Parabola - Wish You Were Here Part III - Cards 4 & 5

It’s been a while, but it’s a nice rainy day and I’ve got a new electric kettle for tea and my puzzling companion has a glass of whisky so it’s the perfect time to dive into another puzzle.

The front of the card shows a standard treble clef, which, thanks to too many school years reading music, tells me it’s CABBAGE (not BABBAGE, though I did originally misread the first note). There are others scattered around the page, without a clear guide, other, perhaps, than the black and white keys of a piano on both sides. Unfortunately for this puzzle, I played strings...

On the back, we have a series of numbers over a series of lines - the numbers are 1-18 and my first thought is some sort of connect the dots. Don’t want to draw on the cards, though, so that will have to wait. There are the requisite stamps, and the September 8th postcard, as well as a very oddly worded message that I think might be connected to the stamp alphabet - rooster, duck, etc. My spidey sense is tingling, but not sure why. Yet. We dive in.

Again, the alphabet so far:

• Camel - 1 - A
• Sheep - 5 -E
• Rabbit - 6 - F
• Crow - 9 - I
• Bat - 11 - K
• Duck - 12 - L
• Chicken - 13 - M
• Cow - 14 - N
• Horse - 15 - O
• Pig - 18 - R
• Dog - 20 - T

The stamps are easy enough: Cow-camel-rooster-sheep: NAME: “Look for file name...”

We realize as I’m doing that there are other animals hidden in the text, for example sPIGot. In the message, we get: Rooster-Lamb-Pig-Duck-Crow-Cow. MERLIN. 

And there’s where we pause. The left is not connect the dots, neither does it seem to line up with the notes on the front, nor the 5th card, which has letters. 

Stumped, we decide to go back to her facebook page and poke around. Rewatching the video, we realize we now have the password to email to her account, and do so. An immediate answer comes through, which takes us back to the “FBI Tipline” for Blowback. We need four key codes, but we have only found two:

• Key Phrase One: ??
• Key Phrase Two: AZURE
• Key Phase Three: BEATLE
• Key Phrase Four: ??

Phrase 1 isn’t cabbage, nor is it palimpsest from the last puzzle. We’ll also, apparently, need the information of the other people we’ve found to date.

While I’m digging through the recesses of my brain, my puzzling partner solves the lines - each line and space is a different letter, like a MUCH bigger clef. An alphabet clef? It reads FINANCES DEPARTMENT

Looking back over our notes, and vowing to NEVER take this much time off again, we realize that one of the pass phrases might be in the quote authors - we never did sort that out. Her favorite quotes are:

03/01/18/07 

11/08/16/11 

14/03/17/06 

02/04/17/26 

19/08/18/10 

30/05/19/22

As we did before, in chronological order by postcard stamp cancellation date:

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

February 24:

2017: You will face many defeats in life, but never let yourself be defeated. - Maya Angelou

2018: Those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself. - Richard Nixon

August 4:

2017: There's no such thing as quitting. Just sometimes there's a longer pause between relapses - Alan Moore

2018: Each of us brings to our job, whatever it is, our lifetime of experience and our values. - Sandra Day O’Connor

September 8

2018: It's better to burn out than to fade away. - Neil Young

2017: Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. - George Bernard Shaw

2016: A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. - Tim O'Brien

Dec 4:

2018:Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

2017: Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them. - Washington Irving

2016: What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? - John Green

So, top to bottom, again, only the days that have postcards

• The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched--they must be felt with the heart. - Helen Keller
• Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• It's better to burn out than to fade away. - Neil Young
• Each of us brings to our job, whatever it is, our lifetime of experience and our values. - Sandra Day O’Connor
• Those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself. - Richard Nixon
• If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things. - Albert Einstein
• Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them. - Washington Irving
• Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself - George Bernard Shaw
• There's no such thing as quitting. Just sometimes there's a longer pause between relapses - Alan Moore
• You will face many defeats in life, but never let yourself be defeated. - Maya Angelou
• Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy. - Isaac Newton
• What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? - John Green
• A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. - Tim O'Brien

Using only the first letters of the last names, we get KEY ONE IS MANGO

Key Phrase One: MANGO

Key Phrase Two: AZURE

Key Phase Three: BEATLE

Key Phrase Four: ??

However, we still have no idea about the grid of her ‘favorites’. 

Diving in, I decide we may as well go all in tonight, and do the last card, from December 5th, as well. On the front of the card is a figure in front of the sunset, with the words “Wish You Were Here” and shapes that correspond to the shapes from the inscribed six sided star on card one. On the back is a short message, and the alchemical symbols from the first card overlaid with letters. 

Using the animal alphabet for the stamps, we get TANNIN: “Look for file name Tannin” - this is not, unfortunately, an “FBI Tip Line” extension, nor a key phrase.

The alchemical alphabet is as follows:

• A: Mars
• C: Saturn
• D: Mercury
• E: Neptune
• M: Jupiter
• N: Sulfur
• O: Earth
• Q: Sun
• R: Venus
• T: Moon
• U: Pluto

The shapes on the front correspond to the shapes on the inscribed star, so from top to bottom: 

Mars-Sulfur-Mars-Saturn-Earth-Sulfur-Mercury-Mars: ANACONDA. Is this our fourth key? The others were marked as keys though.... 

And this is where my partner makes a breakthrough. Her favorite quotes are day-month-year-word, and it gives us 

• 03/01/18/07 - THE 
• 11/08/16/11 - FOURTH
• 14/03/17/06 - KEY
• 02/04/17/26 - PHRASE
• 19/08/18/10 - IS
• 30/05/19/22 - MERCURY

Key Phrase One: MANGO

Key Phrase Two: AZURE

Key Phase Three: BEATLE

Key Phrase Four: MERCURY

Then we remember that there were puzzles from the first card that we hadn’t solved, including a line in the back that now seems to line up perfectly with the letters of the 5th card. I’m not sure which side to start on so: SEND ME THE CONFIRMATION NUMBER.

What confirmation number?!

Back to the website, frustrated, we look for a clue. And feel like an idiot - we were too far in on the page. So, now we dig through lines of code, looking for mango, azure, beatle, and mercury, in that order. Ctrl+F was VERY handy. We search, then, for file name TANNIN, and are asked for our Department. Looks like it’s time to pull up what we know of the three people mentioned in her email:

• Eric Kent - Human Resources - Birch Lane - Palimpsest
• Sarah Moss - Cyber Crime Department - The Brothers Karamazov - Tennis
• Merlin? - Finances Department - Anaconda - Cabbage

None of these departments seem to have access to the file, however. Back to the drawing board. Then we realize that there is another puzzle we’ve missed on Card 4. The notes on the front. We count and there are 26 white keys (counting the sides). In theory, going from the top: YUSEF SEDIQI. So, rather than Merlin in Finances, we have Yusef Sediqi. We’re still stuck, however, on the department. 

We look for a clue. And curse. Cybercrime is one word. MF......... grrrrrrrr.... We proceed... 

Ok, that was awesome. Quite possibly the BEST yet. Thank you Enigma Emporium for over two months, give or take, of fun. But now the FBI are onto us! Oh no! Agatha Shapira is a wonderful villain.