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. 

Maze of Games - Chapter Two - Puzzle 1 - 4 of Clubs

After discovering that I had gone down the wrong path first, I took the clockwise option, which led our protagonists to the 4 of clubs. Here, they met a leprechaun, one who spoke entirely in palindromes. Rather than share her treasure, presumably at the bottom of a well, she handed our sibling duo a set of puzzles. Not content with a simple Napoleonic reference (able was I ere I saw Ebla), the puzzles were all limericks, fitting with the leprechaun theme. These limericks, however, were based on Greek myths. A hearty thank you to D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths, which I grew up on, and helped me recognize what they were in the first place. At least some of them - I don't recall werewolves in D'Aulaire's.

The trick with the limericks is that each contained a palindrome, and that palindrome was missing. The key to solving them is in the surrounding text. It helps to know that a flying serpent is a dragon, or that Medusa's sisters were the Gorgons. Lycanthropes, as I mention above, are werewolves. 

I found the mechanism of the app very helpful on this one - making sure I didn't miscount. The letters at the center of the palindromes - the ones not repeated - make up our clue. In this case, AROUSE. 

This, we then plug into the puzzle at the end of the chapter - which is where I realized I'd made a wrong turn last time. The couplet tells us to add letters to the front and back to make something that turns - CarouseL. 

And that is the 4 of clubs, the first puzzle in chapter two of Maze of Games.

Maze of Games - Chapter Two - Puzzle ? - Eight of Clubs - Acts of War

In which our sibling protagonists find themselves in the next realm of the Maze of Games, the maze of clubs, which is a hedgemaze, possibly inhabited by peasants (I hope they're not revolting). We know this because our heroine gives a brief introduction to the meaning of the individual suits, which goes entirely against what I learned from that font of knowledge, Sting. 

I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier

I know that the clubs are weapons of war

I know that diamonds mean money for this art

But that's not the shape of my heart

The first step is to find the first room. The Club maze has multiple entrances and exits, and the goal, per our heroine, is to make a path that visits all cards without crossing. The left two entrances are connected in one giant loop, which doesn't go through all of the cards, so we are sent to the right. Either path on the right starts with the 8 of clubs, however, the path up loops around and dead ends in its several options, so we go to the far right option to get us started. 

The 8 brings us to a reenactment of several bits of Shakespeare by a pack of 'tragedians' rehearsing their death scenes. Those deaths form the basis of our puzzle. We match the killers with their victims - thanks for the immersion in Shakespeare, mom! - and find, based on the order from 1-14 and A-N, a word within the scramble. MALICE.

As before, we need that word, in order, to then put it into a new pattern. We are told to 'add letters on the bow and stern, to make an item quite included to turn.' OK, this makes no sense - after banging my head for a bit I confirm that MALICE is the first word. It is not. I go back and look at the map. Apparently, I should have solved that first, rather than just the first stop.

Once that is done, in order to get all of the cards, it is necessary to do the loop to the left, though it's still not clear which way I am supposed to go, clockwise or counterclockwise, before going over to the 8 of clubs. Our options are to start with the 4 or the 6. 

I start with the 4 of clubs... next time.

Enigma Emporium - Wish You Were Here II - Blowback - Postcard #5

It’s time for the last card of The Enigma Emporium’s Blowback series, sequel to Wish You Were Here. It’s a lovely night on the balcony, the cat is eating her tuna, the foster kittens are making a mess in the spare room and I have a freshly opened bottle of wine. All is right with the world. Opening the envelope and pulling out the card made me immediately think of an old Moby song, Porcelain, which is apparently not titled Goodbye, which is why it took me so long to find the bloody thing.

Why do I think of this song? Because the front of the postcard shows a sunset with the word GOODBYE layered over it. There are also some oddly grouped birds, that on first thought makes me think Braille, much as MPC did long ago, but there are lines of four, not three, also, it would be Braille on its side. More to stare at later. On the back, we have a series of groups of Xs, of differing lengths, all five wide, with red Xs in two places each time. Grid coordinates? The stamps this time, are the same image - a hawk in flight - with one numbered 5, and one numbered 1. What is a flock of hawks, if it’s a murder of crows. The date of the postcard is June 11, 2019.

