The Copy Cat Files - Wish You Were Here IV - Typewriter Card

 Ok, this was an odd one. I was not prepared, my iPad wasn't charged properly, and by the time I sat down with my laptop, we'd already solved some of the puzzles. Because of course. So, without further ado, Card #3 of Enigma Emporium's Wish You Were Here Series IV - The Copycat Files.

On the front we have a series of four lines, which...

My puzzling partner solved another one before I even finished writing that paragraph. In the top paragraph on the back, aside from the red herring, is a series of words that sound like letters: tea = T, for example. Reading through, we get TOKYO (tea-oh-'kay-why-oh) out of the odd sounds. I guess our penpal this time is in Japan. 

As I was typing, before I got so gleefully interrupted, on the front there are four lines of text at the top, starting with the letters KEIL - which rearranged form LIKE, which are the four letters in the stamps at the top of the other side of the card. So, we know that, with a bit of effort, we're going to rearrange those lines and get a word. Back to the front, there are also six lines of spaced out numbers, with a return arrow like an ENTER key on a keyboard. I expect we know how to solve that as well,

On the back are the four above-mentioned stamps, spelling LIKE, and two paragraphs of longhand text. The first two obvious bits are red letters, which spell Herring. Red herring. haha. And poor capitalization in the bottom paragraph spells out MADE YOU LOOK, while hinting at the solution to the top paragraph - sounding the words out. 

Back to the four lines on the front, which my puzzling partner addresses while my food order arrives and I have to defend it from my cats with a squirt gun. #fosterfail. Anyhow, the result is: "Like printing your own money someone said and I decided to go for the real thing. Counterfeiting is quite easy really" Sounds like the Secret Service would need to get involved, not just the FBI.

While he does that, I work on the bottom section - the keyboard. From the look of it, it's a series of 9 words, where each set is made of the keys. I have to figure out how to align it, and hit a wall, which I blame on having to spend a significant portion of my attention squirting cats to keep them out of my barbecue. I have too many cats. It wasn't intentional. 

If we assume that each set is the three lines of letters on a keyboard, the two are going to have to be interwoven - there are no 2s in the top set, for example. Also and this I didn't see, but the numbers that are close together are the same key, not adjacent. So, we need to align the keys and figure out the numbers. This is going to take a while. 

1. A S K/H 
2. OK
3. 
   
4. HJ
5.   
6.  P
7.  ?
8.  QUQE
9.  TETOSSHH -> shot steosh

We eventually give up and look for a hint on this one. We cannot seem to figure out the alignment of the keyboard vs. the numbers, no matter how we line things up. We were close but not THAT close. instead of forming words, the number is how deep to count. So, we get: IEEOEERITY Nope. We try reading up and down like the ones above: I HAVE MADE OVER FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS NOW. 

So, is that our solution? A counterfeiter living in Tokyo who's made over $50 million? No name? 

Back to the hints... This time, we're told that the 'made you look' isn't the message, but there's something in the background... holding it up to my nose I realize there are breaks in the underline, and my puzzling partner solves it while I defend my dessert (baked quince with brown sugar and walnuts) from a cat I have foolishly set free from the bathroom/prison. I AM WARREN ASH. 

Now we know we're set :) And thus, minus interfering cats, a mini meltdown, a now-empty squirt gun, and a very patient puzzling partner, we have the solution for the third card of the Copy Cat files by Enigma Emporium. Good puzzles, and I'd like to think we'd have solved them eventually without the clues, if it weren't for those darn cats. :)

The Copycat Files - Wish You Were Here IV - Map Card

 My friend and I have been spending far too much time creating new worlds in ARK, yes, far behind the times, I realize, and we decided we needed a little more analog in our lives. So, this evening we dug into another puzzle postcard by Enigma Emporium - one of a set of 5 standalone puzzles in their 'Copycat Files' set, a follow up to their three interwoven Wish You Were Here sets. Last time we did a wintery themed one, this time, we chose a map and telephone theme.

The card is in sepia tones, numbers connected by a line around a picture of Alexander Graham Bell (who I took to be Darwin until I looked at the numbers and realized that they are country codes). We expect the names of the countries to spell a message. On the reverse, we have two stamps with series of numbers, as well as four groups of numbers, and a line connecting a series of lighter boxes. The images themselves are of a lock and keys, and some sort of techno runner? 

We start with the numbers on the front, connecting country codes. Mongolia-Yemen-Nepal-Algeria-Montenegro-Egypt-India-Senegal-Morocco-Oman-Iran-Russia (or Kazakhstan)-Angola-Slovakia-Argentina-Ireland-Netherlands-Taiwan-Chad-Lesotho-Azerbaijan-Israel-Rwanda-Ethiopia. My name is Moira Saint-Claire. Hello, Moira.  

We turn to tackle the back of the card. My first idea is to treat them as a symbol, rather than a number. So, '8' becomes 1-8 or 18, 44 becomes 2-4 or 24, etc. There may need to be some math involved, as the largest number would be 47. With that idea, we get the first set as:

18 24 23 "33 22 34"  -    18 24 34 26 25 47    -   34 12 16 12 16 12 26

Gobbledygook, then I look at the stamps again. They're a simple A-01, and read SWIFT-KEY (ok, the techno runner is 'swift'). Which means that we're looking at that long ago system where you could type on your cell phone keypad. It's been a while. 8, therefore, isn't 1-8, but the first number that you'd get when you hit 8 - T. I feel old in that I used to know how to type really quickly that way. My partner solves the connected numbers/keys quickly: PORTLAND

The number sets in lines are the old style typing, not swift key, but fairly easy with an old visual reference

So, we get: THE "FBI" THINKS I AM A MAN. "COOPER" WAS THE NAME OF MY CAT. I HAD NEVER USED A "PARACHUTE" BEFORE. I NO LONGER FLY"BOEING". I didn't make the connection, but my puzzling partner got it - Moira is claiming to be DB Cooper, which, per Wikipedia, is the pseudonym of an unidentified man who hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft in United States airspace between Portland and Seattle on the afternoon of November 24, 1971. He, or she if Moira is correct, parachuted out midflight. 

My partner then solved the more complicated Swift code at the top, using the same keyboard as above: The fingerprints on this card will match those found on the plane if you want to turn me in.

And thus we have it - another card solved. Moira Saint Claire of Portland, OR, claims that it was she who carried out the hijack, and her prints are on the card, probably messed up by our own as we poured over it, but alas...

