Cycle of Learning - Cryptic Cryptids - Card 1

 It's been a while, but my partner and I finally had the collective brainpower (hopefully!) go back to puzzling and tacking the last batch of puzzles from Enigma Emporium's Season Two: Cycle of Learning. This batch is called 'Cryptic Cryptids'. Cue the X-files theme, or maybe Grimm? 

On the front is a series of 4 peaks, with the names and dates of who presumably summited them, under a quote from Sir Edmond Hillary, over the message 'HELLO'. On the back, we have a typed message with a series of interspersed numbers that clearly mean something. The note is from Scarlett Long, telling a certain Elric Sanderson that they need to pay their rent. It was sent February 4, 2020. From the message, there are arrows going to a mouth - phone number? speak out loud? - and then to a series of what could be hex on a black box stamp on a book, then to the Eiffel Tower, then to a pen. A website is at the bottom. 

I start with the names/dates to identify the peaks, Google is helpful:

• David Harrah and James Maxwell, 1950 - Yerupaja
• Charles Barrington, 1858 - Eiger
• Jack Buchsteiner, 1819 - Torstein
• Yevginy Abalakov, 1933 - Ismoil Somoni Peak

So, we hunt the YETI (of course, the snowy peaks should have given that away already).

While I was doing that, my partner was trying to work with the hex on the black stamp. A straight conversion doesn't make sense, which means we probably have to follow the arrows, starting with the message text itself.

The numbers in the message are 2-7-9-4-0. deux-sept-neuf-quatre-zero? Nothing to my ear when pronounced properly... the Eiffel tower makes me think of France, 27940 is Les Trois Lacs (the three lakes) region of France? 

Then we look at the website. It's the Infiniti Institute/pmats (stamp backwards). So, what is the stamp when read backwards? If you run the hex through backwards, starting at the end, you get cryptozoology. That leads us to a page that actually exists. It is the staff directory for the Cryptozoology department, which does include one Scarlett Long, based in Paris, Texas. From her profile we have matches for the Eiffel Tower, and pen (Penn State). There is no reference to Elric Sanderson. A quick search of the internet reveals only one Elric Sanderson on facebook, and his only information is a photo of a pretty cat. 

We're stuck. We know Scarlett is looking for Yeti's as part of the Infiniti Institutes Cryptozoology department. We're not even sure what information we're still looking for. To the hints! The first tells us to get comfortable with how the page works?! All I notice is that when I click any text it brings me to the top of the page. It's all hypertext. Hmf. Then, OMG. Hovering over the word 'mouth' in Dartmouth reveals a DIFFERENT link. Following mouth-->books-->Paris-->Pen we get an Expedition log! Or, more accurately, a chance to figure out what we're missing.

Turns out, we need the mountain she found the Yeti on. A quick Google of mountains 27940 reveals that Mount Lhotse in Tibet is that height, and a reasonable place to find the Yeti. That gets us another message, and a beginning place for the next card... for another night. Thank you Enigma Emporium for another fun evening!

Entirely Unrelated - Holiday edition

Entirely unrelated to the content of this blog, but something that's been on my mind as the holidays come up: the tyranny of things. I realized a few months ago that I was just drowning in stuff, which didn't give me enough time to do what I want, which is play with my cats, fountain pens, and, of course, do puzzles. Things were all over the place, and I had so many random things that I don't need cluttering the place, from books I haven't read to far too many socks. While I'd done the Home Edit / Marie Kondo Sparking Joy winnowing of everything early in the pandemic, I still wasn't where I needed to be. So, I picked up a copy of A Life Less Throwaway by Tara Button of Buymeonce.com and got to work.

One of the book's exercises is to identify what you do and don't need, vs. what you may want or have accumulated. Good timing, as I'm also in the pre-holiday gift shopping phase, and trying to figure out both what I want, and want to give, for the holidays.

The Un-Wish List

Bizarrely, this part of the exercise was far easier. Roaming, physically and mentally, between rooms, it was very easy to see what I had and didn't need, had too much of and needed to use up, or had just accumulated without noticing. At one point, while living in a place where I *could not* get things that I needed and therefore stockpiled like an end of days prepper when I could, I accumulated many years' worth of certain items. Very rarely logical ones. So, I do not need any more of the following until further notice:

Bathroom

• Perfume - I have one perfect bottle purchased for me with love and it's enough for several years unless I decide to bathe directly in it
• Eyeshadow
• Body Glitter
• Lotion
• Toothpaste
• Hair pins or ornaments
• Contact solution
• Shampoo - I seem to go through it far slower than conditioner. I don't understand.
• Body Wash - I apparently was convinced I would become that Peanuts character if I wasn't too careful... 
• Lady Products - my mom said this as a joke, but she's right. I'm set. Thanks. 

Closet

• Any clothing I didn't pick out for myself
• Socks
• Costume Jewelry (or any jewelry, really)
• Tshirts
• Seasonal/holiday clothing
• Pajamas (Soma, I love you, but it's time we see other people)
• Scarves or wraps. My aunt is a PHENOMENAL weaver, and fabric dyer. She has gifted me beautiful scarves, and they're the only ones I need. 
• Anything that's too small - If I ever lose the weight, I can buy it, but until then, I just need to roll with the curves
• Shoes - I love my Rothys and will wear them until they are rags but I don't need a pair in EVERY COLOR.
• Purses, bags, backpacks, pouches. Nope. 

Office/Desk

• I do not now, and will probably never again need to buy another notebook.
• I have found my favorite stationery at long last, and will only be buying that brand from now on. However, I still have more than enough of it, and of all the other types I tried before, to last for a good long while. I could use more penpals? Adding it to the list above.
• I do not need novelty pens. I like my very nice fountain pens, thank you very much
• I do not need any more fountain pens. I love mine, they bring me joy. But I am not ambidextrous and can only write with one hand at one time.
• I do not need any more fountain pen ink. (TBH, this one I'll probably break a thousand times over, but it brings me joy, too....)
• I have more than enough sticky pads, paper clips, llama mini clothes hanger paperclips, cat paperclips...
• I do not need any more washi tape, stickers, or stamps. This is hard for me to type, but it is true. 
• I do not need any more art supplies, of any sort. 
• I say again, I do not need any more notebooks

Kitchen

• I do not need any more pots or pans. I have some really great Cuisinart stainless steel that I picked up ages ago, complemented by very nice Nambe pots. I also have two very good cast iron skillets and a grill pan. I'm all set. (Though maybe there are things to upgrade?0
• I do not need any more silverware. I've gone through phases where I couldn't find a fork, to having far too many spoons (but never enough metaphorical ones).
• I DO NOT need any more mugs. Please. I think they multiply in the cabinets
• I don't need any more stemware. Ever. My plan of buying mixed stemware and then it's ok if people break it backfired in that my guests, when I ever have them, remember the good old days? are far too careful.
• I do not need any more dishware in general. My cupboards are overflowing. Unless a shelf breaks and I get mosaic shards, we're good. 
• Kitchen gadgets. I *adore* my slow cooker, my spiralizer, my food processor. I have one of everything that I need. I do not need more until/unless they break, at which point I'll see if I *need* them. Widgets like the bread-maker and rotisserie, while fun, have already found better homes where they'll be more used. 
• Plastic storage containers - I spent a while winnowing my overflowing collection of former delivery containers, ancient Tupperware, and mismatched tops and bottoms. What I have now is a mostly-glass collection, all of which have lids, and a few nicer sturdy plastic bits. It's enough. 
• Water bottles - why do I have so many water bottles? Small, large, plastic, metal, you name it, I have it... 
• Tea paraphernalia. I can only really use one tea pot at one time, and I am actually capable of washing and reusing them. I do not need more.  
• Food-wise, I do not need any more of the following until I use them up:
• Honey. I love it. It is wonderful. I apparently buy it as my default everywhere. I have literal pounds. 
• Tea. I also love it. I also impulse buy it. I need to drink the deliciousness that I have before stocking up again. 
• Coconut flour. One order has lasted me *years* as this stuff is so moisture-absorbent that a little bit goes a loooooong way. 
• Coconut flakes. I used to adore making coconut butter. I need to start making it again, but until then, I most certainly don't need any more flakes! 
• Anything sweet or baking related. I'm both trying to lose weight, and just not really into sweets except for some very specific treats I occasionally allow myself. I also can't be trusted not to binge anything really yummy. It's best that I only eat such things when they're not in my house... 