I start with the stamps. A quick google says that a group of hawks is a cast, kettle, or boil. However, it may technically be an eagle. My puzzling companion’s dinner took longer than mine to arrive, so I had far too much time to poke around on Audubon trying to identify the bird. My best bet was a Golden Eagle. This was confirmed when I found the source image. One golden eagle, five golden eagles. as opposed to hawks, a group of eagles is called a CONVOCATION, AERIE, JUBILEE, SOAR, or TOWER. Possibly unrelated, but there is a Golden Eagle Tower in China, and possibly more related, there is a Golden Eagle Building on the California State campus in LA. A golden jubilee is a 50th anniversary.

We take a break from that and my eagle-eyed (see what I did there?) puzzling partner notices that there are five words per line each in the clear text messages that our pen pal has sent. We focus on the red Xs. From the top left, we start with the longest message, which comes from card 1 - welcome to England. The red Xs are PUT and OUROBOROS. The next card (Paris) has four lines - IN and THE. Next card (Scandinavia) is five lines - SUBJECT LINE. The Moon card has six lines - WHEN YOU. This final card (Goodbye) - CONTACT ME. PUT OUROBOROS IN THE SUBJECT LINE WHEN YOU CONTACT ME.

No email address, but we have a start. Unless we are to tell the FBI again? Still also stuck on the stamps - SHIPMENT CHATEAU BROADSIDE PERISCOPE (something to do with eagles, gold, or ?) I go down a rabbit hole with 8 digit Braille, which is a thing, but apparently not the thing. There is also a dot based barcode system. Nor is it Steinheil code, a pre-Morse telegraph code. We go back to 8 dot Braille, considering the inverse. No. Nor is it lined up enough to be Baudot. We gave up and got a clue. And then got annoyed. It involves the stamps. We solve the puzzle and get an email address. We put Ouroboros in the subject line, as instructed.

The next puzzle requires the answers from the previous cards. Thankfully I have everything stored on blogspot ;) Once we turned the puzzle around we had our vengeance, and could open the link to a video from our pen pal, which led us back to the tip line, and a need to learn basic sign language. :)

That was a ton of fun! Will wait a few days before diving into the next one, but I can’t wait to see more of Enigma Emporium’s puzzles - SOON!

Enigma Emporium - Wish You Were Here II - Blowback - Postcard #4

It’s a lovely Sunday afternoon here on my balcony, and it’s time for another “episode” of Enigma Emporium’s Wish You Were Here Series II - Blowback. My puzzling partner and I are on the 4th card, which I am very carefully describing without solving while my puzzling partner picks up his dinner from the delivery - I feel very smug, on my second glass of wine, having walked down to the little crepe place on the corner, now reopened, and happily fed. While COVID-19 remains a threat, I am glad that small shops that don’t have interior space - the crepe place is a kiosk with only an ordering window - are able to reopen. Unsurprisingly, I digress.

Describing without solving, I can say only that the front of the card has a close of up the moon, with lines of easily-recognized (I’m a nerd) Moon Writing on the top and bottom. There is also a phrase in Italian (?) with letters of three (at least) sizes. On the reverse, we have a series of blanks and numbers under the word SOLE, two stamps - a pear and hand brooms, and a message from our pen pal, who regrets that he hasn’t met us as he moves towards what he sees as his ultimate goal.

And that is as far as I’m going until my puzzling partner gets his food. I can be patient. It hurts, but I can do it. Especially as I have a copy of Moon Writing on an app on my phone - it’s called Sidekick, and is incredibly handy for when you want to decode something on the fly. Not that it ever has, but I have to admit that I’ve been in enough boring meetings that I considered taking notes in Pigpen for the heck of it. Fountain pens and ridiculous excessive penwomanship have to suffice. For now.

FINALLY my puzzling companion is done with his meal and we can dig in to the real meal - PUZZLES!

We start with what I assume is Italian, unfortunately neither of speak it so we have to go through Google Translate. We get the following quote, which is much cooler as an image :)

My friend, meanwhile, translates ‘pear’ and ‘broom’ and gets “pera scopa” or PERISCOPE.

We think the height of the letters of the quote may mean something, but we have to figure out what. He works on that while I work on the moon writing.

THE OUROBOROUS HAS A MOLE IN THE CIA. HE GOES BY THE CODENAME MANTICORE                                                                                                                        

That leaves us with the weird heights of the letters, and the spaces on the back (under the Italian word for SUN). We lack a name, and a location. We go to work with the ruler.