Thanks, Enigma Emporium, for another lovely evening!

The Copycat Files - Wish You Were Here IV - Blue Card

 While still awaiting the next season of Wish You Were Here by Enigma Emporium, there is still one set of cards left to unravel. It seems that, having solved the riddles of the first three seasons, our puzzling skills have earned us a bit of celebrity, to the point where the ‘FBI’ receives all kinds of (you guessed it!) copycat postcards. Unlike those from the Ouroboros, our friendly Agent Jasper Meeks informs us, these cards don’t appear to be connected to each other, but are all expected to have at least a name, location, and a confession.  

We decide to start with the blue card, which depicts on its front a wool-coated gentleman smoking a cigarette against a blue and white snowy background. On his coat there are a series of dot sets, which at first guess I take to be Braille or Semaphore. The message reads “Do not go gentle into that good night.” It is bordered with snowflakes. On the back is a short message about climbing and feeling the rotation of the earth, it is bookended by two ‘peaks’ of code - presumably a step-up Caesar Cipher. More snowflakes border the card, and there are two stamps, postmarked June 21, 2019, with the symbol of the Ouroboros, white against a black background. We dive in. 

I start with essentially a brute force Caesar decrypt of the text pyramids. However, it soon turns out that it’s pretty straightforward: the bottom is a +1, the next is a +2... all the way up to the top. The trick is reading them backwards essentially. Below is the solution, spaces added.

• +10: I
• +9: WO
• +8: RK A
• +7: LL AR
• +6: OUND T
• +5: HE WORL
• +4: D BUT AM L
• +3: ARGELY BA
• +2: SED OUT OF P
• +1: ARIS AND OUR HQ

• +9: I
• +8: AL
• +7: SO R
• +6: ECEN
• +5: TLY MA
• +4: DE THE A
• +3: CQUAINT
• +2: ANCE OF YO
• +1: UR FRIEND JC

I work all around the world but am largely based out of Paris and our HQ. I also recently made the acquaintance of your friend JC. 

While I’m doing that, my puzzling companion notices that there are 26 UNIQUE snowflakes on the front... guess they’re the key to the frame on the back. He works on that while I work on the Caesar. I am an expert in pain and I torture the truth out of folk.  Charming. So now we have a confession, a location, and the name is probably in the dots on the guy’s back. Which I’m having trouble matching up with semaphore or Braille.... 

And then my brilliant puzzling companion points out that the same dot patterns are in the letters of the quote themselves. Todd Hill. We have a name! 

So, Todd Hill, torturer of people, based out of Paris, probable torturer of the guy we saved in the last series. 

Tada!

Parabola - Wish You Were Here Part III - Cards 4 & 5

It’s been a while, but it’s a nice rainy day and I’ve got a new electric kettle for tea and my puzzling companion has a glass of whisky so it’s the perfect time to dive into another puzzle.

The front of the card shows a standard treble clef, which, thanks to too many school years reading music, tells me it’s CABBAGE (not BABBAGE, though I did originally misread the first note). There are others scattered around the page, without a clear guide, other, perhaps, than the black and white keys of a piano on both sides. Unfortunately for this puzzle, I played strings...

On the back, we have a series of numbers over a series of lines - the numbers are 1-18 and my first thought is some sort of connect the dots. Don’t want to draw on the cards, though, so that will have to wait. There are the requisite stamps, and the September 8th postcard, as well as a very oddly worded message that I think might be connected to the stamp alphabet - rooster, duck, etc. My spidey sense is tingling, but not sure why. Yet. We dive in.

Again, the alphabet so far:

• Camel - 1 - A
• Sheep - 5 -E
• Rabbit - 6 - F
• Crow - 9 - I
• Bat - 11 - K
• Duck - 12 - L
• Chicken - 13 - M
• Cow - 14 - N
• Horse - 15 - O
• Pig - 18 - R
• Dog - 20 - T

The stamps are easy enough: Cow-camel-rooster-sheep: NAME: “Look for file name...”

We realize as I’m doing that there are other animals hidden in the text, for example sPIGot. In the message, we get: Rooster-Lamb-Pig-Duck-Crow-Cow. MERLIN. 

And there’s where we pause. The left is not connect the dots, neither does it seem to line up with the notes on the front, nor the 5th card, which has letters. 

Stumped, we decide to go back to her facebook page and poke around. Rewatching the video, we realize we now have the password to email to her account, and do so. An immediate answer comes through, which takes us back to the “FBI Tipline” for Blowback. We need four key codes, but we have only found two:

• Key Phrase One: ??
• Key Phrase Two: AZURE
• Key Phase Three: BEATLE
• Key Phrase Four: ??

Phrase 1 isn’t cabbage, nor is it palimpsest from the last puzzle. We’ll also, apparently, need the information of the other people we’ve found to date.

While I’m digging through the recesses of my brain, my puzzling partner solves the lines - each line and space is a different letter, like a MUCH bigger clef. An alphabet clef? It reads FINANCES DEPARTMENT

Looking back over our notes, and vowing to NEVER take this much time off again, we realize that one of the pass phrases might be in the quote authors - we never did sort that out. Her favorite quotes are:

03/01/18/07 

11/08/16/11 

14/03/17/06 

02/04/17/26 

19/08/18/10 

30/05/19/22

As we did before, in chronological order by postcard stamp cancellation date:

January 19:
2017: Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy - Isaac Newton
2018: If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things - Albert Einstein
2019: The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched--they must be felt with the heart. - Hellen Keller

February 24:

2017: You will face many defeats in life, but never let yourself be defeated. - Maya Angelou

2018: Those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself. - Richard Nixon

August 4:

2017: There's no such thing as quitting. Just sometimes there's a longer pause between relapses - Alan Moore

2018: Each of us brings to our job, whatever it is, our lifetime of experience and our values. - Sandra Day O’Connor

September 8

2018: It's better to burn out than to fade away. - Neil Young

2017: Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. - George Bernard Shaw

2016: A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. - Tim O'Brien

Dec 4:

2018:Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

2017: Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them. - Washington Irving

2016: What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? - John Green

So, top to bottom, again, only the days that have postcards

• The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched--they must be felt with the heart. - Helen Keller
• Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• It's better to burn out than to fade away. - Neil Young
• Each of us brings to our job, whatever it is, our lifetime of experience and our values. - Sandra Day O’Connor
• Those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself. - Richard Nixon
• If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things. - Albert Einstein
• Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them. - Washington Irving
• Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself - George Bernard Shaw
• There's no such thing as quitting. Just sometimes there's a longer pause between relapses - Alan Moore
• You will face many defeats in life, but never let yourself be defeated. - Maya Angelou
• Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy. - Isaac Newton
• What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? - John Green
• A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. - Tim O'Brien

Using only the first letters of the last names, we get KEY ONE IS MANGO

Key Phrase One: MANGO

Key Phrase Two: AZURE

Key Phase Three: BEATLE

Key Phrase Four: ??

