Argh! Tragedy!
But I do find it interesting that the target was in Tennessee, a state with lots of double letters. Might we be able to examine the last message and find some way to derive the state name from all those repeated letters?
As for the types of puzzles, the quote box concept is interesting. But I’m not sure how to apply it.
I thought the laddergram idea was more interesting. It’s really easy to laddergram “fox” to “the”:
fox
foe
toe
the
The vertical columns kind of look like some of the weirder words we’re seeing in the codes. Look at words like “iiiieeee” and “eeooaann” in the last message. Maybe Boris is including a few veritical columns and a few rungs of each ladder. The last code also had all of “sTiCk”, “sTeam”, “sTone”, “sTill”, “steal” in it. All part of one big word ladder? Or maybe there’s one “st???” word that showed up five times in the message, and Boris is giving us the bottom rung of five different word ladders each starting with that word. Someone was pointing out similar words like “ounces” and “nieces” before too. I haven’t been able to make anything work though.
Hey, too bad about the Andrews (or is the Stevens?), but at least now we don’t have the pressure of working under a deadline. That’s good, right?
Ah ha! Quote boxes! That makes sense. That’s why the letter frequency matches a normal letter frequency.
Oho, wait… So the pound signs might indicate when a particular column has fewer letters than the others?
So what are the "fox"es? Possibly definitions for where the rows start/stop?
Jones calls tonight and apologizes for the unintentional error in his report. The Stevens family is, of course, the family in the old TV sitcom Bewitched. Jones’ wife was watching an all-night Halloween marathon of that show, and somehow the background noise from the program must have filtered in subconsciously and wound up as a mistaken name in the report Jones typed up. Jones assures You that You need pay no attention to the accidental reference to that particular classic TV comedy.
Carry on…
Not a good morning. Not good at all.
First, You woke up this morning feeling under the weather. Next, You turned on the tube to watch a little classic TV comedy, but the cable was down. No picture but fuzz. Then You decided to make the morning coffee, but You find that the urn is empty. Grr! You have been working so hard on the codes You didn’t notice that You used up the last of it yesterday.
So You decided to go to the supermarket and get some coffee…and maybe a little ice cream. Ice cream always feels good on a scratchy throat. But the store was out of ice cream (something about a hijacked truck, according to the stockboy) and the coffee grinder was broken. So You had to forget the ice cream and buy pre-ground coffee—which is never as good. At the last second You saw something at the check-out counter and on impulse You bought that item as well.
When You returned home, You found the door to your place ajar. This was particularly concerning as You always lock up when You leave. However, a search of your home found nothing missing, and You discovered no alien blobs lurking around to eat You. (OK, admittedly this is paranoia…but it wouldn’t be the first time the spies have tried to kill You off.) Nothing seemed to be amiss and several valuable objects were untouched. Sigh. In your sickness and frustration You must have simply forgotten to close the door.
No, not a good morning at all.
“What else could go wrong today?” You mutter as You start to brew the probably stale-tasting coffee.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
You answer and find Jones.
“What now?” You ask.
Jones enters.
“We’ve heard again from Barlow and the spies. This message was sent via street waif to the White House early today.” Jones fishes in his pocket and produces a note. It reads:
We tried to warn you that we were not bluffing. You did not listen. Now death has struck. The War of the Worlds has begun. Our alien attack in Flag Pond only stopped because we stopped it. Had we not intervened, there would be hundreds more deceased and you might still be battling a giant alien monster destroying everyone and everything in its path. Next time we will not be so generous.
Our demands have increased. We now want $200,000,000. In addition to pardoning all past and present spies, you are now required to give them each a new car and free gas for life. Washington DC must change its name to Barlow DC. Finally, the University of Tennessee must be shut down.
If the money is not there and the changes are not enacted in the next ten days, then another alien monster will attack a large population hub. You will not be able to stop it. The casualties will be enormous and our demands will increase. Don’t you see that you must eventually give in? Had you only heeded us the last time, there would have been no Halloween disaster. Please do not make the same mistake again.
You have until dawn, November 13th.
Boris Barlow—The Great Mind and Master
You crumple the note and toss it to the floor. This has got to be stopped!
You hand Jones a cup of coffee. The Agent grimaces as he takes a taste. He is too polite to comment on the coffee quality, however.
