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