However, we still have no idea about the grid of her ‘favorites’. 

Diving in, I decide we may as well go all in tonight, and do the last card, from December 5th, as well. On the front of the card is a figure in front of the sunset, with the words “Wish You Were Here” and shapes that correspond to the shapes from the inscribed six sided star on card one. On the back is a short message, and the alchemical symbols from the first card overlaid with letters. 

Using the animal alphabet for the stamps, we get TANNIN: “Look for file name Tannin” - this is not, unfortunately, an “FBI Tip Line” extension, nor a key phrase.

The alchemical alphabet is as follows:

• A: Mars
• C: Saturn
• D: Mercury
• E: Neptune
• M: Jupiter
• N: Sulfur
• O: Earth
• Q: Sun
• R: Venus
• T: Moon
• U: Pluto

The shapes on the front correspond to the shapes on the inscribed star, so from top to bottom: 

Mars-Sulfur-Mars-Saturn-Earth-Sulfur-Mercury-Mars: ANACONDA. Is this our fourth key? The others were marked as keys though.... 

And this is where my partner makes a breakthrough. Her favorite quotes are day-month-year-word, and it gives us 

• 03/01/18/07 - THE 
• 11/08/16/11 - FOURTH
• 14/03/17/06 - KEY
• 02/04/17/26 - PHRASE
• 19/08/18/10 - IS
• 30/05/19/22 - MERCURY

Key Phrase One: MANGO

Key Phrase Two: AZURE

Key Phase Three: BEATLE

Key Phrase Four: MERCURY

Then we remember that there were puzzles from the first card that we hadn’t solved, including a line in the back that now seems to line up perfectly with the letters of the 5th card. I’m not sure which side to start on so: SEND ME THE CONFIRMATION NUMBER.

What confirmation number?!

Back to the website, frustrated, we look for a clue. And feel like an idiot - we were too far in on the page. So, now we dig through lines of code, looking for mango, azure, beatle, and mercury, in that order. Ctrl+F was VERY handy. We search, then, for file name TANNIN, and are asked for our Department. Looks like it’s time to pull up what we know of the three people mentioned in her email:

• Eric Kent - Human Resources - Birch Lane - Palimpsest
• Sarah Moss - Cyber Crime Department - The Brothers Karamazov - Tennis
• Merlin? - Finances Department - Anaconda - Cabbage

None of these departments seem to have access to the file, however. Back to the drawing board. Then we realize that there is another puzzle we’ve missed on Card 4. The notes on the front. We count and there are 26 white keys (counting the sides). In theory, going from the top: YUSEF SEDIQI. So, rather than Merlin in Finances, we have Yusef Sediqi. We’re still stuck, however, on the department. 

We look for a clue. And curse. Cybercrime is one word. MF......... grrrrrrrr.... We proceed... 

Ok, that was awesome. Quite possibly the BEST yet. Thank you Enigma Emporium for over two months, give or take, of fun. But now the FBI are onto us! Oh no! Agatha Shapira is a wonderful villain. 

Parabola - Wish You Were Here Part III - Card 3

Another Tuesday, time for some more puzzles! I've got sleeping cats around me, chicken in the slowcooker, and a card in front of me with a sailing ship on it, a mix of letters around the edge, a demon sky rat (seagull), a reference to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner (water, water every where, but nary a drop to drink), and some mysterious brown and blue splotches (coffee? ink?), as well as a nautical looking compass. fun fun. Another evening of delving into Enigma Emporium's lovely puzzles. 

The back is a bright pink, with a semaphore motif, four stamps, some nautical flags, a long series of numbers that don't seem to go above 9, in groups of 4, and another message from Agatha. The message contains letters in "military speak" - A=alpha - phonetic alphabet, it reads: BIRCH LANE. I may have bowled over my puzzling companion to solve that before we got to the rest. 

The stamps are rabbit (6), crow (9), duck (12), sheep (5) = FILE - so far we're at "Look for file..." in a tennis court on Birch Lane? 

Next up is the Maritime Signal Flags. In groups of five, they read: 

• NWNNE 
• NSSSW
• EESNW
• WSENS

I'm going to go ahead and guess that these are related to the letters around the outside of the ship on the cover, and the order that we read them in. Reading in order: PASSWORD IS PALIMPSEST

We're feeling pretty good about ourselves, and we hop to the squiggly line that is probably semaphore. It is! I read the letters to my puzzling companion - I can't solve and note take simultaneously for visual puzzles it seems. Eric Kent. Who's he, I wonder? Does he live at Birch Lane? Does he have a file we need? 

The final puzzle here is the blocks of four. My companion has an idea. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is in quatrains. We try quatrain-line-word-letter: HUMAN RESOURCES. Hmmmm...

So, we are looking for a file, that may have something to do with Eric Kent, Birch Lane, and Human Resources. 

BUT! I am not done for the evening! A quick peek at the next cards gives me some more letters to play with for her FB profile. 

Our updated alphabet is now:

• Camel - 1 - A
• Sheep - 5 -E
• Rabbit - 6 - F
• Crow - 9 - I
• Bat - 11 - K
• Duck - 12 - L
• Chicken - 13 - M
• Cow - 14 - N
• Horse - 15 - O
• Pig - 18 - R
• Dog - 20 - T

Working off her 'coal from top to bottom' message, we have... dog, camel, dog, dog, duck, sheep, dog, camel, duck, sheep. TATTLETALE. Hmm. 

But really, that's enough for today now, and I can't just gobble this puzzle up - only 2 cards left, and only one set left beyond it. I want to spoil my dinner but we have other things to do this evening, and so we leave it there... for now. 

Parabola - Wish You Were Here Part III - Card 2

It's a lovely Friday afternoon, and for once I have an almost empty plate at work going into a weekend, so how about a little puzzling with my remaining brain cells as the upstairs construction continues to shake my ceiling? We dive into the second card of The Enigma Emporium's third postcard series: Parabola. Spoilers ahead, look out below.