“We’ve spread a story about rabid bears to explain the Halloween tragedy. It’s the best we could think of. Fortunately, the press is just printing what we tell them. However, if we have a major attack in a city, we likely won’t be able to cover that up. There’s going to be mass panic everywhere.” Jones puts down his cup. “And of course there is no chance of the demands being met. Therefore it is all up to You to save the country.”
“I’ll get right back on it,” You promise. As Jones leaves (without finishing his coffee, You note), You pull out the extra item You have just purchased. It is the latest issue of a Dell puzzle magazine. Perhaps if You look at the different puzzles long enough You might get some hint at the solution to this danged code.
Perhaps Barlow was once staring at similar puzzles when he got an idea. Just maybe Barlow once looked at one of the puzzles and thought, “Hey, I could use that layout to create a coded message…”
The message below was posted this morning on the underground internet site Spy-Mates, a place for “the meeting of lonely undercover agents and others who like to peep.” This deep web site originates from somewhere in Europe has a strict “no espionage” policy. Because it was suspected that this might be more than a simple cryptic love letter, the posting was deleted after several hours. However, according to the NSA, many hundred views likely had already occurred by the time the message was taken down by the moderators.
ThOu reesLlemb grief InTtutTt edd. ha#wAii iii vvee Finks thrOb heMp leeeete pvvp orrrrr deeeeeoeee roe. Cheats Snip No1 venOm ll HiGh Clubs isss allln. tyr3 skiff doom spa fOx oats scold goBo# tarTans mating oomW heck. cAbIn teDeee heaven hide Their neWt# snout ooroeo. ChOp gold et Clunk ice oOoOo Nabs Cats fair eyyy old ellie rrrrr oaeuiaoe. TaLes q bad BaTs lost Aaaa tide amor hues Wide eee trIps green Whom #fFf aahhiioo bEes once fox l fox. CoWl sttsTs loot rx hags incur Curssee bloTs nile. Geep gEp tank nude ruur Hair rbebBby aaez these idols. yooy anvoo sheep awk china sTuMp usA amputee uvWxL aSsets Hide them orbs amen. Dubl#iinn grim orBs sumo hoof FoP ddlll rats arF neTs eyes puS buxem leeeeeee#e. Clog Usa OnW whist tT huant smaks Yoube.
Certain DNA recovered at the scene of the Flag Pond Halloween attack does not match anything currently known to exist. While this has excited some in the scientific community, more reasonable members are quite alarmed. The mountainous area of Flag Pond also is showing spiked radiation levels. There is no sign of any of the missing Halloween residents. Llama tracks from the yard where Mr. Butterball disappeared seem to lead over to the dirt road where the tire marks were located. Some unknown human footprints were also observed at this site.
The National Guard is being called out to protect Eastern Tennessee this Wednesday. The media has been asking a lot of questions regarding this deployment of the Guard, especially in regards to their necessity in the handling of a rabid bear crisis. More awkward queries and editorials are being published daily, and the rather flimsy cover story will probably not hold up for much longer.
It sure would help if You could break the code…
Lights burn very dim. It’s hard to see exactly where they’re coming from. The lights merge into a single bulb overhead. You trudge down a long dark corridor and come to a sharp right turn. And then another. Everything angles downward. The next hall is longer still. Now You turn left. Left again. Then ahead lies yet another long hallway. Low wattage lonely light bulbs sway from the ceiling. They hum and crackle. As You pass each bulb it pops and goes dark. But then another faint ball glows crazily in the distance, leading You onward, deeper and deeper into the abyss. Ancient stoned walls are dripping water. You must be far underground. Wait. Who’s that? There is a mysterious figure now just up ahead. You approach. This weird apparition in front of You wears a dark robe…yet somehow it glows. The thing carries a sickle. No it is an ax. Suddenly a deep laugh echoes from seemingly all directions. The ax rises. You are trapped. You raise a helpless hand for protection. The ax falls. You scream. You are…
Suddenly awake. It was just a dream, and not the helpful kind. You turn on the bedside lamp and try and shake the unreasonable fear that nighttime imaginings sometimes can bring. You look carefully around your bedroom. It’s OK. All is quiet. You are alone.
Sigh. You take a sip of water from the cup beside You on the nightstand. Just a dream…
But the sense of impending doom does not want to leave. It settles in your soul. Indeed lately You have had more than a few horrible nightmares. Are they warnings or foreshadowings? Are they visions of your failure? Of your future? It is as if this spy caper is different. Just maybe this time You won’t have the right answer. This time the darkness may well win out. Halloween forever and amen.