• M is 0.7 cm
• A, E, L are 0.6
• R, C, U, D, are 0.5
• S, R, E are 0.4
• Everything else is 0.2 cm          

Mars? 

Meanwhile, I realize that the spaces under the “SUN” are the length of planet names - in Italian. Because of course. Poor Pluto gets ignored. 

• Mercurio
• Venere
• Terra
• Marte
• Giove
• Saturno
• Urano
• Nettuno

Using the numbers in order, I get AUSTIN. So, our penpal is in Austin, thinking about a periscope, and telling us about Manticore, a mole in the CIA. But what is his bloody name?! We go back to staring at the letter heights. More wine is needed, and I’ve munched my way through the last of the little almond cookies. It’s a beautiful evening on my balcony, birds are swooping in the sunset, and I’m banging my head on letter heights. GRRRR. Worse when I suspect the font is Times New Roman? Related to the planets? Caesar cipher? Mod the letters? Subtraction gets us FOMX? Nope. My brain keeps wanting it to be Marc something, but then how does the measurement come in? A search to see whether Galileo used codes turns up that Galileo is also the name of travel booking software, but that hasn’t been the type of code this time, unlike finding the Iranian bank in the last series. We cave, and look for a clue - we are told to go by lines. 

In height order, we get: MARCUS ELDER. We bang our heads. My wine is now gone. Sono fuori vino.

So, our pen pal is in Austin, going by the name of Marcus Elder. There’s a mole in the CIA, and he’s thinking about a periscope, another nautical reference to go with broadside, but how does it go with shipment and chateau? Per my puzzling companion: a houseboat? 

And that, my friends, is postcard #4 of Enigma Emporium’s Wish You Were Here Series II - Blowback. 

Enigma Emporium - Blowback - Wish You Were Here II - Card 3

My puzzling companion and I have been exhausted these past few days, so doing puzzling in the evenings hasn’t been working out. Instead, we carved out our lunch break to delve into the third card of Enigma Emporium’s sequel to Wish You Were Here, Blowback.

The third card front has six Scandinavian researches, under the Swedish (or maybe Norwegian?) phrase: Famous Researches of Scandinavia (huzzah for a study abroad to Sveriges landsbruck universitat!). They are Solander, Nobel, Meitner, Kreyberg, Celsius, Arrhenius.

On the reverse, we have a series of six boxes connected by numbered lines on the left - we expect this has something to do with their discoveries, possibly in Swedish given the last post card. On the right, we have a short message from our pen pal, regarding “cooking” revenge, which sounds odd, two stamps - bread and a book? - and a coded message made up of numbers.

We begin by looking at the stamps, trying the same approach as the last, and run them through Scandinavian languages, finding more logic in Norwegian than Swedish, to my disappointment. Bread-page in Norwegian becomes brød-side. BROADSIDE? As in an attack? Not impossible. Will stick with that.

Then we progress to the scientists:

• Daniel Solander - Swedish Naturalist
• Alfred Nobel - Swedish Chemist
• Lise Meitner - Swedish-Austrian Physicist
• Liev Kreyberg - Norwegian Pathologist
• Anders Celsius - Swedish Astronomer
• Svante Arrhenius - Swedish Physicist/Chemist

Moving through, we determined that the boxes may be related to the names of the scientists, in order left to right then top then bottom. Doing that, we find the following words if we connect the lines drawn between the boxes. ALLEN MARK DAVIS. Presumably that is what our pen pal goes by in DALLAS, which we get from the first letter of each scientist’s first name. 

Three puzzles down, but the last message is a doozy (and we’re still not sure about Broadside). The message is to D.T. from A.C. A.C. Of all of them could be Anders Celsius, whose most famous work is the Centigrade/Celsius temperature scale. Maybe these reference a book? Thankfully, before I go down a rabbit hole, my puzzling friend proves better at reading text - it’s to D.F. - or Daniel Fahrenheit - German physicist. We expect that we need to convert the temperatures from Fahrenheit to Celsius, then run a standard number to letter cipher (thank you, dCode). We split up the work - my partner ran the temperature conversion while I plugged it into the letter to number - thankfully it was a simple A=01, not a second encoding with temperature or something as a keyword for a Vigenere cipher, though I would hope we would have figured that out eventually. So, the last tidbit that we learn from our pen pal, Allen Mark Davis, currently of Dallas, is that: 

THEIR CHIEF OF EUROPEAN OPERATIONS IS KNOWN AS LEVIATHAN

Thank you, Enigma Emporium and my wonderful puzzling pal for the best lunch break in a long time. 

