Parabola - Wish You Were Here Part III - Card 2

It's a lovely Friday afternoon, and for once I have an almost empty plate at work going into a weekend, so how about a little puzzling with my remaining brain cells as the upstairs construction continues to shake my ceiling? We dive into the second card of The Enigma Emporium's third postcard series: Parabola. Spoilers ahead, look out below.

Our second card from our new penpal, Agatha Shapira, comes on February 24th, which is postmarked across three stamps (rabbit - 6, horse/pony -15, pig -18). The front is a close up of part of Dali's "The Persistence of Memory". The blue back has a series of dates (presumably to be transferred to letters), and a message - apparently the Ourobouros have been stalking us for over a decade - 2005 to be precise. On the right there is a series of what look to be overlapping blue/yellow makes green messages in alarm clock/calculator/"segmented LCD display" font. Scattered around them are what could be clock hands or semaphore, but some have three lines rather than two, or only one, so not sure where to start there - doesn't look like pigpen. The repeated phrase "watchlist" makes me think clock.

As I'm typing this up, my eagle eyed partner notices that the larger type on the front does not match the smaller messages - rather than "The Persistence of Memory" and "Salvador Dali" we get "Department" and "Cyber Crime". He works out what that says while I start on the stamps and the dates. We ignore the lcd on front and back for now. 

Rabbit - 6, horse/pony -15, pig -18 becomes: FOR. The last stamp message was LOOK, so now we have "Look For." For what? I refuse to jump ahead and look at the other cards, but I really want to.

The dates on the top left of the back are below. Since some of them will vary across years, I've listed the dates that they fell in 2005, which is apparently when they started stalking us. I've put them in month-date format, but it could be the other way around. 

• Father's Day, Diwali, Boston Marathon, Orthodox Easter, Mother's Day: June 19, November 1, April 18, May 1, May 8, or 06-19, 11-01, 04-15, 05-01, 05-08. F-S K-A D-O E-A E-H
• Yom Kippur ends, Pentecost, Juneteenth, Father's Day: October 13, May 15, June 19, X, or 10-13, 05-15, 06-19, 06-19. J-M E-O F-S F-S

Other than realizing a lot of things fell on June 19th that year, not seeing anything. 

I try to decipher the yellow and blue lcd bits. 

• First line: Yellow: 3 5, Blue 1 2
• Second line:  Yellow: _ _ 2 5 8 _ 0 _, Blue: 6 1 2 1 1 9 2 5
• Third Line: Yellow: 9 6 5 8 0, Blue: 1 1 1 1 2
• Fourth Line: Yellow: _ 9, Blue: 9 1 
• Fifth Line: Yellow: 0 _ 4 4 _ 9, Blue: 2 5 1 1 9 1

Alternatively, if we treat each character as two numbers, we get:

• First line: 13 25: MY 
• Second line:  06 01 22 15 18 20 05: FAVORITE
• Third Line: 19 16 15 18 20: SPORT
• Fourth Line: 09 19: IS
• Fifth Line: 20 05 14 14 09 19: TENNIS

Using this same logic on the image on the front gives us: 18, 13? Maybe just telling us that yellow + blue = green? 

My puzzling partner goes down the tennis scoring rabbit hole while I compile an animal alphabet from the cards we've done so far. I suspect that we'll eventually get letters for all of the animals in Agatha's pictures, and they'll spell some sort of message. So far we have:

• Rabbit - 6 - F
• Bat - 11 - K
• Duck - 12 - L
• Horse - 15 - O
• Pig - 18 - R

From here we get a bit stumped, and my puzzling companion checks for hints on what we've missed. It turns out that we were making the date puzzle too difficult. If we only take the dates, rather than the months, we get: SARAH MOSS. Who's she? Another FB profile? Can't be only one in existence. Nope, there are several. 

We got a little cheaty on the clock hands - I didn't get a chance to try the puzzle but we read ahead  - The Brothers Karamazov. Next time I'll be better at communicating with my puzzling partner where I have and haven't worked on a puzzle yet! 

So, that's it for Card 2: We're looking for something, possibly Sarah Moss. Someone (Sarah, Agatha?) favorite sport is tennis. Something about The Brothers Karamazov. Cyber Crime Department. 

Parabola - Wish You Were Here Part III - Card 1

Fresh off our success on the Carte Rouge, we dug back into another set of mysterious postcards from The Enigma Emporium. This time it is Parabola, the third installment of the Wish You Were Here series. Having seen our erstwhile correspondent snuffed out, this is apparently from his killer(s) - presumably the Ouroboros, which we expect are linked to Infiniti Institutes, of Carte Rouge fame. 

