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...