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 :)