The first card opens on a split background - Black and Tan - with a blue/black sigil in the center, surrounded by an Ouroboros. There are astronomical/alchemical symbols for planets in a six pointed star, with three sets of numbers - some of which do go above 26 so no simple approach there. There is a many jointed line in grey across the card - unlike prior puzzles it does not at first glance correspond to anything on the back of the card. 

On the back of the card, we have a message from our new pen pal, “Agatha Shapira,” with a friendly Hello, Detective written over a picture of our presumably-now-deceased former pen pal. There are four sets of blue and white numbers, none of which go above 26, and only one that goes above 12. There are four stamps under the January 19th postmark - a duck (12), two horses (both 15), and a bat (11). My first thought is Latin names? Then the message itself explains that good old Agatha is just a normal every day, beer drinking gal. Serial murder just pays the bills. 

We dive in. 

I start with the stamps on the Latin name hunch:

• Duck (12): Anas platyrhynchos
• Horse (15): Equus caballus - no 15. Harumph
• Black Bat - multiple scientific names but this image apparently comes from a notebook available on Barnes and Noble ;)

And then I run it through A=01: LOOK. Look where? The refusal of anything to jump out under black light is annoying, but it does help me read the blue numbers. 

What about the images on the front? Black light yields nothing (darn it). In the outer points, clockwise, starting at the top: Mars, Sun, Jupiter, Venus, Moon, Saturn. The inner ‘ring’ around the triangle: Mercury, and then two that aren’t planets but alchemical elements - salt (?) and sulfur. Which means that the numbers are likely from the periodic table. We set to work:

• 5 -  Boron - B
• 24 - Chromium - Cr
• 31 - Gallium - Ga
• 55 - Cesium - Cs
• 73 - Tantalum - Ta
• 98 - Californium - Cf
• 109 - Meitnerium - Mt

Nothing coming easily. They ARE all in numerical order, with various gaps, so we could either scramble them, but there aren’t enough vowels, or look at the gaps: 19, 13, 24, 18, 25: SMXRY. Nope. After a quick trip into Lise Meitner, who was awesome, we go back to the ring itself. Again, the outer ring is Mars, Sun, Jupiter, Venus, Luna, Saturn, but that could also be read as Iron, Gold, Tin, Copper, Silver, Lead. We can look at that as their elemental names and/or their elemental numbers: Fe (26), Au (79), Sn (50), Cu (29), Ag (47), Pb (82). They’re too high for the straight A=01, and don’t readily spell anything. Also, what does the split mean?

Hmm, she mentions facebook... wonder if she has a profile? SHE DOES. And it’s constructed well enough that I think it’s a normal person... until I click her video. Apparently our dear old pen pal Jason is still alive, and we can save him... if we’re willing to snoop into the FBI. These people... Also, I really like her eye makeup, and would kill for her hair. But I digress... 

It doesn’t show up well on my iPad, but her phone profile has a QR code embedded in the profile background. A link takes us to a google search, with “Key Phrase two is Azure”. I love The Enigma Emporium  She mentions being an animal lover: her photos contain camels, ducks, sheep, and dogs. Her most recent post has her in Kenya. 

Looking at the date stamp and the actual cancellation stamp on the cards, there are annual posts on January 19:

• 2017: Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy - Isaac Newton
• 2018: If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things - Albert Einstein
• 2019: The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched--they must be felt with the heart. - Hellen Keller

She also has some interesting information in her personal details, but it doesn’t work out to a straight A=01 either. We also find her email, for when we find the other key phrase. 

Eventually, after pouring over the codes and the facebook page, we hit a wall. A quick hint from Enigma Emporium points out that no number is greater than 13... the alphabet is split like the card. So, add 13 to one set of the numbers. Assume blue because it’s second in all of them. 

The first sends us to her favorite quotes section, which we’ve already found, but haven’t solved yet. The next sends us to her locations - she’s been a ton of places. All over the world. Staring at them long enough yields: Key Thre(e) is BEATLE. Another sends us to the header, where we found the QR code for the google search. The last one says quote authors, which presumably refers to the three quotes above which are on the same date as the stamps. I’ve added them to the quotes above. 

