qwerty_layout, dvorak_layout))

with open('/thecatch2026/dr_dvoraks_document.txt') as f:
    print(dvorak_to_qwerty(text=f.read()))

Finally, Flag{BCjM-6SpO-HVpI-N13B}.