Our second card from our new penpal, Agatha Shapira, comes on February 24th, which is postmarked across three stamps (rabbit - 6, horse/pony -15, pig -18). The front is a close up of part of Dali's "The Persistence of Memory". The blue back has a series of dates (presumably to be transferred to letters), and a message - apparently the Ourobouros have been stalking us for over a decade - 2005 to be precise. On the right there is a series of what look to be overlapping blue/yellow makes green messages in alarm clock/calculator/"segmented LCD display" font. Scattered around them are what could be clock hands or semaphore, but some have three lines rather than two, or only one, so not sure where to start there - doesn't look like pigpen. The repeated phrase "watchlist" makes me think clock.

As I'm typing this up, my eagle eyed partner notices that the larger type on the front does not match the smaller messages - rather than "The Persistence of Memory" and "Salvador Dali" we get "Department" and "Cyber Crime". He works out what that says while I start on the stamps and the dates. We ignore the lcd on front and back for now. 

Rabbit - 6, horse/pony -15, pig -18 becomes: FOR. The last stamp message was LOOK, so now we have "Look For." For what? I refuse to jump ahead and look at the other cards, but I really want to.

The dates on the top left of the back are below. Since some of them will vary across years, I've listed the dates that they fell in 2005, which is apparently when they started stalking us. I've put them in month-date format, but it could be the other way around. 

• Father's Day, Diwali, Boston Marathon, Orthodox Easter, Mother's Day: June 19, November 1, April 18, May 1, May 8, or 06-19, 11-01, 04-15, 05-01, 05-08. F-S K-A D-O E-A E-H
• Yom Kippur ends, Pentecost, Juneteenth, Father's Day: October 13, May 15, June 19, X, or 10-13, 05-15, 06-19, 06-19. J-M E-O F-S F-S

Other than realizing a lot of things fell on June 19th that year, not seeing anything. 

I try to decipher the yellow and blue lcd bits. 

• First line: Yellow: 3 5, Blue 1 2
• Second line:  Yellow: _ _ 2 5 8 _ 0 _, Blue: 6 1 2 1 1 9 2 5
• Third Line: Yellow: 9 6 5 8 0, Blue: 1 1 1 1 2
• Fourth Line: Yellow: _ 9, Blue: 9 1 
• Fifth Line: Yellow: 0 _ 4 4 _ 9, Blue: 2 5 1 1 9 1

Alternatively, if we treat each character as two numbers, we get:

• First line: 13 25: MY 
• Second line:  06 01 22 15 18 20 05: FAVORITE
• Third Line: 19 16 15 18 20: SPORT
• Fourth Line: 09 19: IS
• Fifth Line: 20 05 14 14 09 19: TENNIS

Using this same logic on the image on the front gives us: 18, 13? Maybe just telling us that yellow + blue = green? 

My puzzling partner goes down the tennis scoring rabbit hole while I compile an animal alphabet from the cards we've done so far. I suspect that we'll eventually get letters for all of the animals in Agatha's pictures, and they'll spell some sort of message. So far we have:

• Rabbit - 6 - F
• Bat - 11 - K
• Duck - 12 - L
• Horse - 15 - O
• Pig - 18 - R

From here we get a bit stumped, and my puzzling companion checks for hints on what we've missed. It turns out that we were making the date puzzle too difficult. If we only take the dates, rather than the months, we get: SARAH MOSS. Who's she? Another FB profile? Can't be only one in existence. Nope, there are several. 

We got a little cheaty on the clock hands - I didn't get a chance to try the puzzle but we read ahead  - The Brothers Karamazov. Next time I'll be better at communicating with my puzzling partner where I have and haven't worked on a puzzle yet! 

So, that's it for Card 2: We're looking for something, possibly Sarah Moss. Someone (Sarah, Agatha?) favorite sport is tennis. Something about The Brothers Karamazov. Cyber Crime Department. 

Parabola - Wish You Were Here Part III - Card 1

Fresh off our success on the Carte Rouge, we dug back into another set of mysterious postcards from The Enigma Emporium. This time it is Parabola, the third installment of the Wish You Were Here series. Having seen our erstwhile correspondent snuffed out, this is apparently from his killer(s) - presumably the Ouroboros, which we expect are linked to Infiniti Institutes, of Carte Rouge fame. 

The first card opens on a split background - Black and Tan - with a blue/black sigil in the center, surrounded by an Ouroboros. There are astronomical/alchemical symbols for planets in a six pointed star, with three sets of numbers - some of which do go above 26 so no simple approach there. There is a many jointed line in grey across the card - unlike prior puzzles it does not at first glance correspond to anything on the back of the card. 

On the back of the card, we have a message from our new pen pal, “Agatha Shapira,” with a friendly Hello, Detective written over a picture of our presumably-now-deceased former pen pal. There are four sets of blue and white numbers, none of which go above 26, and only one that goes above 12. There are four stamps under the January 19th postmark - a duck (12), two horses (both 15), and a bat (11). My first thought is Latin names? Then the message itself explains that good old Agatha is just a normal every day, beer drinking gal. Serial murder just pays the bills. 

We dive in. 

I start with the stamps on the Latin name hunch:

• Duck (12): Anas platyrhynchos
• Horse (15): Equus caballus - no 15. Harumph
• Black Bat - multiple scientific names but this image apparently comes from a notebook available on Barnes and Noble ;)

And then I run it through A=01: LOOK. Look where? The refusal of anything to jump out under black light is annoying, but it does help me read the blue numbers. 

What about the images on the front? Black light yields nothing (darn it). In the outer points, clockwise, starting at the top: Mars, Sun, Jupiter, Venus, Moon, Saturn. The inner ‘ring’ around the triangle: Mercury, and then two that aren’t planets but alchemical elements - salt (?) and sulfur. Which means that the numbers are likely from the periodic table. We set to work:

• 5 -  Boron - B
• 24 - Chromium - Cr
• 31 - Gallium - Ga
• 55 - Cesium - Cs
• 73 - Tantalum - Ta
• 98 - Californium - Cf
• 109 - Meitnerium - Mt

Nothing coming easily. They ARE all in numerical order, with various gaps, so we could either scramble them, but there aren’t enough vowels, or look at the gaps: 19, 13, 24, 18, 25: SMXRY. Nope. After a quick trip into Lise Meitner, who was awesome, we go back to the ring itself. Again, the outer ring is Mars, Sun, Jupiter, Venus, Luna, Saturn, but that could also be read as Iron, Gold, Tin, Copper, Silver, Lead. We can look at that as their elemental names and/or their elemental numbers: Fe (26), Au (79), Sn (50), Cu (29), Ag (47), Pb (82). They’re too high for the straight A=01, and don’t readily spell anything. Also, what does the split mean?