Enigma Emporium - Wish You Were Here II - Blowback Card 2

It was a lovely Monday evening for puzzling, and with dinner in a tray on my balcony, I called my puzzling partner to begin our evening’s adventure, diving into the second card in Enigma Emporium’s Wish You Were Here II series - Blowback.

We actually started solving it before we started solving it, as when I was sending him images of the card, we recognized one of the puzzles on the back. We’ve both lived overseas, so we were joyfully oohing over the languages we recognized. But, I get ahead of ourselves.

The second card is sent to us from Paris, “City of Colors” (hint, hint), with a picture of La Tour d’Eiffel and some colored balloons on the front. On the back, and where we immediately got excited, there are a series of numbers in different languages - we recognized French, Indonesian (ok, fine, Javanese!), German, and Turkish right off the bat. I had to insist on a break to write this much before we dove in. In addition there are two stamps - a black cat and water droplets (?) - and some sort of encoded (Caesar?) message, probably written backwards due to the placement of the apostrophes. We also have a plaintext message from our pen pal, claiming, apparently, that Paris was his original home. We decide that the balloons, paired in 3 and 5, are probably his name in this place.

• Tri - Welsh - 3
• Kahdeksan - Finnish - 8
• Seitseman - Finnish - 7 
• Viisi - Finnish - 5
• San - Chinese - 3
• Seitseman - Finnish - 7
• Yksi - Finnish - 1
• Chwech - Welsh - 6
• Trois - French - 3
• Seitseman - Finnish - 7 
• Deux- French - 2
• Quatre - French - 4
• Oans
• Zwei - German - 2
• San - Chinese - 3 
• Trois - French - 3
• Fumpfe -   
• Pegik - Algonquin - 1
• Oans
• Un - French - 1
• Tiga - Javanese - 3
• Yawthawn - Arapaho - 5
• Iki - Turkish - 2
• Deux - French - 2
• Eins- German - 1
• Pegik - Algonquin - 1
• setunggal - Javanese - 1
• Neli - Estonian - 4
• Eins - German - 1
• Fumpfe - Bad German - 5
• Oans -
• Etiri - (Tamil - Enemy)
• Pegik - Algonquin - 1
• Eins - German - 1
• Vier - German - 4
• Chwech - Welsh - 6
• Kaks - Finnish - 2
• Pegik - Algonquin - 1
• Setunggal - Javanese - 1
• Dort - Turkish - 4
• Yawthawn - Arapaho - 5
• Deux - French - 2
• Kolme - Finnish - 3
• Laba
• Setunggal - Javanese - 1 
• Dort - Turkish - 4
• Quatre - French - 4
• Viisi - Finnish - 5
• Seitseman - Finnish - 7 
• Eins - German - 1

So, it turns out that while I was translating languages, my pal was working on the Caesar cipher. It was not, in fact, backwards, but it was also not in English. It was, per the theme, in French. In a different Rot each time.  Thankfully, I speak French. 

The woman who first recruited me was an agent who called herself “unicorn”. 

The numbers took for freaking ever to find, and we honestly couldn’t find them all. So, we made do with the following:

3, 8, 7, 5, 3, 7, 1, 6, 3, 7, 2, 4, ? Oans, 2, 3, 3, ? Fumpfe, 1, ?Oans, 1, 3, 5, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 4, 1, ?Fumpfe, ?Oans,?Etiri, 1, 1, 4, 6, 2,1, 1,4,4, 5, 2,3, ?Laba, 1, 4, 4, 5,7, 1

We hit a wall. We looked for a clue. Then we banged our heads into a wall. We were almost there! 

I AM IN MY HOME TOWN OF POUGHKEEPSIE FOR PERHAPS THE LAST TIME 

Still not sure what language Laba, Fumpfe, and Oans are in, but we made educated guesses. 

Returning to the balloons, we were also stuck. A hint here sends us to French again: JON BJORN. My partner had actually solved it, but got stuck on black vs. grey. Le sigh. 

So, we know that our mystery man is in Poughkeepsie, where he was originally recruited by a female agent by the code name of Unicorn, going by the name of Jon Bjorn. 

