The Scarlet Envelope 8 - Anonymous

 So, funnily enough, I've been doing puzzles but not posting much in ages, but I just used one of my old posts on what a Vigenère cipher is to demonstrate how I explain complex things in a job interview, and the current Scarlet Envelope puzzle goes immediately online, and it's too hot outside to just solve the puzzle and go play, that I thought why not?  Yes, this is puzzle number 8. I may or may not go back and fill in the gaps. Cope. 

The familiar red envelope is covered with pictures of a table setting, a robotic TV head character, a tree, and a skull/key thing all on what could be toothpicks. I can only imagine the post office has thoughts. Inside, we have:

1. A newspaper article, The Truth About the Only Drink that Stops a Cold, by a now-deceased journalist who may have determined the secret ingredient was the blood of the company's enemies. There is also a word search
2. A lottery ticket with a grid puzzle and a series of colored triangles.
3. A business card for a patent lawyer (can you patent recipes that include human blood?)
4. A recipe card for "Dark Maple Syrup Pie - With a Hint of Mystery". Alongside sugar, flour, eggs, and dark maple syrup, you can also add razor blades, glass, poison, and document shreds.  And if you're out of syrup, substitute blood. Sounds delicious.
5. A sticker for Daleriver Dark Maple Whiskey, which I actually quite like and will be going on my puzzle and craft cart once this is done. There's a website listed, www.daleriver.ca You can feel that there's something behind the sticker, and it's a link to the puzzle's hints. Not yet...
6. A coaster for the Anonymous Place - Live Music to Die For - Since Never. I'll probably keep the coaster out, too. Can't have guests thinking I'm normal ;) The coaster has a QR code for a Spotify playlist that starts with Monster Mash ;) It also has a website: www.anonymous.place.

Rather than start down the obvious rabbit holes, I start on the newspaper, where you learn about the early demise of Aaron Curry, investigative journalist, who died after only publishing part one of his expose of Daleriver Dark Maple Whiskey - a pharmaceutical miracle that cures the common cold. Frankly, this sounds like Georgian chacha, but with a dark twist. I swear chacha kills anything and everything. I miss it. But I digress. 

On the word search, the clues state that there should be one each of a 4,5,7,8, and 9 letter word, but I found more. It also looks like they should be read as 4 - 8 - 5 - 9 - 7, but that could be over extrapolation. The words I found are: 

• 4 - Over (tout, read)
• 8 - Treeline
• 5 - Reads (louts)
• 9 - Backwards
• 7 - Letters

I tried to hold the treeline image on the article up to the light but couldn't see any letters, backwards or otherwise, coming through the paper from the other side. Must be a different tack. Tucked it back in for now. 

The lottery ticket - Lottery is spelled in different colored letters, on top of arrows pointing different directions. With the exception of the second letter, a blue triangle facing SW, the letters matched up with former 'prizes', and when you found the letter of the correct color, from the prizes, you got C*NCEAL. Going to guess there's an O hiding somewhere. However, it also says that you're supposed to have gotten that somehow from the 'guaranteed prize' grid, which is four sets of foursquares to the right of the ticket. Not sure how that works. Back in the pouch for now. 

Now for the websites. I start with the whiskey. Because of course I do. The first hint is to 'scratch that itch' which presumably corresponds to the shiny sticker on top of the sticker which I already noticed and like because it's shiny so rather than scratch it off I carefully peel and it's got a series of three dots with a curved arrow overtop, presumably meaning I'm supposed to turn something, or exchange something, later in the game. But it's a pretty holographic sticker so I'm keeping it for now. Exploring the page,  you also find that Barbi Bishop, the lawyer with the card, is Daleriver's lawyer for the patent, #2172863, which I expect will come up later. There's also a hidden 'I'm shooketh' gif in the photos, where it looks like someone gesturing with a maple syrup bucket?

Now to the Anonymous place website... I was captured! I'm apparently being held hostage, with a few others, by a TV-headed crazy person. Talking to me from a TV, with a terrifying bunny clown in the shadows. Trying to change the channels, the first one tells me that there are five passwords which will combine to set me free. Ok, great, is CONCEAL one of them? There's a phone-esque number pad at the top, so trying to type that in first.