Den

• I probably don't need any more board games - while I used to love hosting game nights, with the pandemic that hasn't been happening, so that's very much on a hiatus.
• I don't need more audiovisual equipment. I have a nice sized TV, and with the transition to streaming, I don't need disc players or anything similar. 
• I don't need any more video game consoles. I remember last year being EXTREMELY excited about the Nintendo Switch with the RingFit. I still love it, when I bother to hook it up. It's a lot of fun, but I still don't use it. Until I use what I have, I don't need more.
• I also probably don't need any new video games for a bit. I have a Steam library full of unplayed or unfinished games. In the next century, once I've played everything, I can consider a new video game, though honestly I should just go outside.
• I don't need any more physical books. I have several still in my bookshelf unread staring at me. I also have access to a great local exchange library. Honestly, I've transferred mostly to audiobooks anyhow.
• I do not need any more audiobooks. See above comment re a library of unread/unplayed items. My audible library is stuffed, and I have a wonderful local library for any new additions. 

Other

• I do not need any more camping equipment. I love camping. I haven't done it in ages. In my closet there is a wonderful little tent, sleeping bag, camp stove.... you see where I'm going with this. 
• I do not need any other sports equipment. I have a small set of weights that I don't use, a set of resistance bands that I do use occasionally... I have everything I need. 
• I do not need to save random boxes or glass jars or other packaging "just in case". I will recycle as much as humanly possible the empties, use up the things in the filled ones, and then recycle them, too. 

Things That I Want

The short answer is not much, actually. I'll add anything I think of, but the things I want aren't things, so I'm horrible to shop for this holiday season. So far, I've come up with:

• UPDATE: A friend has a surfeit of sharp objects and will allow me to borrow one indefinitely until I can acquire the perfect blade. A really nice every day carry (EDC) pocketknife with a lifetime warranty. I've heard good things about Benchmade, and spec'd myself out this pretty little thing, only to realize that I can't ship knives to my current address due to post office limitations. Phooey.
• Mortgage payments?? Yes, I am already years ahead on my mortgage. I would like it to be gone so I don't have to deal with the bank and its difficult-to-pin-down staff. Still, asking for money just seems so mercenary, outside of playing Monopoly.
• Penpals. This came up as a result of analyzing my "Un-Wish" List. I love writing and receiving letters. Not really a *thing* so much but I'm struggling with this list here.
• Experiences?
• Massages? Fortunately for me, unfortunately for givers, I have amazing health care that reimburses for massages, so that's out.
• Horseback riding? I can't find a place I enjoy riding
• Dining? We're in the middle of a pandemic...
• Donations in my name. Ok, this, this I can get behind. 
• Food banks: Working in agricultural development, I'm a big supporter of food security, and food pantries/banks are (unfortunately) a major need for many in today's society. However, as I don't believe I know what they need, I prefer to give cash and let them buy what makes sense, rather than showing up with canned goods. I have the ones below on a recurring donation, but anything helps. 
• Northwest Harvest: Based in Washington, they support a network of food banks across the state to ensure "that every child, single parent, house-bound senior, and hungry Washingtonian has access to healthy, culturally significant food." 
• World Central Kitchen: Hunger doesn't know borders, but it certainly knows disasters. WCK supports providing food to families after disasters, and it does it using local supplies, which in turn support the recovery of the local economy, a virtuous circle of disaster recovery. 
• Roadrunner Food Bank: I may live in WA now, but I grew up in NM, and families there need just as much support. 

Cycle of Learning - Migratory Patterns - Card Five

 As we wrap up another heat wave of a week, we wrap up as well the last card of Enigma Emporium's Season Two - Cycle of Learning - Migratory Patterns set. The fifth and final card, which we expect will wrap up some of the loose ends, including where the heck to 'report' our findings. And what's up with the stamps and cancellation marks? We begin....

This card has an American Bald Eagle on its front, of course with the wrong latin name, and a series of other, presumably wrong, names below it. On the back, we have a border of black and white Xs, which will probably be alphanumeric, then, on the left, a series of what I expect to be rebuses. On the right, we have three stamps - planet, stamp = park? - cancelled April 18th in Yemen. Probably just means the stamps from around the world will lead us to the final location? Underneath the cancelled stamps is a message from our penpal. 

I'm terrible at Rebuses, so I start looking at the front. My partner digs into the rebus for a bit, and where I saw snap peas, gets 'Trapeze'. Probably more likely. 

The bald eagle is said to be an "Acidic Pirate" - the latin name for bald eagle translates as white headed sea eagle. The sea part could be the pirate linkage. Otherwise I get Vespula for wasp, but it wasps rods makes me think more of carpenter/mason bees - Osimia. 

I go back to the rebus. We get Paladin, Trapeze, and then my brain does something weird and we get Saturn for the last one. Paladin Trapeze Saturn? Paladin - Trapeze - Saturn? Turns out that's the website we need to go to. Maybe I don't suck as much at rebuses as I thought! Of course, it immediately wants a password, so back to the card...

We go looking for the acidic pirate, and my partner was right - it was the family, not the bald eagle directly. So, word scrambles here we go: PASSWORDS: RHINOCEROS, DRACONIAN, KLEPTOMANIAC. And we're in!!

We then go through the process of identifying the works that we've found in prior cards. The first card we didn't get all the info needed - turns out my choir rabbit hole was useful - there's someone buried in the Roslyn Chapel choir. That gets us to confirming the second article - all fine. And then we realize - I didn't take notes on number 3! We just solved it. UGH! I dig through and find my old excel sheet for solving the puzzle. Phew. No having to re-solve. However! There is apparently more than one CubeSmart in Boston, but we need to know (and need to guess that we know!) the one closest to the museum where the art was stolen. Used a hint for that. And then on to the 4th! Faberge eggs, all set, but apparently we had the wrong library. Blast. Another hint needed. Note for Enigma Emporium - it would have been nice to have an intermediary confirmation step to know that we were on the right track back when we were doing the original cards. Grrrr... 

And then we stumble. There's another puzzle question, presumably related to the Xs that we haven't solved yet. And the hint image for the clues has the Xs arranged differently on the card. On ours, they're on the edge, where here, they're on the central line. Hmmm.... Halfway through counting and going blind, I realize this is the website, not the final location of where we want this to be. That must relate more to the stamps' cancellation locations. 

So, they were cancelled in:

• March 5 - Germany
• March 14th - Great Britain, United Kingdom, England
• March 20 - Turkey
• April 4 - Thailand
• April 18 - Yemen

GETTY. That's where we should store the art - the Getty Museum in LA. Nice place, if too warm for my tastes. 

I input that as the final answer, and get a rather unsatisfactory 'Thanks, we'll put them there' message. It honestly feels a bit of a let down. Not even a cute auto message sent to my email - those for whatever reason feel more 'special'. Still, really enjoyable puzzles throughout. A slightly unsatisfying ending, but I really like the excuse to hang out with my puzzling partner so... I'll take it ;)

Thank you, Enigma Emporium, for another pleasant evening 

Cycle of Learning - Migratory Patterns - Card Four

Another lovely Saturday evening for a fun card from Enigma Emporium's second season, Cycle of Learning.

We're on the 'Cardinal' bird card of Migratory patterns. On the front, a Cardinal, with, as anticipated, its scientific name encoded, and a similarly encoded message below it. On the back, we have a series of three black eggs with numbers/dates, four sets of letters, a series of three stamps with matryoshka dolls, cancelled in Thailand, and a city map with the Russian word for library библиотека/biblioteka. 