The stamps make no sense until I look again at the hint. French. Le sigh again. Chat Eau - CHATEAU. Not sure that there’s a chateau in Poughkeepsie 

This one was a lot harder than the last one, and felt a bit more like work than the last. Also, possibly because of the way that we split the puzzles up - I took the brute force find every number while my puzzling partner, who doesn’t speak French, worked on the things that actually needed French. Le sigh. But, we still did it! And we’ll look forward to the next one in a couple days. My brain needs some time to recover. So I will take a nap, and then fire ze missiles! 

Enigma Emporium - Blowback - Wish You Were Here Part II - Postcard 1

I loved Enigma Emporium’s first Wish You Were Here series (with the possible exception of the fourth card which didn’t feel as meaty as the others), and was super excited when the full set of all the Wish You Were Here postcards finally arrived. I was exhausted when they arrived Friday evening, but Saturday came and after a nice long nap and an attempt at a homemade cafe mocha, it was time to delve in to season two of Wish You Were Here (WYWH) - Blowback. I called my puzzling partner, and we dug in.

Our first card seems to have come from London - letters each have a location in them (bet we have to figure out what they are, and a red telephone box, whose signature panes might have a code. On the reverse, we have a series of coordinates, possibly of metro stops?, two stamps, and a message from our erstwhile pen pal. It seems he has turned on his captors/tormentors the mysterious Ouroboros, to bring them to justice to protect his family. He tells us that his name and location will change, and that he’ll have a similar goal each time. Guess we’ll have to help :)

The stamps, cancelled June 3, 2019, show a ship, and mint leaves. SHIPMENT?

Next we looked at the pictures in the letters of ENGLAND:

• E - Stonehenge
• N - Eden Project 
• G - Angel of the North
• L - Tower Bridge
• A - Tower Bridge
• N - Lloyds  (the hardest one for us to recognize, huzzah for travel blogs and reverse image search)
• D - Eden Project, Cornwall

So, we are going to SEATTLE, to do something with a SHIPMENT.

We turn now, so the series of coordinates on the reverse. We again think they will be for London metro stops, with the underlying UNDERGROUND image, and that we will have to do something similar to the country accession puzzle, as some of the numbers are highlighted. We set to work.

We were right, unsurprising given the clues, that all of the grid locations were London undersground stops (we’ve increased our perception!). However, we hit a snag almost immediately, in that the number of letters in each station name didn’t match the number of digits given for each Station, even with a bit of fudging.

1. Tottenham Hale
2. Theyden Bois 
3. Becontree
4. Seven Sisters
5. East Finchley
6. Eastcote 
7. Clapham Common
8. Ealing Broadway
9. Dagenham East
10. Rayners Lane
11. Grange Hill
12. Edgware Road (Bakerloo line)
13. East Putney
14. Hillingdon (formerly Middlesex)

What if, once we look at all of the stations, we have to shuffle them based on length to identify the right letters? No, too complicated. My partner pointed out that was overthinking. Instead, what if we took the Xth letters and picked them out, in the order that they are highlighted.

1. TottenHam Hale - TH 
2. ThEyden Bois - E
3. BecOntree - BO
4. Seven SiSters - SS
5. East FInchley - I
6. EaStcote - S
7. CLApham Common - CAL
8. EaLing Broadway - LE
9. Dagenham East - D
10. RaYners Lane - Y
11. GranGe Hill - GG
12. EDgware Road (Bakerloo line) - DR
13. EASt Putney - AS
14. HilLIngdon (formerly Middlesex) - IL

The boss is called Yggdrasil. The world tree. I admit to being convinced we’d gotten the last few out of order, but getting to the end it made sense. If any of this actually makes sense.

Following the normal course of these postcards, there is one more puzzle to solve. We find it in the glasses of the phone box - Braille. Using the handy included code bookmark (thanks Enigma Emporium!) we read - TIMCOX

So, we are going next to Seattle for a shipment, where our pen pal goes by the name of Tim Cox. The boss of Ourobouros is called Yggdrasil, and we have completed Postcard One of WYWH II - Blowback. Hooray! 

Thank you Enigma Emporium for the fun evening! I encourage anyone reading this to check them out - support a small business and entertain yourselves for hours at the same time :) #shopsmall

Cryptex Hunt - Chapter Four - Power Leveling

We didn't get very far into ESO tonight before we decided time was better spent puzzling, so we dove back in to Cryptex Hunt 2020, Chapter Four, in which our heroine, Paige Park, completely fails to notice that she is being power-leveled by another gamer, despite her ridiculously high MIND skill. That MIND skill also fails to convince her that it is a terrible idea to not put points into MAGIC in a world where magic exists. This is one of those Wisdom vs. Intelligence conversations. #dnd

The fourth's like the third. See what doesn't unfold. 