YES! CONCEAL takes me to the groundskeeper's page - and I remember that the groundskeeper mentioned something about lottery tickets on the daleriver page. Progress. Groundskeeper, Act III. Turns out that the Groundskeeper was paid to burn down the competition. There's also a circled letter: R. Presumably the third letter in the five letter overall codeword. Back to the TV

The next channel is blind justice, so presumably to do with the lawyer, but not sure where to go on that.

The next channel has an arrow sign reading pie numbers. Not sure what that's about yet, though there are numbers on the recipe card, 1 to 5., with no clear order at this point.

Next page has those four foursquares separated, with a ring of arrows inside them. Hmmm. 

Next is a whisky barrel and bottle, presumably linking to the website? Shooketh? Too many letters.

The next page is a picture of trees, with numbers overlaid 84759, presumably there's a place to find the remaining numbers. 

Stumped, so back to the qr code on the recipe. A Youtube - Cooking with Anonymous. Straight math gets me 1583, not enough numbers, so presumably something about the folding the black and red bits to connect should do something to the numbers but I'm not sure.  I admit to being stuck, and carefully peel back the QR code from the back of the sticker. 

Before I even read the hints themselves, I see that the label is one of the puzzles. So I stare at it, the label, and realize that the message "Defined by our Region, Powered by Dark Maple' is the clue. The region is Nova Scotia - too many letters, as is 'Dark Maple' but they call the whiskey itself in the french D’érable - 7 letters, worth a shot. Nope. Not as think as I smart I am. None of the decor looks numeric, then I realize there's a typo on the label - D'rable without the first e. Hmmm. Nope. Nor does 'Whiskey' work. It makes me feel somewhat better that I've identified the first several hints before getting stuck when I do look. It's NOT on my label - it's the bottle on the website. And when you compare the two, yes, there are differences. Dots in lieu of the motto. So, what letters are highlighted? Looks like, based on the relation to the designs: RIWYROR. Ok, that's gobbledygook but let's try. No. The sticker thing. Jump two. So, ENRAGED. Ok, that makes sense. YES! Another video, this time featuring the letter S in a square. (Sesame street style). This is Act IV, the CEO. Police are on their way! The rhymes are a bit off throughout and it's bothering me - not sure if it's intentional or what. But, so far RS! 

Now for the recipe card. YES! I was folding it wrong. Hmf. I need to make the bits line up like the arrow sign. Once I do that 1 lines up with Sugar (3), 2 with Razors (7), 3 with poison (9), 4 with glass (1000). 3791000. YES! 

An E in a heart this time - Grandma's special recipe - Act 1.  Sounds like Grandma got killed by the competition. So we have E_RS_ for our code? 

So, looking at the photos, we still have the trees and justice. And possibly still missing something on the lottery ticket. Starting with the justice/business card. If we take a hint from the card and 'not separating justice' to bring the scales together, we get CONCERN - Act II - The Lawyer - P in a Star. She gave the gramma's patent to Daleriver. Hmf. EPRS_. Still need Act 5 and I expect that's the trees, and the treeline. 

Staring, and staring. And staring. and realizing that the letters could just be the letters puzzle takes far too long. And if you ignore the two on each end which are covered, you get a 10x5 grid, like the wordsearch. Reading what the trees are pointing at, backwards, gets SIXXSIXONE or 6 times 61 which is 366. Nada. I try combining them with the tree numbers from the TV. Also nothing. 6x6 is 36. Plus 1? 37 would give the right amount of numbers for the trees. Or maybe in front? No. I look at the hints. OMG. 6 six times followed by a 1. I was making it far too hard. Act V - the Journalist. A in a triangle EPRSA - Spear? The TV hint says it's a five letter/number combo bookended by zeros. The hints say look at the coaster. Hmf. ACK! The shapes are in the letters of Anonymous place. 

So, we've got circle - heart - triangle - star - square or R- E- A - P - S.  So, 0-REAPS-0 for the code. Here we go. SUCCESS VIDEO!!!

The 8th letter of the INITIATION GAME password is close to the heart of the man who stopped at nothing. That would be the CEO, right? On the website he has a sweater with a big letter Y on it. 

So, for the metagame we have: P - ? - Z/N - T - R - ? - X - Y.  A couple I need to go back and poke at some more. And that is a few hours well spent not boiling outside and hanging out with the cats and drinking tea while trying to use my brain :)