Digging in, my expectation is that the four texts of the passages on the back will be nested like the dolls. A quick google of the dates with the word 'egg' brings up the fabulous Fabergé Imperial eggs, of which only 46 of the original 52 are still known. Presumably an additional 3 have now been found. For those curious, we're apparently on the trail of: Nécessaire, last seen in 1952 when it was sold for a pittance of 1250 pounds sterling!; Mauve, of which only the 'surprise' remains; and, the Alexander III Commemorative, for which only a photograph remains. 

Digression over, back to the text. The nesting that I'm expecting cannot be straightforward - lots of q and no u, but I try it anyhow, skipping every third letter. No dice. Then my partner makes it even MORE straightforward. Outer layer on top, middle layer in middle, innermost on the bottom: Find a janitor named Dimitri. 

Meanwhile, we're stuck on the front puzzle. In theory, it's straightforward as well. Take the symbol, look up its Octal value, find the character whose got that as a Hex value, et voila. That only works for some, however... We look for a hint. OH F@)#**)( we were making it FAR too complicated. There are Three in Minsk. 

Ok, so we are looking for three of the missing Faberge eggs in Minsk, presumably at the National Library of the Republic of Belarus, which looks vaguely like an egg itself. We'll ask for a janitor named Dimitri, who should be able to hook us up. 

Huzzah!

Cycle of Learning - Migratory Patterns - Card Two

 We continue with the second of the Migratory patterns. The second card's theme is the raven, and the color scheme is very Halloween. The front has a raven with rotated letters, if you 'un' rotate them, and count back the number of letters, like a Caesar, you get the correct letter. Under the raven spells Corvus, the genus for ravens, and beneath that is more text. My partner delves into that while I poke at the back.

The back has a typed message from our colleague 'Audubon', a stamp with an eye on it, cancelled in the UK on March 14th, with an X and a check next to it. On the right we have an odd message - spotted flying high above the capital a rare golden eagle - in halloweeny colors. Another message has stored at the station commonly called central in the architect's old office. Between lines there are what could be railroad tracks, or a way to connect letters between words. 

Once rotated, the front text reads "Located the Amber Room". We'd never heard of it, but it was actually a thing. Apparently stolen by Nazis. Possibly in a shipwreck, now. Wild. 

Meanwhile I'm making no progress on the back. My partner thinks the eye may just be showing us which way to rotate the letters. I'm convinced there's another set of cryptic-crossword/invisible idiots style clues in the long form text. Driving me insane. 

While I'm banging my head, my partner figures out the rare golden eagle comment - the colors represent the flag of Germany, which also has an eagle on it. That would fit with the stolen-by-Nazis theme. The capital would then be Berlin.

If we assume we're sticking with Germany, the central station would be the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, and the architect is listed as Meinhard von Gerkan. Not sure where to go from there, though. 

I'm going nuts on the long form, so we get a clue. We were wrong about the stamps. Fran Wagner will be our contact. Still stumped on the architect thing, we look at the clue, and realize we had it. It's just stored at von Gerkan's office. Nothing tricky with the lines, no secondary puzzle. 

Our contact, Fran Wagner, will help us recover the Amber Room (its panels, presumably), all 13,000 lbs of which are apparently stored at the offices of Meinhard von Gerkan in Berlin. 

And that is the second card in Migratory Patterns from The Enigma Emporium. Not as satisfying, but done all the same.  

Cycle of Learning - Migratory Patterns - Card One

We're starting with a new set of cards today, diving into Enigma Emporium's Migratory Patterns. This envelope's theme is that it's our first real Institute job. We have to dig up a series of artifacts for a client, many of which we 'never dreamed to be real.' Another Institute agent has already done the work of locating them, we just have to unscramble their codes and process the items. Hmmm...

The front of the first card is a dove with letters on the top and bottom. I'm guessing Caesar because that's my default. Could be Vigenère. On the back, we have a long form message on the left, with certain letters highlighted in yellow, purple, and green, talking about ornithology and claiming to be from Audubon himself. On the right, we have a series of stamps, cancelled in Germany, above what are essentially cryptic crossword clues. Staring at it, we get most of it pretty quickly. Blair witch throws us off, then we get  "I found the holy grail". Cool. Clearly the cup of a carpenter... 

Going back to the stamps. Cancelled in Germany on March 5th. Hmmm... Apparently March 5th is Absinthe Day, Cheese Doodle Day, and St. Piran's Day. St. Piran sounds possible, given the religious theme of the stamps, but he's the patron saint of tin miners, and primarily celebrated in Cornwall... My puzzling partner looks at the stamps themselves, and finds the oldest boys' choir is in Regensburg, Germany. Strangely, I travelled there ages ago. Willing to bet that the grail is there, rather than Cornwall. So far so good, now to tackle the text. 

The text under the word 'Dove' is not, in fact, its genus or species, but should give us a clue on how to unscramble the surrounding text. As I type this, N figures it out. The letters are inverted in pairs - oculbmdiea becomes Columbidae - the genus for doves and pigeons. Our text then reads: Have arranged for local man to give you access meet him in town. His name is Alexander Edmunds.' Ok, talk to Alex in Regensburg to get the Grail? Sweet. Now, the text on the back...

Looking at the letters in color order:

• Yellow: QNPOIXLAGMK
• Purple: SPVWOZPEISIM
• Green: A J.J. Audubon  

I try brute force Caesars first, thanks to dCode for making that simple. Unsurprisingly, nada. I proceed down a rabbit hole on John James Audubon (not to be confused with the German Autobahn). While I go down that path, N thinks that maybe it's not purple, but blue, and yellow+blue = green, giving us one letter per line. It's not quite that straightforward, but Excel comes in handy. (MID, and COLUMN(INDIRECT) for those interested). 

Rather than yellow + blue (purple!) it's the middle - (yellow + blue)/2 --? Rosslyn Chapel. Which is NOT in Germany. I've been there, too. And there's a vault that they don't let anyone in to. Could it be there? And does Rosslyn Chapel mean it's not in Regensburg? Now I'm confused... Is the grail in Scotland or Germany? Also, there haven't been any Institute links that we found on the card? 

In confusion, we check the hints on Enigma Emporium's website. Apparently the stamps are wrong, or aren't ready yet - they're for the website which me must get later? The hint says we aren't to go farther at this point, so we will expect that The holy grail was found in Rosslyn Chapel, where our contact is Alexander Edmunds.

Thanks to Enigma Emporium for another fun evening :) 

Cycle of Learning - The Enigma Emporium Season Two - Veritas - Card Two

 After a lovely holiday away, we come back to the Enigma Institute, ready to decipher more of the secrets their other agents have uncovered from the cosmos. It doesn't bode well when my partner, responsible for sending me the images of our quarry, starts with 'Oh god, this is going to be irritating.' It turns out that this is because the entire border of the back of the card is teeny-tiny numbers. Thankful for image editing software so I can zoom in - I'd go blind otherwise. It turns out, however, that the numbers are a count, from 1 to 210. 

On the front of the card, we have a skyscape with a man on a hill, and a poem. On the back, tiny numbers circle the border, we have a message in plain text, a series of nested triangles, a coded message on the right, and three stamps of space launches with dates on them. Presumably different space shuttles? There's also the word 'sunk?' on one of them, and the website at the institute/triangle? going down the center. 

We tackle the stamps first:

• August 12, 1977 - ALT 12 - Shuttle Enterprise's 1st flight
• November 26, 1985 - STS-61-B - Shuttle Atlantis 2 flight
• May 7, 1992 - STS 49 - the first mission for shuttle Endeavor. This one is the stamp where it says 'sunk?'. The HMS Endeavor was the first European ship to reach Australia, Botany Bay. She was eventually scuttled, per the Wikipedia article, 'in a blockade of Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island in 1778. The wreck has not been precisely located but is thought to be one of a cluster of five in Newport Harbor.' Not sure what to go on there, unless the location is its scuttling, or Botany Bay, Australia. Alternatively, the Department we're looking for could be Botany?

Staring at the front of the card, the first letters of each poem line spell AURORA, not sure what else to get there, yet. 

Poking around on the triangle, we make our lives a bit too hard - rather than trying to solve for all the sides, which we can't without then angles, we only need the area. The area of the triangle in question? 51. Yep, AREA 51. 

