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!
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