Frustrated, we look for a couple of more clues, and are surprised yet reassured that we are actually supposed to come back to a couple of the puzzles when we’ve done ALL OF THE OTHER PUZZLES AND CARDS. That is both awesome, and irritating as I have zero self control/patience. I love it. We do see that the numbers on the front can be done at this time, so we go back and have a look. We run into the same issues, and look for a specific hint. We were making this FAR too hard. It’s not elements. It’s not alchemy. It’s a rot/mod cipher. Bloody hell. A massive thank you to dCode, and we have EXECUTE COMMAND TSUNAMI. 

And with that, we have solved as much as we can with the first card alone. Many thanks to The Enigma Emporium for yet another wonderfully fun evening of puzzles. You’re contributing to my sanity during COVID, which I greatly appreciate. 

Carte Rouge - Day Six

Back again to Carte Rouge by Enigma Emporium. We’ve got three cards left to go, and a few questions left to answer. Last time we were able to justify progress by going to the Infiniti Institutes website and answering a few questions correctly (after a bit of sneakiness on their part regarding web addresses. Good progress.

Back now after a mini vacation, it’s time to tackle the remaining puzzles: The chest of the Jack of Clubs, the edge of the Queen of Hearts, and the male Joker.

As I’m putting this together, just opening the file my partner is ahead of me on the Jack’s chest - he realizes that they are shuffled in order, such that the N is in 9th place in the sentence, the 11th is a blank.

1.Y 2. E 3. K 4. A 5.T 6. E 7. R 8. I 9. N 10. A 11. (SPACE) 12. V 13. E 14.L 15. I 16. K 17.A 18. Y 19. A

YEKATERINA VELIKAYA, also known as Katherine the Great (1729-1796). And thus the Jack of Clubs.

That puts her probably second, between Queen Elizabeth and Abigail Adams:

• Queen Elizabeth I: 1533-1603
• Katherine the Great: 1729-1796
• Abigail Adams: 1744-1818
• John Paul Jones: 1747-1792
• Madame Le Brun: 1755-1842
• Marie Antoinette: 1755-1793

With this in hand, it was back to Infiniti Institutes to answer their questions. We were were able to answer all of their questions and were welcomed as an initiate. But, that still leaves two cards to solve. Hmmmm.....

Back to the Queen of Hearts. We know her chest reads “The Bard is a King to Me” - presumably Shakespeare, and that another card, the King of Hearts, references poetry, Venus and Adonis. And, surprise surprise! Shakespeare has a poem titled Venus and Adonis. Assuming that the numbers are line (word) we get the following:

We Gave You Supreme Rule Plucked The Last Queen Like A Flower - Feeds Had Turned By Far Too Foul For Pay We Seek Your Power. 

Not entirely sure that that second to last part makes sense, but it does fall in with the rest of the rhyming threats. 

I’m admittedly surprised that the conclusion felt, hollow. The puzzles themselves though, and the process for solving the cards, was a great time. They CLEARLY went to a lot of trouble to put this together, I can’t wait to see what comes next from Enigma Emporium! 

Carte Rouge - Day Four?

I feel like we’ve done more than four days of puzzling on Carte Rouge, but I don’t seem to have documented them. It’s been a while, and we needed a break from the news, so my puzzling companion and I cracked open the deck once more.

While we debate looking for clues, I try to identify what we’ve gotten so far, and put it in some sort of order:

Suit	Card	Edge Message	Chest Message	Other
Clubs	King	The Tsar has been addressed - the Throne can be repossessed	Angel Script
Clubs	Queen	Once your own fate is known, pass the cards to John Paul Jones.	There is one thing we yearn to earn - you must help your people learn	Captain
Clubs	Jack	Best to accept and ascend - each offer conceals an end
Diamonds	King	The cards belonged to three before, beyond you they must go to two more	We have only one goal - We desire total utter control
Diamonds	Queen	If you have been paying close attention, then you can likely guess our intention	The First Second Lady - The Second First Lady	Abigail Adams
Diamonds	Jack	When your work is finally done, pass the cards to Madame LeBrun	A revolution you want to win -  we can tell you how to begin
Hearts	King	Black: My Dear Queen it is a pleasure to know you Red: Our love is poetry like Venus and Adonis	Pigpen cipher key
Hearts	Queen		The Bard is a King to Me
Hearts	Jack	My fine lady the Good Queen Bess, as beautiful as she as powerful	You will be our pawn until your final hour	Queen Elizabeth I
Spades	King	Helping you is our pleasure but you must share your treasure.	Morganwg Alphabet
Spades	Queen	Face to face, men of all trades - a shared secret between Heart and Spade	Madame Deficit	Marie Antoinette
Spades	Jack	Your Nation is in turmoil - there is a rebellion you must foil	You will be our pawn until your final hour