Couldn't resist. Moving on... The institute website for triangle? doesn't exist, but it does for /51. Off we go! The website gives us information on the 'world's first xenobiologist', whose name and details have been redacted, presumably for their safety. Their first name was neither Alice nor Aurora - we keep looking (well, to be precise, I go down an Endeavor rabbit hole, my partner keeps looking...)

The cleartext message looks odd to us, and, given the math, we pick out the words right, mean, zero, jump out. The sum of all the numbers between 1 and 210 is 22155, its mean is 105.5... not sure where we're going here yet. On second glance, several numbers are missing: 29, 34, 78, 102, 153, 164, 191.  Letter to number gets us 

I start digging on the weird letter math. 

• 13+L = 13+12 = 25 = Y
• N-M+L-8 = 14-13+12-8 = 5 = E
• 9+J = 9+10 = 19 = S
• C+E+1/9 + L-Lx11/11 = 3+5+1/9+12-12*1 = 9/9 + 1 - 1 = A? or are the / meant to be dividers of letters?
• 13-L+L-K+21-R = 13-12+12-11+21-18 = 5 = E

Eventually we feel stuck, and check the clues. We were correct on the Aurora, and on the Area 51. However, we were supposed to focus on the 'Atlantis' as part of the sunk clue, and not go down the Endeavor rabbit hole, for all that that was the stamp the word was on... We look back at the plain text, and a clue takes us to counting the missing numbers. Ooops. One letter per line, or, I play with excel... the Mid(text,start,numberofcharacters) function is VERY handy. ROSWELL. ffs. I guess we're supposed to ask the person, name still redacted, about roswell? 

The weird letter math is harder than we were making it. Each integer/letter is a character, which then is acted upon. So, 13+L is both 13 (m) and 13+12 (y) = MY

• 13+L = 13, 13+12 = 13,25 = MY
• N-M+L-8 = 14-13+12-8 = 5 = NAME
• 9+J = 9+10 = 19 = IS
• C+E+1/9 + L-Lx11/11 = 3, 3+5=8, 8+1=9, 9/9=1, 1+12=13, 13-12=1, 1*11-11, 11/11=1 = Chiamaka
• 13-L+L-K+21-R = 13, 13-12=1, 1+12=13, 13-11=2,2+21=23,23-18=5 = Mambwe

His name is CHIAMAKA MAMBWE. Ok, I loved and hated this puzzle. Clever, but makes me feel like an idiot. We put his name into the website, get an email address, and ask about Roswell. That gives us a bit of a discourse on Americans' interest in Roswell, belief in aliens, and just general weirdness, then sends us on to another website, using the other codes - atlantis and aurora - to gain entry, whereupon we are gifted with the first page of an alien autopsy.

While I love the Enigma Emporium's overall concept, I wasn't that taken with this card, or the previous in the Veritas series. I feel like the Wish You Were Here series had a better payoff in terms of reward, and the puzzles were less... fiddly? Still, a pleasant way to spend a Friday night with my puzzling partner. 

Cycle of Learning - The Enigma Emporium Season Two - Veritas - Card One

 My partner and I are back at it after a break - delving into the second set of cards in The Enigma Emporium's second season - The Cycle of Learning. We started with Trial By Cipher, and are now working our way through Veritas, which features an X-files-esque cover photo of some guys in a moodily-lit field. Not that this is the only order - the EE website has the four sets of puzzles 'linked' but not in any particular order. In we go.

The front of our first card features a space rocket lift off against a background of stars, some lines which I presume will be constellations/words on the back, song lyrics from Frank Turner's "Silent Key," and the words Island Maze Tsunami Parliament, with an arrow pointing to 'maze'. 

On the reverse, deep purple pretty, there are two sides. On the left, an encrypted message overlaying a series of circles/orbits with dark print denoting some of Jupiter's moons. Down the center there is a website pointing us to a page at our friends The Infiniti Institute that doesn't, at least at first attempt, appear to exist. On the right hand side, we have: a picture of Galileo, discoverer of the first 4 of Jupiter's at least 79 moons; a stamp with a little spy icon 'cancelled' with a stamp requesting a password; and a series of numbers in X.Y format. First thought, MoonofJupiter.Letternumber

I abandon my partner on that and go work on the cipher. I can solve the first few lines easily, as a logic puzzle then realize that the different orbits are different ciphers. As I'm talking, my partner realizes they're not cryptograms per se but Caesar ciphers, based on the order in which they were named. 

• (Callisto: +4): I have learned much in my years undercover. Hopefully what I am now bringing the Institute will 
• (Callisto + Sinope: 4+9=13) serve the gre
• (Sinope:+9) at understanding  
• (Elara + Sinope: 7+9): for which we
• (Sinope: +9) stri
• (Sinope+Europe: 9+2=11) ve
• (Europa:2) seven
• (Elara + Sinope: 7+9): years at NASA
• (Sinope+Europa: 9+2=11): and eight
• (Europa: 2) more at
• (Elara + Sinope: 7+9): my present i
• Sinope+Europe: 9+2=11): nfiltratio
• (Europa:2) n have
• (Sinope:+9): shown me many
• (Sinope+Europa: 9+2=11): secrets
• (Europa:2) Of those,
• (Sinope:+9): I am writing to
• (Sinope+Europa: 9+2=11): prese
• (Europa:2):nt to you
• (Sinope:+9): the greatest

I have learned much in my years undercover. Hopefully what I am now bringing the Institute will serve the great understanding for which we strive. Seven years at NASA and eight more at my present infiltration have shown me many secrets. Of those, I am writing to present to you the greatest. 

Space spies? I feel like I've seen that movie, but I'll totally watch it again :) Gives us an idea, though, for the coordinates. There've only been 5 space shuttles (Enterprise apparently never flew outside earth atmosphere), and none of the second coordinate goes above 5. So, Letternumber.SpaceShuttle? Would be in keeping with the Challenger quote on the front. In order, they were Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour.

That gives us:

• 1.4 - 1.Atlantis: A
• 6.3 - 6.Discovery:V
• 1.2 - 1.Challenger:C
• 2.4 - 2.Atlantis: T
• 4.5 - 4.Endeavour: A
• 3.1 - 3.Columbia: L
• 7.4 - 7.Atlantis: I
• 8.1 - 8.Columbia: A
• 8.1 - 8.Columbia: A
• 7.4 - 7.Atlantis: I
• 2.2 - 2.Challenger: H
• 5.3 - 5.Discovery: O

And that makes no sense to us, either. Bah, humbug. Maybe it's the quote on the front? Word.Line? Not making any more sense....

• 1.4 - Were
• 6.3 - I
• 1.2 - Led
• 2.4 - Down
• 4.5 - ???

Letter.Line? Not any better. I still think the arrow pointing to the Maze must have something to do with it. 

• 1.4 - W
• 6.3 - A
• 1.2 - L
• 2.4 - E
• 4.5 - N
• 3.1 - E
• 7.4 - W
• 8.1 - N
• 8.1 - N

Does the song have anything to do with it? Line.Word?

• 1.4 - Of
• 6.3 - I'm
• 1.2 - The
• 2.4 - As

We give up, and go look for a clue. It turns out that the gentleman isn't Galileo, but Claudius Ptolemy. He came up with the geocentric universe, at which point maybe these are in the order he thought the "planets," including the sun and moon, orbited the earth? Earth (center), Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Eureka! Transmission

• 1.4 - T
• 6.3 - R
• 1.2 - A
• 2.4 - N
• 4.5 - S
• 3.1 - M
• 7.4 - I
• 8.1 - S
• 8.1 - S
• 7.4 - I
• 2.2 - O
• 5.3 - N

Not sure what that gets us, as the institute doesn't have a /transmission. The full message would be 'ask me about the transmission'. Does he have his own institute page? No, apparently not. 

We go back for another hint. The arrow wasn't just pointing at 'Maze'. *sigh* We find the website. 