I digress (unsurprising). The lines at the top suggest that this is a similar task to those in the prior chapter, where we found letters shaped like other letters in the text. This time, we are given the shape, and the letters to find, but have to figure out something else from them. My bet is that we get a message from the words that the shapes are found in. But, let's see.

The first shape to be found is on page 71, where we are to find NAHRT, SOSSU, and HESSE, possibly in the shape of a V. Page 73 says to find OTODE (not to be confused with the Itade rune in ESO), and 74 BELSH. On 75 we find TOOTRI, HENADO. 77 sends us to OSYGE and 78 TEREE. 80 finds OTUK (valley), TYONIL (mountain), DHEOS (traveling), HALT (traveling), AHSTA and TERE.

Thankfully my puzzling friend is better at seeing those than I am. Unfortunately, the first one he finds also destroys my hunch. DHEOS goes through: looked her she cloth was. Not a message I'm familiar with, though it is in a bit of an 'I' shape. So are the others on the page, though.

We start, conversely, from the end. The context of the message itself could be useful, it talks of maps, and DHEOS is someone traveling east to meet AHSTA. So, when I look to the left of DHEOS, AHSTA is right there. Still, no message. Unless I try to add a line to make H? We decide to find all the letters/words before our next move. When we are done, it looks like three pairs of words, vertical lines. When connected it could be an E. We go looking for the rest.

• 71. These three are three parallel lines in the first long paragraph. However, if we start at the valley of Sossu and add upward lines to the mountains, we get an M.
• 73 & 74. Two more vertical lines on different pages, apparently in the same night sky. 
• 75. Three more vertical lines, possibly an L?
• 77&78 - two lines across pages. Possibly an I?
• 80 - E

Meh. Reading the directions again, we get a terrible feeling. We're going to need to fold paper, and we're doing this digitally. Bugger. We check the clues. Yup, we need paper. Or, we need to figure out how to do this digitally. Fuck. We try to improvise.

• 71 - This still would look like an M if we folded those lines
• 73&74 - This would be an I - both words are on the same side of the paper if printed.
• 75 - still maybe an L? 
• 77&78 - If printed on the same piece of paper, the words would be on opposite sides and, if curled together, would make an O. 
• 80 - this looks like multiple folds - X? 

So, we're at MI*O*. Times like these I wish I had a functioning printer, but I never seem to remember to replace the cartridge, and when I do it's the wrong one. I grab a spare piece of paper, and start folding. 75 becomes readily apparent as N, so we're at MINO*, and with all the weird folds, I'm willing to bet the last one is an R. MINOR. Input, and we win the chapter! Hip hip huzzah, and not bad for not having the actual printout. My hoarding of scrap paper to the rescue. A good challenge, thank you Cryptex Hunt 2020! 

Cryptex Hunt - Chapter Three

Success! My puzzling pal admitted that the second chapter puzzle of Cryptex Hunt hadn’t been enough for a full meal, so we agreed to do another one after he had a chance to eat dinner. This is good, and possibly saved our friendship, as I was already reading chapter three while I wheedled and probably would have gone bonkers trying to wait to solve it for another day.

In Chapter Three, Paige Parks joins a guild, almost gets kidnapped, and disappears through a door newly created in a parking garage. Because, of course. The Book keeps her one step ahead of everything though, so she’s prepared.

The puzzle at the end reads: wOrd hunt Seek each word Find passcode. To the right are a series of circled numbers (like page numbers...) and a number. I expect the O is deliberate - I checked and it’s not in the errata. It does say spelling mistakes aren’t puzzles. Is it a spelling mistake?

Being horribly impatient I try the same combo as last time: Page, word number.

• 49-5: TOO
• 51-5: THEY
• 54-7: A
• 56-11: BY
• 60-25: ABOUT

Hmmm, not happening. What does the capital O symbolize? The second pair of lines at the beginning reads “The Third’s Instructions Also Contain Your Goals”. Not as helpful as the prior two, for now. 

So, what about page, character (page 49, 5th letter)?