We get stuck on the Spades because, for the life of us, we cannot find the appropriate runic alphabet - one that has both an up arrow and a down arrow. A quick search for a hint suggests that we need to go back to the alphabet on the King of Spades’ chest. Which, of course, we haven’t fully gotten yet, or at least, I hadn’t written it down - we HAD done another session which I forgot to record which had sorted that out at least. We have the alphabet key - Black suits are A-M, Red suits are N-Z.   Except, that didn’t work. Something with our alphabet was wrong. We had to go look for a hint. Our alphabet was close, but not quite - we had neglected to figure in suit order. That had come up in our discussions, but I couldn’t make it work before. Now we have it sorted. 

Going off that, we were able to read the King of Spades’ chest: MORGANWG ALPHABET. That turns out to also be known as the Coelbren y Beirdd, which was a script made by a forger who sometimes went by the name of Iolo Morganwg. After a quick trip down that Wikipedia rabbit hole, we translate the text around the rim: HELPING YOU IS OUR PLEASURE BUT - YOU MUST SHARE YOUR TREASURE.  But, I don’t wanna share! Fine... I put all of this into the chart above as we move forward to keep track. 

Next to the Queen of Spades. Her chest has an interesting patter of dots, which make me think of a macrame code that I came across but can’t for the life of me remember the name of. While that bothers me, we do the outer rim of the card: FACE TO FACE MEN OF ALL TRADES  - A SHARED SECRET BETWEEN HEART AND SPADE

The knots are still bothering me. I know I’ve seen this before. Somewhere. A quick google reveals Quipu - Incan coded knots for record keeping. After I yell that at deafening volume, possibly damaging my companion’s ears permanently, I dive in.  And hit a wall. 1, 100, 1 meh. There’s something I’m missing.

Meanwhile, my puzzling companion has taken on the chest of the Queen of Hearts, using the same code that we found earlier. THE BARD IS A KING TO ME. Hmmmm, who called Shakespeare a king? 

Giving the Quipu up for a bit, I take on the chest of the Jack of Spades: YUILEUPW - UTLORIAHU

Yep, that’s gibberish. But, maybe if I intertwine them like the edge? YUUTIL... nope... and no way to get it that isn’t two U in a row... drawing board again. Thankfully, my puzzling companion remembered what we had just solved  - a shared secret between heart and spade. The Jack of Hearts is: OWLBORAN - NIYUFNLOR. Interweaving those gives: YOU WILL BE OUR PAWN - UNTIL YOUR FINAL HOUR

Steal our treasure, call us pawns, I’m not liking these folks. Next to the Edge of the Jack of Hearts: MY FINE LADY THE GOOD QUEEN BESS - AS BEAUTIFUL AS SHE IS POWERFUL. Good Queen Bess was better known as Queen Elizabeth the 1st (1533-1603), which is well before the other three names we’ve come across so far. 

Back to the Queen of Spades, I’ve been overthinking this: 13-1-4-1-13-5: MADAME 4-5-6-9-3-9-20 DEFICIT: MADAME DEFICIT. Turns out that that was a name for Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), due to her rather extravagant habits (or at least their rumors). 

That gives us 5 names - three before us and two after us. If they are in purely chronological order, we get:

• Queen Elizabeth I: 1533-1603
• Abigail Adams: 1744-1818
• John Paul Jones: 1747-1792
• Madame Le Brun: 1755-1842
• Marie Antoinette: 1755-1793

A quick check of the website confirms that we’ve got the names in order. Thank you! One question answered! 

Staring at the numbers around the Queen of Hearts only gives me a headache. I decide to work on the Woman Joker, using the Alphabet code we’ve found. The edge reads: FOR EACH FAVOR THERE IS A PRICE - THE EQUATION IS QUITE CONCISE. Across the chest, we get: 

EVEN                                             FOUR

THGUOS                                       THGUOB

QUEENS                                        THINGS

ERA                                                EBNAC

Once we interlace them, we get: FOUR THINGS ARE SOUGHT - EVEN QUEENS CAN BE BOUGHT

While I was staring at that, my puzzling companion made a discovery that had me both angry and bemused. The King of Clubs’ chest is not another pattern, it’s merely telling us that the script is Angel script - which I found by accident. Still haven’t found a nice date stamp, either. Harumph. 

That leaves us with four remaining puzzles: the edge on the Queen of Hearts, the chest of the Jack of Clubs, and both the edge and the center of the male Joker. 

We decide to take a break for the day - Progress!