We get a name using the 'constellations', following another website hint. This card is really requiring a lot hints, and would potentially require us to either write on or cut up the card, neither of which we want to do. Wire? String? My digital image software skills are lacking, so we go with the full hint. We put the full name into the website, and get an email address. Presumably to ask about the transmission? We, of course, do so, presuming as well that it has to do with the search for extra terrestrial life that his bio mentions. 

We get an email response, and other website, which requires another password. Meanwhile, apparently the transmission in question is something that conspiracy theorists said was sent by Neil Armstrong himself having seen aliens on the moon. Still, not the password. And then we do a google image search - it's Chrome's "Incognito Mode" icon. FFS. The result is apparently the aforementioned missing tape. Hmf.

I'm afraid this wasn't a particularly auspicious start to the second set of Enigma Emporium's Cycle of Learning - Veritas. While it goes well into the theme of the card and the X-files vibe, the puzzles themselves require more online sleuthing and digital manipulation than solving. My favorite part was honestly solving the cryptogram before realizing it was a Caesar cipher. I had fun, because hanging out with my puzzling partner doing puzzles is fun no matter what, but it didn't feel as satisfying as some of the other puzzles. I hope the rest of the set have more ciphers and less Google Image search. 

Cryptex Hunt 2021 - Puzzle #2 - Welcome to the Jungle

My puzzling partner was really cruel, and made me wait to do the next puzzle until after work. I may have gotten a bit over my skiis and had most of the first one done before he could log in... patience isn't my strong suit... ever... So, while I (im)patiently wait for my last call, technically on leave following a dentist's appointment that left a quarter of my face numb, I'll fill in a bit about the Cryptex Hunt. This puzzle hunt was started, I believe in 2018, by a maker of lovely handmade cryptex - those beautiful works of art where you have letters around the outside that you must align to form a word of a certain length. If you've watched the (terrible, miscast) movie the DaVinci Code, you've seen one:

The puzzle hunt has had different themes over the years - last year was a YA novel that smacked of D&D and RPG games. A lot of fun, though life got in the way before we could complete it, and here it is already the 19th and we're just starting this one. 2021's theme is old school text adventures - commands like up/down/left/right/n/s/e/w get, use, etc. So far, no grus. The final puzzle (#14) has already been solved by 193 teams, at least per the leaderboard file, which hasn't been updated in about 2 weeks. The first finish was on March 6th. Still, it's fun and keeps us from going nuts, right? 

The theme for the second puzzle is 'Welcome to the Jungle'.

Ok, this one was a bit of a doozie, not so much for the puzzle but for the game that got you to the puzzle. The game itself deliberately gets you lost, so I cannot provide a map. As with #1, you have to complete the game twice. Both rounds you have to gather goods and put them in their proper locations. Pick up dots, egg, thread, and eventually a machete, as well as a boomerang. The first three go on pedestals which you will find while being lost - the guide Olivia's exhortion to not get lost is a red herring. Once you have placed the first three on the pedestals, pick up the journal at the dingo, go back to the vines, and pull, tug, and yank according to the colors in the journal. That will get you a toy to distract the dingo. Go to the (dry) fountain, pick up the machete, put the machete in the stone, and go back to the fountain to drink. That is round 1. 

Round 2, do everything up to putting the sword in the stone. Then, throw the boomerang until it's a stick. Examine the stick to see the order of the clues you'll need, then reexamine, with your improved sight, the four objects: egg, Dots, thread, and sword. The insights reveal clues to answers which, in order, will spell out the Cryptex Hunt's solution for puzzle two. 

The Russian jeweler is Faberge, the creme de menthes made by the same people as Dots are Andes, Dupont's first synthetic fiber was Nylon, and Arthur's Queen was Guinevere. Together, that spells FANG, the solution to puzzle #2. 

Cryptex Hunt 2021 - Cryptex Hunt Puzzle #1 - International Cryptex Day

 Far behind the times, thanks to, well, everything, my partner and I are curious to try this year's Cryptex Hunt. On a lunchbreak I get us set up to compete under the name Secret Squirrels - referring to our D&D characters of a rogue and a blue flying cleric, respectively. Puzzles 11 and 12 have already been released, so we have quite a bit of catching up to do. I'm setting these to be published on April 1, after the puzzle hunt is over, to make it fair for others catching up as well. 

I have a brief delay before my next call so dive in after sending the links to register to my partner. The first puzzle is an old text based adventure game. Must not get eaten by a gru! 

You start in a room with a rather obnoxious tutorial, which I chose not to deactivate just in case. Find a card, get told that you're going to need to open the microwave downstairs, which is locked. Easy peasy. First, go check out the bathroom. That soap feels pretty heavy... can't break it, but soap dissolves in water, right? Drop it in the apparently VERY CLEAN water, to reveal a key to the southern room, theoretically. However, you've become a germaphobe and can't just reach into the clean water to grab the key. Of course. 

Wander downstairs, pick a magnet off the fridge in the kitchen, and some twine from under the sink. Use them together to make a magnetic fishing tool to get the key out of the toilet. Step one complete. Open the door, and you find a remote without batteries, and a working phone (unlike the one in the hallway). Grab the remote and head downstairs. 

Have a look at the magnet and the hallway phone. It's not the same alphanumeric set up that you're looking for, but as the magnet image shows, it's got your password. Writing it all out, you have a few options. It's not POLICE or SOLACE, but SPLICE. Using that password, we get the message to Call Jess. 

Can't call anyone from the phone downstairs, so back upstairs to call Jess. Thankfully apparently you know her number by heart. She's a bit scattered but eventually tells you to tune the TV to Channel 34. Back downstairs you go. Getting your 10,000 steps in!

Look at your living room couch. It's a mess, and full of useful goodies, like that obnoxious noisy toy. If you open it, it has batteries which you can use to power the remote you picked up from upstairs. Turning to the appropriate channel gets you the image of someone typing in a code on the microwave. Head to the kitchen again, type in the code, and presto! 

You get a very cool little ticket to an escape room, with its own coded message. Use the message on the cryptex, which in turn gets you a flyer for a repair shop. What to do now? Much useless 'fixing' of pieces ensues, before a clue makes me realize that the first words when sounded out make a word: ARRAY. No clue what to do with that. It doesn't make any sense.... until I remember we need to actually input an answer for cryptex hunt itself. 

So, the answer to puzzle one is: ARRAY

Cycle of Learning - The Enigma Emporium Season Two - Trial by Cipher - Card Five

 We've come now to the final card of the first set of season two of Enigma Emporium's puzzle postcards. Trial By Cipher, and presumably our final task before being granted entry to the Infiniti Institute's hallowed halls. Defending my dinner from hungry cats who have selective amnesia about their own dinners, we begin.

On the front of the card is a picture of water on a beach, and a quote about leaving footprints in the sands of time. I immediately get 'If I go crazy then will you still call me superman' stuck in my head. This is NOT helpful. There is a path of small bird (?) prints on the sand, perhaps connecting the letters but I can't see any message at first glance.

On the back, we have the same beach image. There are two messages, one broken oddly but legible, one a set of four words that reminds me of a Playfair Cipher, but it has repeated letters. The stamps are a picture of a castle or fortress, and an image of an X'd out lighthouse. There are also two lines of sets of numbers, top and bottom, which look like they're some sort of line-word-letter grouping. 

I start looking at the words: absconding - clinandria - paedagogic - fraxinella. I try to 'decode' them as a playfair, using the word sublime as a key - nothing. The other keyed cipher I can think of is a Vigenere - no luck there, either.

Do the words themselves have meaning?

• absconding - leave hurriedly and secretly, typically to avoid detection of or arrest for an unlawful action such as theft.
• clinandria - a cavity or area in which the anther is situated on the column in flowers of the Orchidaceae
• paedagogic - related to teaching
• fraxinella - a Eurasian perennial herb (Dictamnus albus) of the rue family with flowers that emit an aromatic flammable vapor in hot weather.

Not sure that got me anywhere, other than a new desire to plant flaming flowers. 

I'm staring at it, convinced that there's a rail fence in there somewhere, and then I see it. I was even kind of close - in a meandering path like the steps in the sand, we can find ALEXANDRIA. Given the sand references, I'm guessing Egypt, not Virginia.  

