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!