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...