Now that we have that, I get a little closer to the stamps - it's the date of the fortress, not the date of the Lighthouse or Pharos of Alexandria. A quick Wiki trip teaches me that the stones of the Pharos were used to create the Citadel of Qaitbay in 1477, which I expect is the year whichever branch of the Institute that we are dealing with, was established. Then I go down a rabbit hole reading about the Citadel while my partner does actual work. 

It turns out that the quote on the front is from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's A Psalm of Life. We consider that the numbered lines could refer to quatrain-line-word, but nothing comes of that, nor of quatrain-line-letter. We're still missing the name of the department and its head. While I'm trying to get philosophical, my partner solves the Department. The number sets refer to line-word-letter of the one quatrain on the front, not the whole poem, and, when read, provide PATTERN RECOGNITION. 

Which leaves us with the oddly spaced, oddly font-ed message, from which, presumably we need a name. If we can look at it long enough. Broken kerning hurts, people. There are several standalone letters, seemingly italicized, of which we can make no sense. yuendiw. innuendo? Reading them up and down as we did with Alexandria doesn't yield any more sense. Nor does counting the number of letters in each group and trying to A=01 it into submission. We try rotating the card due to the weird font, but nothing comes from that, either. Banging our head, we take a hint, then bang our heads harder. We were ALMOST there with the counting and pairing. Sigh. Morse... not letter pairs but dots and dashes. SAM PORUS. 

The final department is Pattern Recognition, led by Sam Porus and established in Alexandria in 1477. And we are correct! Officially welcomed to the Institute. I am not convinced that that is all there is on the page, but despite something being titled 'hidden during prewarmup,' I cannot find any further clues. Still, all in a good evening's work. Thank you, Enigma Emporium for all the fun, and I'll look forward to cracking open the next set next week! 

Cycle of Learning - The Enigma Emporium Season Two - Trial by Cipher - Card Four

 In an effort to save the shreds of our sanity, and make sure we're getting enough variety and entertainment in our diet of COVID isolation and too much work, we're going to *try* to make Saturdays puzzle days. So, here we go. This time, it's card four of Enigma Emporium Season Two - Trial By Cipher - in which we attempt to join the enigmatic (see what I did there?) Infiniti Institute. 

On the front, we have five flowers - Poppy, Rose, Sunflower, Coneflower, and Marigold. Except, what's bugging me, former plant geneticist, is that they're listed as spp. which is normally for a latin name, rather than an english name. Something tells me we'll need to find the latin names. Alternatively, we could go diving into the language of flowers. 

On the back, we've got a recipe for floral tea, and a message from 'Maple', superimposed over what is possibly supposed to be a maple tree, and a subtitle 'Common Maple', over the wrong latin name for maple (Acer spp.). The name, instead, is for moonshine yarrow (Salix achillea).  There are two stamps, one showing what appears to be a dead daisy (0), and what appears to be a floral tea service (100). Maple's note is all about metrics, conversions, etc. so somewhere we'll do the math to get the final number (presumably another message). 

Step one: latin it up. Dear old Linnaeus made our lives easier. I've been to his garden in Sweden. Seems like a lifetime ago, when traveling was a thing. I digress... I also look up their meanings in the old Language of Flowers, while my partner tries to make sense of the back.

On the front:

• Poppy - Papaver spp.- symbol of sleep and death
• Rose - Rosa spp. - symbol of love, friendship, etc. depending on the color. These look red so we'll go with love.  
• Sunflower - Helianthus spp. - symbol of adoration, loyalty, longevity
• Coneflower - Echinacea spp. - symbol of strength, and possibly healing
• Marigold - Tagetes spp. - herb of the sun, passion and creativity. 

So, that gives me nothing, top to bottom, then I read them in order left to right. Papaver-Echinacea-Rosa-Tagetes-Helianthus: PERTH. We have a location of whatever branch of the institute this is for, at least :) 

On to the back... I start with the same first step for the floral tea - diving into the latin names. My guess is that the weights will be what letters we need from them, but talking about 'organized' probably means we'll need to alphabetize by latin name, or by english name, before we're through:

• Calendula - Calendula officinalis - 511 - NCC
• Marigold - Tagetes spp. - 142 - TEA
• Mint - Mentha - 29 - ???
• Rose Petals - Rosa petalis -227 - OOT 
• Nettles - Urtica dioica - 511 - CNN
• Red Clover - Trifolium pratense - 86 - UL
• Chamomile - Matricaria chamomilla - 142 - MRT
• Lemon Peel - Citrus limon excorio - 539 - UTM

We run into trouble when we get to Mint - there's no specific variety listed, and Genus Mentha doesn't have 9 characters. But I finish because I have a feeling we'll need them anyhow, with apologies for the probably bad Latin on peel and petal. I used google. So, at some point we're going to need to separate the letters from the weights. If we alphabetize by English name, keeping the numbers in the same order, we get

• Calendula - 511 - NCC
• Chamomile - 142 - CMH
• Lemon Peel - 29 - EE
• Marigold
• Mint 
• Nettles
• Red Clover
• Rose petals

That quickly goes no where, so we try alphabetizing by latin name. Unfortunately, Calendula stays where it is, and Mint once again throws a spanner in the works. I feel less guilty for all the mint I've accidentally killed over the years (I know it is a weed. I still can't grow it). 

• Calendula officinalis - 511 - NCC
• Citrus limon excorio - 142 - CRI
• Matricaria chamomilla - 29 - AI
• Mentha - 227 - EE?
• Rosa petalis
• Tagetes spp. 
• Trifolium pratense
• Urtica dioica

What if we alphabetize by latin name, then run the numbers smallest to largest? While I'm throwing everything at the wall, my partner solves it. Ingredients by alphabetical order in English. Then convert the value in grams into ounces (a brilliant leap based on the words 'metric' and 'conversion' in the note), take the whole number, then A-01 gives the following: RESEARCH

• Calendula - 511 grams = 18 ounces = R
• Chamomile - 142g = 5 oz = E
• Lemon Peel - 539g = 19 oz = S
• Marigold - 142 g = 5 oz = E
• Mint  - 29g = 1 oz = A
• Nettles - 511g = 18 oz = R
• Red Clover - 86g = 3 oz = C
• Rose petals - 227g = 8 oz = H

So, so far we have the Research Department based in Perth, Australia. We still need a name, but that might be (Moonshine) Yarrow, or Acer. Common Salix would be Willow. If we take Salix achillea separately we get WILLOW YARROW. We go with that, and that seems to work.  

We are a bit stumped on the year. The stamps so far have been the year - it may have been established in 100? 1000? 0100 would be 4 in binary. D? 1000 grams = 35 oz. Seems low for something in Australia. 100 oz is 2834, a little high for a year. We try many random approaches, and give up. We go for a clue. Then bang our heads. That dead flower? It's FROZEN. It's not dead dried flower made into tea - it's frozen and boiling, which are 0 and 100 on Celsius, respectively, or 32 and 212 Fahrenheit. 244? Yep. 

And there we have card 4. Except for the stamps, which we really needed the help on, this was a lot of fun. I don't know, though, that I would ever have identified the dead flower as frozen without a prompt. 

Willow Yarrow, head of the Research Department in Perth, founded in 244, we look forward to meeting you once we've completed our initiation :)

Happy Saturday night all, I hope you're enjoying Season Two - Cycle of Learning from the Enigma Emporium as much as we are! 

Cycle of Learning - The Enigma Emporium Season Two - Trial by Cipher - The REAL Card Two

Welcome back to a two-card binge of Enigma Emporium's second season - Cycle of Learning - and the first set in that series - Trial By Cipher, in which we attempt to gain access to the mysterious Infiniti Institute with our sleuthing skills. Maybe not off to such a great start, as my puzzling partner and I apparently accidentally did cards two and three out of order, and weren't able to check our answers on the website. Oops! Being stubborn cryptographers, we opted to do two cards in a night - a wild weekend indeed! So, behold, the solving of the REAL card two....

