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!
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!
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