Hmm, she mentions facebook... wonder if she has a profile? SHE DOES. And it’s constructed well enough that I think it’s a normal person... until I click her video. Apparently our dear old pen pal Jason is still alive, and we can save him... if we’re willing to snoop into the FBI. These people... Also, I really like her eye makeup, and would kill for her hair. But I digress... 

It doesn’t show up well on my iPad, but her phone profile has a QR code embedded in the profile background. A link takes us to a google search, with “Key Phrase two is Azure”. I love The Enigma Emporium  She mentions being an animal lover: her photos contain camels, ducks, sheep, and dogs. Her most recent post has her in Kenya. 

Looking at the date stamp and the actual cancellation stamp on the cards, there are annual posts on January 19:

• 2017: Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy - Isaac Newton
• 2018: If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things - Albert Einstein
• 2019: The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched--they must be felt with the heart. - Hellen Keller

She also has some interesting information in her personal details, but it doesn’t work out to a straight A=01 either. We also find her email, for when we find the other key phrase. 

Eventually, after pouring over the codes and the facebook page, we hit a wall. A quick hint from Enigma Emporium points out that no number is greater than 13... the alphabet is split like the card. So, add 13 to one set of the numbers. Assume blue because it’s second in all of them. 

The first sends us to her favorite quotes section, which we’ve already found, but haven’t solved yet. The next sends us to her locations - she’s been a ton of places. All over the world. Staring at them long enough yields: Key Thre(e) is BEATLE. Another sends us to the header, where we found the QR code for the google search. The last one says quote authors, which presumably refers to the three quotes above which are on the same date as the stamps. I’ve added them to the quotes above. 

Frustrated, we look for a couple of more clues, and are surprised yet reassured that we are actually supposed to come back to a couple of the puzzles when we’ve done ALL OF THE OTHER PUZZLES AND CARDS. That is both awesome, and irritating as I have zero self control/patience. I love it. We do see that the numbers on the front can be done at this time, so we go back and have a look. We run into the same issues, and look for a specific hint. We were making this FAR too hard. It’s not elements. It’s not alchemy. It’s a rot/mod cipher. Bloody hell. A massive thank you to dCode, and we have EXECUTE COMMAND TSUNAMI. 

And with that, we have solved as much as we can with the first card alone. Many thanks to The Enigma Emporium for yet another wonderfully fun evening of puzzles. You’re contributing to my sanity during COVID, which I greatly appreciate. 

Carte Rouge - Day Six

Back again to Carte Rouge by Enigma Emporium. We’ve got three cards left to go, and a few questions left to answer. Last time we were able to justify progress by going to the Infiniti Institutes website and answering a few questions correctly (after a bit of sneakiness on their part regarding web addresses. Good progress.

Back now after a mini vacation, it’s time to tackle the remaining puzzles: The chest of the Jack of Clubs, the edge of the Queen of Hearts, and the male Joker.

As I’m putting this together, just opening the file my partner is ahead of me on the Jack’s chest - he realizes that they are shuffled in order, such that the N is in 9th place in the sentence, the 11th is a blank.

1.Y 2. E 3. K 4. A 5.T 6. E 7. R 8. I 9. N 10. A 11. (SPACE) 12. V 13. E 14.L 15. I 16. K 17.A 18. Y 19. A

YEKATERINA VELIKAYA, also known as Katherine the Great (1729-1796). And thus the Jack of Clubs.

That puts her probably second, between Queen Elizabeth and Abigail Adams:

• Queen Elizabeth I: 1533-1603
• Katherine the Great: 1729-1796
• Abigail Adams: 1744-1818
• John Paul Jones: 1747-1792
• Madame Le Brun: 1755-1842
• Marie Antoinette: 1755-1793

With this in hand, it was back to Infiniti Institutes to answer their questions. We were were able to answer all of their questions and were welcomed as an initiate. But, that still leaves two cards to solve. Hmmmm.....

Back to the Queen of Hearts. We know her chest reads “The Bard is a King to Me” - presumably Shakespeare, and that another card, the King of Hearts, references poetry, Venus and Adonis. And, surprise surprise! Shakespeare has a poem titled Venus and Adonis. Assuming that the numbers are line (word) we get the following:

We Gave You Supreme Rule Plucked The Last Queen Like A Flower - Feeds Had Turned By Far Too Foul For Pay We Seek Your Power. 

Not entirely sure that that second to last part makes sense, but it does fall in with the rest of the rhyming threats. 

I’m admittedly surprised that the conclusion felt, hollow. The puzzles themselves though, and the process for solving the cards, was a great time. They CLEARLY went to a lot of trouble to put this together, I can’t wait to see what comes next from Enigma Emporium! 

Carte Rouge - Day Four?

I feel like we’ve done more than four days of puzzling on Carte Rouge, but I don’t seem to have documented them. It’s been a while, and we needed a break from the news, so my puzzling companion and I cracked open the deck once more.

While we debate looking for clues, I try to identify what we’ve gotten so far, and put it in some sort of order:

Suit	Card	Edge Message	Chest Message	Other
Clubs	King	The Tsar has been addressed - the Throne can be repossessed	Angel Script
Clubs	Queen	Once your own fate is known, pass the cards to John Paul Jones.	There is one thing we yearn to earn - you must help your people learn	Captain
Clubs	Jack	Best to accept and ascend - each offer conceals an end
Diamonds	King	The cards belonged to three before, beyond you they must go to two more	We have only one goal - We desire total utter control
Diamonds	Queen	If you have been paying close attention, then you can likely guess our intention	The First Second Lady - The Second First Lady	Abigail Adams
Diamonds	Jack	When your work is finally done, pass the cards to Madame LeBrun	A revolution you want to win -  we can tell you how to begin
Hearts	King	Black: My Dear Queen it is a pleasure to know you Red: Our love is poetry like Venus and Adonis	Pigpen cipher key
Hearts	Queen		The Bard is a King to Me
Hearts	Jack	My fine lady the Good Queen Bess, as beautiful as she as powerful	You will be our pawn until your final hour	Queen Elizabeth I
Spades	King	Helping you is our pleasure but you must share your treasure.	Morganwg Alphabet
Spades	Queen	Face to face, men of all trades - a shared secret between Heart and Spade	Madame Deficit	Marie Antoinette
Spades	Jack	Your Nation is in turmoil - there is a rebellion you must foil	You will be our pawn until your final hour

