Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Wish You Were Here - Card Three

This post is full of spoilers for episode three of Enigma Emporium's Wish You Were Here. You've been warned. Caveat Lector

Re: Doctor Who: Spoilers, sweetie - Beauty Insider Community

In yet another instance of my good friend enabling my delinquency, we delved tonight into the third card of Enigma Emporium's Wish You Were Here puzzle series. To date, our nefarious pen-pal has stolen Leonardo DaVinci's "Lady with an Ermine" from a traveling gallery in Rome, and gold bars from the Athenian branch of an Iranian bank. They claim, variously, to have been hired by a cult, and forced to steal against their will. Is it the same pen-pal? Is it someone with multiple personality disorder? Am I reading too much in to this? Who knows...

Today's card takes us around the globe. It was sent on March 9, 2018, a Friday this time, from somewhere in the US. The card's front is in black and white, with what looks to be the emblem of the United Nations, white on a black field. Below it reads RESPICE AD CRUCEM, three times fading into the background (Per google: Look at the Cross). The emblem is surrounded by intersecting white lines/fragments. At the top of the emblem, inside the outermost circle, are a series of numbers, possibly dates, with some individual numerals in red rather than white. 20/09/60, 21/09/71, 12/12/58, 25/09/81. A quick check of the numbers in red reveals that they're not a simple A=01 cipher, but we continue.

On the back side of the card, we find a hodgepodge of clues. There are 11 stamps of the flags of different countries, each with a number at its bottom right corner. Tucked behind the flag stamps is what looks to be a small Polaroid of Asian people in a street - the majority of the picture is lightly grayed out, except for a circle around the head and shoulders of a young man in a track suit with a messenger bag, looking down. Below the picture, on the tag of the Polaroid, is a series of black squares in a grid, three high. Behind all of these things, and covered by both stamps and Polaroid, is what looks to be a long enciphered message.

We started with the dates, thinking perhaps they would be accession dates of member states.

  • 20/09/60 - 14 countries ratified the UN Charter on September 20, 1960. In alphabetical order, the 9th, designated by the red number 09 is the Democratic Republic of Congo.  
  • 21/09/71 - AND, this is where we hit a snag - only 3 countries ratified on that date, and the red number would be 7. Back to the drawing board. 
We then bounced to the stamps. First, we looked up the countries, in order from left to right, then I guessed it would be the # letter in their name:
  • Brazil (3) - A
  • Pakistan (5) - S
  • Kosovo (3) - S
  • Uganda (3) - A
  • Sri Lanka (1) - S
  • Tunisia (5) - S
  • Ethiopia (4) - I
  • Spain (5) - N
  • Saint Lucia (2) - A
  • Turkey (1) - T
  • Brunei (5) - E
Assassinate. What a cheerful message. At least we're getting somewhere. I'm guessing we're going after the guy in the picture?

Speaking of, let's look at the boxes under the picture. What else is three boxes high? BRAILLE! Going for the straight code, we get ROGUE AGENT. So, our perfidious pen-pal is now assassinating a rogue agent - but for what government!? And WHERE?! We were so happy to move forward!

We looked again at the dates: 20/09/60, 21/09/71, 12/12/58, 25/09/81. This time, we tried looking at the number of countries that ratified the charter on those dates: 14, 3, 1, and 1, respectively. A wild goose chase then ensued as we realized that if A=01, that spells NCAA, or the National Collegiate Athletic Association. There is not, however, a division 09. There is a video game NCAA 09, but we figured we were off track. Again.

20/09/60, 21/09/71, 12/12/58, 25/09/81. While my partner in crime-solving continued poking at the numbers, I tried some simple Caesar cipher decodes on the text behind the picture and stamps. Nada. For a brief few happy seconds, I managed to make the first two sets of four letters say 'the key' but I think that was apophenia more than anything else. Randomly, #097125 is a hex code for a very serviceable green. 97125 is the zip code for Manning, Oregon, but the 0 is highlighted so it must be important. Simply typing in 09 7 12 5 into google leads us to 9°00'00.0"N 7°12'05.0"E, which is in Abuja, Nigeria. Maybe s/he's there? New hunch: the UN is headquartered in New York City. Did anything happen there on those dates? Outside of UN accessions, that is. No.

Ok, we broke down at this point and got a hint. We were on the right track with the original thought that each of the dates was related to the accession of a country. Here is who acceded to the UN on those dates (thank you Wikipedia):


We were stuck. Again. And needed another hint. Thankfully, Enigma Emporium has hints. The trick, apparently, is that you first find the country in each accession group that has six letters in its name, and the highlighted numbers give you the letter places in that country's name. This pen-pal is brilliantly insane. I ❤ them

  • 20/09/60: CYPRUS
  • 21/09/71: BHUTAN
  • 12/12/58: GUINEA 
  • 25/09/81: BELIZE
So, our criminal of all trades is assassinating a rogue agent in Prague. There's usually a message, though. Where is it?! We were stuck once again, trying to link the 'Look at the Cross'. Again, we had to look for a hint. This is where it would have been reallllly handy to have the physical copy of the postcard. What you need to do is basically poke a hole where the crosses are and see what letter you hit on the other side. But, how do you do that with a pdf?? You use photoshop! Or, if you're like me and not willing to pay an arm and a leg for a toy I'd only use occasionally, you use a combination of MS Paint and ipiccy.com. Make jpgs of both, drop flip and reverse the front and overlay it on top of the other image in ipiccy, with a significant fade. Then, read from top to bottom, then over: THEY HAVE MY WIFE. 

So, we know that for this crime, they are going to assassinate a rogue agent in Prague because a mysterious 'they' (the cult?) has their wife. I remain unsure if this is one or several criminals, who have been alternately hired by a cult, forced to commit crimes, or been leveraged into doing so. It's quite a varied skill set - art thief, bank robber, and assassin. Or so I would expect.  

Thus ends episode three of Wish You Were Here by Enigma Emporium. Unlike the first two, it was hard enough that it stumped us - twice! I do think that with the physical cards - coming soon by mail I hope! - we would have gotten the cross message, but the spatial reasoning to get the country names? I'm not so sure - even with two of the dates only having one country in them. So, card three was frustrating at times, but still fun, and good for a couple hours of fun at least. I definitely recommend this for anyone who loves puzzles, though I hope you read this only AFTER you've finished the puzzles. 

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