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