We get stuck on the Spades because, for the life of us, we cannot find the appropriate runic alphabet - one that has both an up arrow and a down arrow. A quick search for a hint suggests that we need to go back to the alphabet on the King of Spades’ chest. Which, of course, we haven’t fully gotten yet, or at least, I hadn’t written it down - we HAD done another session which I forgot to record which had sorted that out at least. We have the alphabet key - Black suits are A-M, Red suits are N-Z.   Except, that didn’t work. Something with our alphabet was wrong. We had to go look for a hint. Our alphabet was close, but not quite - we had neglected to figure in suit order. That had come up in our discussions, but I couldn’t make it work before. Now we have it sorted. 

Going off that, we were able to read the King of Spades’ chest: MORGANWG ALPHABET. That turns out to also be known as the Coelbren y Beirdd, which was a script made by a forger who sometimes went by the name of Iolo Morganwg. After a quick trip down that Wikipedia rabbit hole, we translate the text around the rim: HELPING YOU IS OUR PLEASURE BUT - YOU MUST SHARE YOUR TREASURE.  But, I don’t wanna share! Fine... I put all of this into the chart above as we move forward to keep track. 

Next to the Queen of Spades. Her chest has an interesting patter of dots, which make me think of a macrame code that I came across but can’t for the life of me remember the name of. While that bothers me, we do the outer rim of the card: FACE TO FACE MEN OF ALL TRADES  - A SHARED SECRET BETWEEN HEART AND SPADE

The knots are still bothering me. I know I’ve seen this before. Somewhere. A quick google reveals Quipu - Incan coded knots for record keeping. After I yell that at deafening volume, possibly damaging my companion’s ears permanently, I dive in.  And hit a wall. 1, 100, 1 meh. There’s something I’m missing.

Meanwhile, my puzzling companion has taken on the chest of the Queen of Hearts, using the same code that we found earlier. THE BARD IS A KING TO ME. Hmmmm, who called Shakespeare a king? 

Giving the Quipu up for a bit, I take on the chest of the Jack of Spades: YUILEUPW - UTLORIAHU

Yep, that’s gibberish. But, maybe if I intertwine them like the edge? YUUTIL... nope... and no way to get it that isn’t two U in a row... drawing board again. Thankfully, my puzzling companion remembered what we had just solved  - a shared secret between heart and spade. The Jack of Hearts is: OWLBORAN - NIYUFNLOR. Interweaving those gives: YOU WILL BE OUR PAWN - UNTIL YOUR FINAL HOUR

Steal our treasure, call us pawns, I’m not liking these folks. Next to the Edge of the Jack of Hearts: MY FINE LADY THE GOOD QUEEN BESS - AS BEAUTIFUL AS SHE IS POWERFUL. Good Queen Bess was better known as Queen Elizabeth the 1st (1533-1603), which is well before the other three names we’ve come across so far. 

Back to the Queen of Spades, I’ve been overthinking this: 13-1-4-1-13-5: MADAME 4-5-6-9-3-9-20 DEFICIT: MADAME DEFICIT. Turns out that that was a name for Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), due to her rather extravagant habits (or at least their rumors). 

That gives us 5 names - three before us and two after us. If they are in purely chronological order, we get:

• Queen Elizabeth I: 1533-1603
• Abigail Adams: 1744-1818
• John Paul Jones: 1747-1792
• Madame Le Brun: 1755-1842
• Marie Antoinette: 1755-1793

A quick check of the website confirms that we’ve got the names in order. Thank you! One question answered! 

Staring at the numbers around the Queen of Hearts only gives me a headache. I decide to work on the Woman Joker, using the Alphabet code we’ve found. The edge reads: FOR EACH FAVOR THERE IS A PRICE - THE EQUATION IS QUITE CONCISE. Across the chest, we get: 

EVEN                                             FOUR

THGUOS                                       THGUOB

QUEENS                                        THINGS

ERA                                                EBNAC

Once we interlace them, we get: FOUR THINGS ARE SOUGHT - EVEN QUEENS CAN BE BOUGHT

While I was staring at that, my puzzling companion made a discovery that had me both angry and bemused. The King of Clubs’ chest is not another pattern, it’s merely telling us that the script is Angel script - which I found by accident. Still haven’t found a nice date stamp, either. Harumph. 

That leaves us with four remaining puzzles: the edge on the Queen of Hearts, the chest of the Jack of Clubs, and both the edge and the center of the male Joker. 

We decide to take a break for the day - Progress!

Carte Rouge - Day Three

It’s been a busy couple of weeks - foster kittens, coronavirus, trying to ‘reopen’ at work. Sooooo much going on. But it was nice to sit down, virtually, with my puzzling pal and take another crack at the puzzles of The Enigma Emporium’s Carte Rouge. The kittens offered to help, but I’m afraid they were easily distracted. Nor do they know any runic languages.

Thankfully, however, I’d stumbled across one of the scripts on the cards while looking for something else entirely - if anyone knows where I can find a self-inking rotary date stamp with pretty calligraphic fonts, please let me know. The script that I came across is called Enochian, and in the cards, it can be found on:

• Jokers - intermixed
• King of Clubs - border
• Jack of Clubs - border

We started with the King of clubs - it turns out to be counterclockwise: THE TSAR HAS BEEN ADDRESSED - THE THRONE CAN BE REPOSSESSED

Then, the Jack of Clubs reads: BEST TO ACCEPT AND ASCEND - EACH OFFER CONCEALS AN END

We work on the Jack’s chest. Starting with the alphabet: N A E V K A Y E L K R E T I Y I A. (Assuming left to right orientation, not up-down)

Following the directions on the King’s chest: A N G V K N Y G S K R G T I Y I N

From the numbers side: I K D F L P J S R B N C G M E H A O Q. Again, assuming left-right, A=1. Following the flip side directions, we get: R K D F L T J C I B N S G M E H A O Q

Gobbledygook. 