On the front, we have "The Patterns of Nature Help Us Find Understanding" in front of a bunch of different spiral images. Think the Golden Mean or Fibonacci sequences. Snail shells, Sunflower inflorescences... It's not a direct quote from anything we can find, but we get the picture... On the reverse we have an encoded message on the left and what looks on first glance to be Pi to an unreasonable length, but which we expect will have 'errors' that spell the real message. As to stamps, we have three this time - Carrots (64), Tree Roots (25), Ginger (9).  

We divide and conquer. My partner takes Pi while I look at the message, another cryptoquip, presumably. I like those :) Off we go!

We were right - there were numbers in 'Pi' that didn't fit. They were: 26 64 84 9 97 92 40 98 2 08. Not seeing a pattern, but then we look at the numbers they replace: 14 21 13 5 18 15 12 15 7 25. NUMEROLOGY. 

I'm still stuck on the message. Patterns of Nature aren't helping in this case. I give up on the cryptoquip idea, leftover from the last/next card, and start attacking the puzzle... mathematically. And then I start laughing rather maniacally. It's a nested Caesar, based on the Fibonacci sequence - 1 1 2 3 5 but then thankfully loops around, making it easier for me to run it on dCode so I don't have to scribble everywhere:

Mathematics is not solely the study of abstract equations. Moreso it is a lens by which to understand reality itself. Amedeo Alessandro

Ok, so far we have Numerology as the department, presumably led by Amedeo Alessandro. We still lack a location and a year, but based on the prior puzzles, I'm willing to bet that the year is 853, based on the roots of the stamps. Still, need a location. My puzzling partner looks at the shapes and realized that, based on the sides, we get 2178414. That gets a shipping company in WA, truck parts, MLS numbers in Las Vegas... Looking at the differences, we get 161433, which is a nice dark blue in RGB. Probably not what they're going for. Trying to find ways to make this a zip code.And then I realize we're making this far too hard on ourselves. At A=1, we get Baghdad. 

We plug our answers into the application page, and we are correct! And then we go check our answers for what turns out to have been the third puzzle... just in case... 

Cycle of Learning - The Enigma Emporium Season Two - Trial by Cipher - Card Two (Actually three, oops!)

 It's been a long time since my puzzling partner and I had the time, energy, bandwidth, etc. to continue our attempt to gain admission to the Infiniti Institute. As a refresher, this season from Enigma Emporium is  The Cycle of Learning. It consists of four sets of five cards each, much as the last season did. The first set of cards is called Trial by Cipher, which, per the website and the cards, is focused on our ability to join the prestigious Infiniti Institutes cryptology department. This time it's me on the computer and my friend with the cards.

Given the need for my friend to scan, he works ahead to send me the images and goes and makes a drink (thankfully catching that the jar he had was mustard not maraschinos before adding it to his glass...) while I look at the cards. We opted for the 'Book' card, as they don't seem to require any order, only that you have all the answers to input at the end. On the front we have an image of five (5) books, with the alphabet above and a range of numbers, no greater than 18, at the bottom. Ok, theoretically a book cipher, or a straight forward alphabet scramble rather than a Caesar. On the back, we have a muddled message on the left (a la Cryptoquip substitution ciphers), and a set of numbers on the right, overlaid above an image of the front, with ABC 123 highlighted above the normal image. There are two stamps, both with mirrors, with the numbers 41 and 14, so guessing a reversal will be part of our solving.    

While I'm trying to find a Cryptoquip solver online that will let me solve it without having to scribble but also not giving the answer, we wonder, too if colors don't have something to do with it. I finally found the level of support I needed at MatrixQ, which lets me do the thinking, just without paper everywhere.  (nevermind, doesn't work). Thankfully finally found exactly what I needed at dCode, which offers a manual substitution option for their monoalphabetic cipher. 

Starting on the front while I dig around for a better cipher tool, we take a crack at the numbers. Nothing above 18, and has 0s. So, A=0, Z=25? Nothing, forwards or backwards. What about the book titles? The 0 could be a space? Well, Linguistic Studies has 17 letters, max, so unlikely, and running it straight, starting at the C in Cultural doesn't work, either. Hmmmmm....

Back to the Cryptoquip, with many thanks to dCode: 

The English language, like every written tongue, has a couple of flaws. Regardless, the ability to utilize and manipulate it with fluency is certainly an important art. Anna Eve Massam 

First, her name is a mirror, a palindrome, like the stamps. Then I go on a hunt for the author (the books on the front, by the way, have no visible authors. Unfortunately, the first page that shows up on Google is the hints page for this card on Enigma Emporium. I do NOT go any farther, but at least I know we got it right! 

Back to the other puzzles. The number block on the same side is my next attack. After several failed attempts at Caesars, forwards and backwards, we give up and take a hint from the hints page. And then I start yelling. At myself. This is a cipher on a book postcard for crying out loud. FFS... 

With much thanks to ISBNSearch.org and Google... 

• Seattleness: A Cultural Atlas
• Minneapolis: An Urban Biography
• New Orleans Noir
• Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies
• Dallas: Then and Now

In comparison, these are clearly the books on the front cover, EXCEPT for Minneapolis, which must be the location? The one that doesn't match is the book Linguistic Studies. 

That's all the puzzles we can find... Going to try to plug them into the application form to see what we missed..... And then we realize there's an order... Time to start another card, to check if our answers are right? Maybe... 

Cycle of Learning - The Enigma Emporium Season Two - Trial by Cipher - Card One

The Enigma Emporium is back with another season of awesome puzzle postcards. While last season was retroactively titled Predator or Prey, this season is The Cycle of Learning. It consists of four sets of five cards each, much as the last season did. The first set of cards is called Trial by Cipher, which, per the website and the cards, is focused on our ability to join the prestigious Infiniti Institutes cryptology department. This time it's me on the computer and my friend with the cards, we dive in. 

Inside the envelope are 5 cards and a note, stuck to one of the cards, presumably the one we're supposed to start with. The note immediately sends us to the Infiniti Institute's cryptography department, where of course we poke around. We anticipate getting answers to the cards which we can then submit to the department, much as the 'FBI' cards previously. We see where we get the title for this series, as Infiniti Institutes (which we know from prior work is a front for the Ouroboros) has "Endlessly Continuing the Cycle of Learning" as their motto. The note is signed Lisa, presumably Lisa Drygg, director of operations, per their faculty page. 

We begin. While I'm downloading the images to examine, my colleague has already deciphered the location. But first, let me describe the cards. On the front, we have a message 'Imagination is more important than knowledge', where knowledge is written in multiple rainbow colors. The background is a paint set and colored pencils. On the back, we have a handwritten message repeated twice with a series of brushes with colored paint on them. On the hilt of each brush is a letter. There is also a series of stamps. 

As I was pulling up the files, my colleague solved the location. When used in the order of 'Knowledge' on the front, the letters from the brush hilts spell MANHATTAN. This is presumably our location, more specifically, when we look at the stamps, using that same logic, we get MOMA, or the Museum of Modern Art, located at 11 West 53rd Street, Manhattan. 

On the back of the card, there is a message, part of which contains phonetics spelling "Billy Quort." A quick check of the website reveals that there is no Billy on the faculty, but there is a link to an event in Manhattan, where Nikola Tesla hypothetically caused a minor earthquake. A search for Billy Quort on moma.org doesn't reveal anything, either. 

The repeated message has some letters with highlighting, which are different in the repeated messages. The message also speaks of reflections, so that may come in handy. The letters are: GSMTFRILITRDCSOE - UEOSHEETYONOITGU. These, of course, are gobbledygook. This is where the 'reflection' method comes in. I think they're using Atbash. Unfortunately, that doesn't yield anything either, we get: THNGUIRORGIWXHLV - FVLHSVVGBLMLRGTF (thank you Rumkin). I could try interweaving them, but that doesn't seem to yield anything backwards or forwards. Nor do the letters all tend themselves to ones which could be flipped - b to d for example. A brute force Caesar doesn't seem to yield anything either. There must be another hint around here somewhere... for the heck of it, I run Vigenere ciphers with 'curiosity' and 'art' as keywords. Nothing. This is frustrating, as the envelope for the Trial by Cipher has a Vigenere key on it. Hmmmmm. Then I feel like an idiot. I flip the letters first, as letter order matters in Vigenere. That gets us UGTIONOYTEEHSOEU - EOSCDRTILIRFTMSG. Sadly, that doesn't yield anything on Vigenere using insight, intensity, guile, knowledge, curiosity, curious, art, Moma, Billy Quort, Billy, or Quort as keys. We also try the reflected approach of encoding the phrase rather than decoding, no dice. 