• 49-5: T
• 51-5: T
• 54-7: I
• 56-11: I
• 60-25: R

Also no. Time to look at the broader picture. The image of the door is one of a standard word search, with words vertical and diagonal. But, there is no grid, and I can’t make my brain make one. I looked for micro printing in the Os. Nope.

What if it’s that # from the end instead? (Page 49, 5th word from end)

• 49-5: Human
• 51-5: Line
• 54-7: Be
• 56-11: And
• 60-25: Meet

Still no. Page and line, first word?

• 49-5: So
• 51-5: Stats
• 54-7: The
• 56-11: By
• 60-25: Kats

Page and line, Xth word? A hard leap I know, as that would be 25 words on a line. Nope

• 49-5: To
• 51-5: View
• 54-7: Man
• 56-11: (None)
• 60-25: (None)

Other rabbit holes filled in: There are not enough words starting with O on each of the pages to make it the xth O word. Is there an O word on every xth line? Nope.

We gave up and looked at the hints. They were unhelpful, making us go back and stare at where we were working, we were on the right trail, and then... Ugh. It is possible, on a VERY generous eyeblurring to find the words wOrd search, seek, etc. in the text, starting with the lines in question. And then we realized that the shapes of the words were telling us something

• 49-5: wOrd hunt - V shaped
• 51-5: seek - I shaped
• 54-7: each word - V shaped
• 56-11: find - Is 
• 60-25: pass code - D shaped

Vivid. 

The last one took a while, but does explain the crappy kerning visible in co de. 

Per my puzzling partner, it was frustrating but more satisfying than the last one. I agree. Time for a brain break. Good hunting all :) 

Cryptex Hunt - Chapter Two - The First Portal

I’ve been lax writing up my puzzling of late. I’m ‘suffering’ from the same feeling I suspect many are at this point - existential ennui, of the COVID-19 variety. The puzzling continues, though, and trying to crack whatever ciphers the games choose to throw at me, along with my puzzling pal, is what is keeping me this side of sane. No, I will not specify which side that is. Cheeky.

Thus, I was quite happy when, having run a couple of dungeons in ESO, my friend and I decided to take a break from the raining fire from the sky and stealing everything that wasn’t bolted down to take on Cryptex Hunt Chapter Two. We agreed to meet back in half an hour to discuss.

Well, this is where we find out that I’m impatient, and a fast reader. Having finished the chapter in five minutes from the time we hung up, I immediately started plugging in ideas to the clue box as I came up with them, all while cooking a very mediocre hamburger and pouring myself a glass of beer to have on the balcony. Where I am now, about to call my friend as soon as I sort this out.

A quick update. Chapter Two has our heroine, Paige, going into her first portal, a seemingly starter dungeon from any number of rpgs. She can allocate skill points (something that I would LOVE to be able to do, IRL), finds herself chased by Bunnicula, and eventually faced with another puzzle, with the clue this time being 24 25 38. This is written on the back of the door, which has a schematic, perhaps for the dungeon? Perhaps related to the front of the door on Chapter One? Unclear. In the schematic, arrows seem to point to three boxes, big enough for 6 digits, and, if 24, 25, 38 were written there, would point to 4 5 8. My brain immediately tries an A=01, which gives DEEH. Or, heed, if looked at backwards (the front of the door). Nope. Oh, and the reason I doubled E was because the intro bit talks about “The Second Helps Locate Not Once But Two Times”.  However, as excited as I was to be able to tell my partner that I’d cracked the case before we’d even begun, heed is not the answer. (Nor is the original DEEH). I filled up my glass again and called.

Turns out he’d also been looking, and at the first thing I thought, too. Perhaps they’re page numbers. A quick check says it’s not the first words (after, and means nothing). Nor is it doubled in the sense of page 24, line 2, word four.

Then, we argued about which order the pages were in. He thinks 24 is on top, so we will start there. The top page has us taking something, which is a match of the page number, plugging it in somewhere and getting an answer. Hmm. Page 24, line 2, word 4 is THIS.

Then, we tried it a different way, page then # word.  24th page, 24th word: PASSCODE 38th page, 38th word: GROUP. Taking a wild guess, the 25th word on the 25th page is going to be ‘IS’. So: PASSCODE IS GROUP.

SUCCESS! Not bad for a couple of junior over-thinking sleuths. Thank you, Cryptex Hunt 2020 for another fun adventure. And now I’m going to finish my well-deserved beer, while trying to con my friend into another chapter...