Let’s try instead from top to bottom: (A=1)

I F S C K L R G D P B M H J N E A Q O. Other side: 

N E A K V Y R A K E E I A L T Y A I 

If we interweave them, we get: INFESACKKVLY....  Still gobbledygook. We have a look at the runes on the spades, but honestly my brain is fried - it’s been a long week and it’s only Tuesday. Time for kittens. Always time for kittens 

Carte Rouge - Day Two

When last we left off our delve into Carte Rouge, we had come to the terrible realization that the sneaky creators had used a unique variant of Pigpen/Napoleonic cipher. The three face cards of diamonds all have different messages around their borders. We split them up - I take the Queen, he takes the King, and we begin work. It doesn’t seem like a message, starting from the silver letter.

Queen: HERBOEORBOBO...
And then we tried the chests first, as those also have text:

King: WE HAVE ONLY ONE GOAL WE DESIRE TOTAL UTTER CONTROL
Queen: THE FIRST SECOND LADY - THE SECOND FIRST LADY
Jack: A REVOLUTION YOU WANT TO WIN - WE CAN TELL YOU HOW TO BEGIN

Hmmm. Ok. The first Second Lady was Abigail Adams, who was also the second First Lady. She was known, some times, as Mrs. President.

While I went down that rabbit hole, my compatriot figured out how to read the edges. Much like the last message, the messages themselves were interwoven. Time for a spreadsheet!

THE CARDS BELONGED TO THREE BEFORE

BEYOND YOU THEY MUST GO TO TWO MORE

IF YOU HAVE BEEN PAYING CLOSE ATTENTION

THEN YOU CAN LIKELY GUESS OUR INTENTION

WHEN YOUR WORK IS FINALY DONE

PASS THE CARDS TO MADAME LEBRUN

Madame Le Brun was a French portrait painter. The last card referenced John Paul Jones - the first US Naval Commander. Something tells me at some point we will have to put them in order.

Abigail Adams: 1744-1818

John Paul Jones: 1747-1792

Madame Le Brun: 1755-1842

We poke around for a while at a loss of where to go next, then my companion notices that the Jack of Spades follows a pattern similar to the King of Hearts. We get:

YOUR NATION IS IN TURMOIL

THERE IS A REBELLION YOU MUST FOIL

Still nothing on the interior meaning is of the Jack’s chest, which references other cards.

Poking around we see that I missed the message on the queen of clubs’ chest.

THERE IS ONE THING WE YEARN TO EARN

YOU MUST HELP YOUR PEOPLE LEARN

We realized, belatedly, that the key to unscramble that was on the Jack of Clubs - he appears to be holding a standard of some sort, in the order of the colors that I just brute forced

And that was a solid two hours’ work on these cards. Still so many to go! I love it :)
Many thanks to The Enigma Emporium, and my puzzling companion, as well as my cat and three foster kittens, for a lovely evening. We think the King of Clubs may hold the key for the Jack of Clubs’ chest, but we are le tired and it is time to sleep.

Carte Rouge - First Steps

The Enigma Emporium creates not only wonderful postcard mysteries like Wish You Were Here, they also make lovely standalone puzzles - I suggest checking out their instagram or facebook feed. They also produce a thoroughly new-to-me type of puzzle in the form of an encrypted card deck, by the name of Carte Rouge. 

My friend and I both got decks, but he got his faster, so I will have to content myself with images until mine arrives, much has he has had to do with the postcards, so all's fair I guess. Harumph.

The cards at first glance are a standard deck, 52 in all, the 4 standard suits. The back of each is the same (no 'marked' cards here!), with a border of roman numerals that we expect to be a simple A=01 (or I) substitution, but we don't dive in just yet. The face cards are all highly decorated, many with what look to be a variety of ciphers. I see runes, pictograms, cards suits, pigpen, and probably a variety of others that I'm missing at first glance. There are also 10 number cards with calligraphic letters in their centers, but they are not the only ones referenced on the face cards. 

The cards are prefaced with a spare card, a note from someone who has been watching our puzzling progress - so glad someone is reading this blog! Her name is Lisa Drygg, and she is purportedly the Director of Operations for Infiniti Institutes, and based out of Seattle. We get the institute's address from the email she gives us to contact her assistant, Cori Tanem, who is listed as the Inter-Organization Operative, based in Austin TX. I look closely at the names and locations - this is Ouroboros! The locations of each of their operatives matches those of the agents of Ouroboros in the Wish You Were Here universe. Hats off to Enigma Emporium for building a great world. 

We decide that the back is probably the place to start - I have my companion read me the roman numerals while I swap them for A=01. We luckily started at the correct corner: 

If these cards g(h)ave come to you then we are quite sure you know what to do. 

Hmmmm, some clearer instructions might have been helpful! However, I think I recognize the world image from a place on the Infiniti Institutes website - a 'where we work' type of page. I start to poke around the Europe page, and get distracted by the Crossword Codenames section, which doesn't seem to be all English letters... 

A digression for another time, as my companion notices that the King cards are all in Pigpen (also known as Freemason or Napoleonic), and have at their heart a key to decoding Pigpen if needed. 

I stick a pin in that, as I'm back on the website poking around. There's a reference to a deck of cards...

The deck of cards you currently hold is truly a wondrous curio. We believe that it was used previously for intra-organization communication of some variety, but have yet to decipher the nuance of who, where, or when. That task is yours.

The first clue we must unravel is who was the first to receive this artifact. To the Kings!! 

Given the pattern on the back of the cards, we expect that we will have to start with the hearts, then clubs, diamonds, and spades. However, the King of hearts doesn't have Pigpen around his border, instead there is interwoven language in red and black. I start with black:

Black: My Dear Queen It Is A Pleasure to know you. 

Red: Our love is poetry like Venus and Adonis 

We had thought to stop there, and go play ESO, but no, the patch remained broken, Greymoor far from us, so my puzzling partner took up the mantle of transcribing the Pigpen, starting with the King of Diamonds, and I looked around for a suitable passtime. I found the Queen of Clubs... She has around her several sets of what appear to be gibberish, but to me looked like they would make sense if stacked. So, I made an Excel sheet (any poor reader of this blog will be anything but surprised:)). Using the pattern on the back of the cards - hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades, I stacked them accordingly, then read up and down, left to right.