Eventually, we give up and look for a clue, which tells us that we may need to look left, right, and center...

I try to look to the right on the right and the left on the left, which is gobbledygook again, then remember the 'reflect' note, so look to the right on the left, and the left on the right. That gets us: CREATIVE THINKING - CREATIVE THINKING. At this point, we go into the website.

A quick plug in of the answers to this card gets us past the first set of questions, and we are done with the first card of Trial by Cipher, the first set of puzzle cards in Season Two of Enigma Emporium's puzzle cards, Cycle of Learning. 

Thanks for sticking reading, and please do check out Enigma Emporium's wonderful puzzles!!

The Copycat Files - Enigma Emporium - Wish You Were Here IV - Final Card - Sagrada Familia

We have reached the final card of season one of Enigma Emporium's Wish You Were Here Series. This final card, or at least final in our order, closes out the set of The Copycat Files, a series of cards received by 'The FBI' after we finished solving the capers in the other three sets. I'm very glad we already have season two waiting; I'd hate to be out of puzzles.

This final card is dark in color. On the front is a picture of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, the famous, still-in-progress cathedral by Antoni Gaudi. It felt like a bit of a cheat to identify, as I was there about a decade ago. At the time, I found that the stained glass windows were best captured with the underwater setting on my pre-DSLR point and shoot camera. I digress... Around the picture on the front is a series of colored tiles, reminiscent of another Gaudi creation, Park Guell. There is a backwards set of writing around the outside of the tiles. 

On the back are three stamps, which my puzzling partner identifies as Louis Braille, which means that the tiles on the front are likely a Braille message, given that they are three high. Possibly three messages as there are three colors. Given that the purple/red stamp is crossed out, there could only be two messages, blue and yellow. There are also a series of boxes that may correspond to the letters on the front, though not all align with the message around the outside, and another series of characters in some sort of code, with colors to start. 

Starting with what appears to be the simplest first, the message around the outside of the front is a bit mixed. All Men Try Not To Have Mine.  In So Many One Try. Hours None Yearly Are Fine. Can Sol Eat Rave. Instead, I have to look through the paper and attach letters to the boxes. That gets us: MY NAME IS ANTONY ARASLAV. That doesn't use all the boxes on the back - some may line up with the Braille, but not all boxes align with text.

While I was doing that, we realized that the code on the back wasn't caesar. I tried skip code, and realized he's playing with light, similar to the Ars Paradoxica codes from the podcast that I've detailed elsewhere on this blog. <Forwards - Red Shift> This part is merely a small diversion. <backwards - Blue Shift> I have begun a new life here in Toronto.   

That leaves us mostly with the Braille. We start with green and yellow, as the purple stamp of Braille is crossed out. We assume that there are overlapping blue and yellow codes, where green tiles are used in both messages. That turns out to give gobbledy-gook, so instead we treat each six-set as two letters, blue, then yellow, in order of the stamps.

IW-AS-NOT ALWAYS A DISHONEST MAN. AFTER I LOST MY JOB AT THE PLANT I DID NOT SEE ANOTHER WAY. THE FIRE WAS A FAKE AND I KNEW MY FAMILY WOULD BE AWAY. I HAD A WEEK BEFORE MY LIFE INSURANCE ENDED. THIS WAS THE WAY TO PROVIDE FOR THEM.

Ok, so, we have Antony Araslav, currently living in Toronto, who committed insurance fraud, faking his death, presumably by burning his house down with him inside it, to provide his family with insurance money. As crimes go, this seems fairly tame. 

And thus we have the final card of Season One of The Enigma Emporium's postcard series. This one was a bit of a slog on the braille, and I had trouble keeping the lines in order, but still a very good code, and I appreciated that the play of light and tiles reflected the work by Gaudi in Barcelona. Good job, and I'm looking forward to season 2! 

The Copycat Files - Wish You Were Here IV - Enigma Emporium - Shakespeare Card

 This is the fourth of the five cards we picked up in the last group of Enigma Emporium's first season of puzzle postcards, now called Predator or Prey. It's been a slow holiday season, so we were hoping for a bit of a challenge, but this, at least, didn't start out that way. 

On the front is a picture of Shakespeare's Globe Theater, complete with a very obvious DUBAI in the windows, and a series of quotes from various plays. On the back, we have a skull, fragmented, with names of key characters from Hamlet, minus a letter, in each fragment. We also have a Shakespeare stamp with the numbers 3.18.90 and a series of #-#-# which are presumably related to some of the plays or quotes on the front. Possibly Hamlet with the skull? Alas poor Yoric... I start solving even as I'm setting up the post.

From the windows, our mysterious friend is in DUBAI, in the United Arab Emirates. The missing letters from the names spell I ROBBED GARDNER MUSEUM. That was harder than it needed to be as my brain kept supplying the missing letters... Thanks, 11th grade English :)  Apparently, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is a real museum in Boston, which suffered a theft in 1990 and is still offering a reward for their return. Neat. 

I work on the assumption that the book codes are from Hamlet. I remember my 11th grade English teacher, Mr. Z, having us watch different film versions to understand how different directors interpreted Hamlet's madness, and whether he actually loved Ophelia or not. Some things stick, apparently. Also showing us clips that demonstrated that, having listened to a reading of Tennyson's Lady of Shalott, most listeners focused not on the Lily Maid of Astolat, dying in a boat, but on Lancelot, musing a little pace. Ingrained sexism at its finest... Sigh.  Good times.

Back to the book codes. Line-Word-Letter fails at the second one - there is no 14th word on the 10th line of Hamlet...

As I'm banging my head on the back, my puzzling partner is solving the front. It turns out that the names of the plays from which the quotes come, spell out PAT O'TOOL. Apparently our erstwhile art thief living the life in Dubai.

I go down a rabbit hole on the Lady of Shalott and possible locations for Camelot while my puzzling partner continues the real work. 

Having naught else to go on, we stick with Hamlet. There are 5 Acts, with a total of 20 scenes - the last number couldn't be Act, but could be Scene. It could be Word-Line-Scene? Also doesn't work. Letter-Line-Scene would have the first two letters be HH, so guessing that's a no as well. 

The stamp has 3.18.90 on it, with no known play associated with that date, unless perhaps Richard III being in process. The Ides of March, a la Julius Caesar, are the 15th of March, not the 18th. All the 18th from 3.18.90 kept pulling up was his Sonnets... but I was suuuure it was Hamlet. Eventually we gave up and got a clue. Yup. Sonnets. But not for the stamp. Because that would have 18 lines and all of the sonnets are 14 lines. Still no clue. 

With Much Thanks to the Folger Shakespeare Library, we worked through the text of the note: I Live Like A King Here. I Will Never Return And Never Be A Prisoner. Tell The World My Story.

And then it hits us. The date of the Gardner Heist was March 18th, 1990. *sigh* 

So, there you have it, Pat O'Tool robbed the Gardner Museum on March 18th, 1990, and fled to Dubai. He lives there in kingly fashion and will not return.

Thanks to The Enigma Emporium for another fun and exciting evening. I wish returning the stolen goods to the real museum was as easy, as I can think of a few things to do with a $10 million reward. The cats could eat tuna for the rest of their days, among other things :) 

First, though, we must devolve into a discussion on whether the thief went straight to Dubai, or whether there were other stops first. Dubai in 1990 wasn't much to look at, living like a king is doubtful. Perhaps they sold the art to the emirs and lived with them, rather than Dubai proper? An Irish Gangster in the Emirates' Court? We may be overthinking...