Hearts	O	Y	O	A	S	W	S	E	D	J	P	J	S
CLUBS	N	O	W	T	K	N	S	C	S	O	A	O
DIAMONDS	C	U	N	E	N	P	T	A	T	H	U	N
SPADES	E	R	F	I	O	A	H	R	O	N	L	E

Once Your Own Fate Is Known, Pass The Cards To John Paul Jones

Who is this John Paul Jones and why am I giving him my cards? Meanwhile, my puzzling partner has determined that it is NOT a standard Pigpen grid, and it is, instead, a dastardly variant. He set immediately to work putting together the composite. Smart! Also, evil on the part of the creators of this deck, whatever mysterious organization they may, or may not, belong to. 

And then, finally, ESO was up and Greymoor awaited. Time for more puzzles another day - have to draw them out! 

Maze of Games - Chapter 2 - Puzzle 2 - Three of Clubs

The proper second puzzle (disregarding my trip down to the 8 of clubs), is the 3 of clubs, and it deals with maps and pictures, and again the sort of puzzle that I feel the need to make an excel sheet for. Our siblings find themselves with a set of shields and a map. Using the heraldry, based on rules regarding each country's neighbors, the goal is to properly identify the location of each country on the map, and specifically the needed heraldry for a blank shield. Not being a particularly visual person, I needed a spreadsheet. 

	Upper Left - own	upper right - nation to left	nation to right - lower left	nation in front - lower right
Werboxia	W- Keys	Z - eagle	F - anchor	V - Tree
Jyuncia	J - Cross	G - Star	Z - Eagle	V - Tree
Vatria	V - Tree	G - Star	J - Cross	W - Keys
Zakophia	Z - Eagle	J - Cross	F - anchor	W - Keys
Gondalia	G - Star	F - Anchor	J - Cross	V - Tree
Frusq	F - Anchor	?	?	? - W - Keys

There, that helps. The first thing you can notice is that there are only two countries that are in any of the lower right quadrants - Vatria and Werboxia. Which means that those two countries form the center of the 'island', which is what I'm calling the map. We don't know which side is which, yet, but we can bank on that. Also, because of the way it's set up, we can know that Frusq is across from Werboxia, because that makes it equitable - we can fill that part in on the sheild/table. So, we now look at where that means things are on the island. 

Postion	Possible Countries	Impossible Countries
Top Left	Frusq, Jymuncia, Zakophia, Gondalia	Werboxia and Vatria
Center Left	Werboxia and Vatria	Frusq, Jymuncia, Zakophia, Gondalia
Bottom Left	Frusq, Jymuncia, Zakophia, Gondalia	Werboxia and Vatria
Top Right	Frusq, Jymuncia, Zakophia, Gondalia	Frusq (from the text), Werboxia and Vatria
Center Right	Werboxia and Vatria	Frusq, Jymuncia, Zakophia, Gondalia
Bottom Right	Frusq, Jymuncia, Zakophia, Gondalia	Werboxia and Vatria

So, we know Frusq has to be across from Werboxia, and that it cannot be on the top right corner. Then we look at the other placements. Looking at Werboxia first, we see that Frusq is to its 'lower right'. Presumably that means that we turn the map on its side, to the left or right. That would place Frusq only in either the northeast/top right, where we know it can't be, if Werboxia is on the right, or the southwest/bottom left, if Werboxia is on the left. Given that one is impossible, we find that Frusq is in the bottom left corner and Werboxia is center left. This also means that we know that Vatria is center right. We still need the other placements, but that definitely helps. Now we have:

Postion	Possible Countries	Impossible Countries
Top Left	Jymuncia, Zakophia, Gondalia	Werboxia and Vatria, Frusq
Center Left	Werboxia	Frusq, Jymuncia, Zakophia, Gondalia, Vatria
Bottom Left	Frusq	Werboxia and Vatria, , Jymuncia, Zakophia, Gondalia
Top Right	Jymuncia, Zakophia, Gondalia	Frusq (from the text), Werboxia and Vatria
Center Right	Vatria	Frusq, Jymuncia, Zakophia, Gondalia, Werboxia
Bottom Right	Jymuncia, Zakophia, Gondalia	Werboxia and Vatria

But, we also know now which sides face each other, and can at least place 'teams' on a side. If Vatria is right, that means Jymuncia and Gondalia must also be on the right. If Werboxia is on the left, that means Frusq and Zakophia must be on the left, and, because we already know where Frusq is, Zakophia must be in the top left. 

Postion	Possible Countries	Impossible Countries
Top Left	Zakophia	Werboxia and Vatria, Frusq, Jymuncia, Gondalia
Center Left	Werboxia	Frusq, Jymuncia, Zakophia, Gondalia, Vatria
Bottom Left	Frusq	Werboxia and Vatria, , Jymuncia, Zakophia, Gondalia
Top Right	Jymuncia, Gondalia	Frusq (from the text), Werboxia and Vatria,  Zakophia,
Center Right	Vatria	Frusq, Jymuncia, Zakophia, Gondalia, Werboxia
Bottom Right	Jymuncia, Gondalia	Werboxia and Vatria,  Zakophia, Frusq

But, we still have to figure out Jymuncia and Gondalia, and for that, we can look at Vatria, which says that it has Gondalia to its left, and Jymuncia to its right, which, when we turn the map, means that Jymuncia is in the top right, and Gondalia is in the bottom right. 

Postion	Possible Countries	Impossible Countries
Top Left	Zakophia	Werboxia and Vatria, Frusq, Jymuncia, Gondalia
Center Left	Werboxia	Frusq, Jymuncia, Zakophia, Gondalia, Vatria
Bottom Left	Frusq	Werboxia and Vatria, , Jymuncia, Zakophia, Gondalia
Top Right	Jymuncia	Frusq, Werboxia, Vatria,  Zakophia, Gondalia
Center Right	Vatria	Frusq, Jymuncia, Zakophia, Gondalia, Werboxia
Bottom Right	Gondalia	Werboxia and Vatria,  Zakophia, Frusq, Jymuncia,

Then, we can fill in Frusq's own shield, which puts GONDALIA in the bottom left corner, which tells us that Gondalia is our keyword, which we then plug into the couplet.

The couplet at the end essentially tells us to shuffle Gondalia to make another word. After much staring and scribbling, we come up with DIAGONAL as our final answer, which gives us an O for the password out of this maze. 

And that, my dears, is the second puzzle in Maze of Games' second chapter, the suit of clubs. Come back next time for the Ace of Clubs, which appears to be our next destination.