Your eyes travel over to the calendar on the wall. Just a couple of days until the next spy deadline passes. Will Barlow make good on his threat to release an alien monster in a high population area? You already know the answer. The man is insane. Of course he will. You shudder to think of the consequences. And the only way to prevent this disaster is to break the code. And so far You have not been able to do it. You have been outwitted. Barlow has won.
No. You must not give up! You will not admit defeat. Not yet.
You pick up the phone at your bedside and dial. There is the usual ringing tone and then a sleepy Jones answers.
Jones: (Yawn) Hello…
You: Jones, it’s me. Sorry to call at this late hour. I just wondered if you or Brown or one of the others at the CIA had made any progress on the coded messages?
Jones: No. We’ve tossed about ideas. But nothing comes of it. This is probably the toughest puzzle we’ve ever seen.
You: Maybe we should all get together and make one last stab at it. Time is running out.
Jones: I know. Less than thiry-six hours. (pause) What exactly did You have in mind?
You: How about we all get together Tuesday evening. Between now and Tuesday we could all write down our best thoughts. We could get input from anyone and everyone who might be able to help. I think if Brown and you…and perhaps even your in-house cryptologists Agents Cooper and White all came over here on Tuesday, we could hash it all out. We could even vow not to leave until we’ve cracked the code. We are smart people. We can do this!
Jones: All right. I’ll see what I can do about getting everyone together on Tuesday. Our groupthink efforts in the past have sometimes helped. Possibly it is just what we need to get over the hurdle to a solution.
You: We don’t have anything to lose. And we could have a lot to gain. We are almost certainly on the verge of some awful alien creature attack. We’ve got to at least say we’ve tried everything to stop it.
You hang up the phone. Perhaps this will work.
Sigh.
You wish You could be more optimistic…but that black terrible feeling is still there. It’s a weighty ominous dread. Something evil is very close by. You know it. Somehow You know it as a certainty.
You pull on a bathrobe and go into the kitchen to make coffee. You don’t feel like trying to sleep anymore tonight. You really do not want to face any more of those frightening dreams. Not tonight.
Perhaps a little late night classic TV is in order. What’s on the tube in these wee hours of the morning? Ugh. It’s The Munsters. You decide classic TV might not be the answer after all. You pick up the maddening coded messages again, hoping to see something you have missed… hoping to find an impossible answer somewhere in all the bizarre and cryptic texts.
You open the door to your home and haul in the groceries. After quickly putting the items away, You set up your oval table and unfold several chairs from the closet. You are still chilled from the cold outside. It is unseasonable, even for November. Best to get the coffee ready now. Perhaps also a tray with cookies and some sliced fruit.
You know how important this meeting is, but somehow You don’t feel very positive. You look around the living room. Why does that feeling of impending doom seem so strong? You have searched your home and are certain there are no aliens lurking around. So it can’t be that. Yet somehow this afternoon feels as if it is something to savor. As if You might never see the light of day again…
Get a hold of yourself! You decide to fill a small bowl with mixed nuts. You have always liked mixed nuts. Enjoy them while You can, right? Sigh. You wish this meeting would hurry up and get started. Jones told You he and the others would be here by dusk…but the sun is setting and still You are alone. You decide to gather up your notes and take a last study of the coded messages. A last study? Well at least a last study until the others arrive.
And what do You really have to report? Somewhere, at some point, You believe You had an idea that was essential to cracking the code. But which idea was it? You stare down at the messages and they seem to blur. Ugh. Better start on the coffee yourself first. Got to get the brain cells going.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
You answer the door and find Jones and Brown. You invite the CIA men inside.
“Where are Cooper and White?” You ask.
Jones shakes his head. “They’re not coming. They each had pseudo-valid excuses, but I think in reality they’ve just got bad memories from the time they were here before and got attacked by a werewolf. However, I am going to set up a speaker. They’ll be communicating with us from CIA Headquarters in a conference call.”
Jones hooks up the speaker and places it on your table. You start laying out copies of the codes. Brown has been looking at You strangely. A frown appears on his usually cheerful face. “Are You OK?” the young man asks. ”You are kind of quiet.”
“I’m fine,” You lie. “Just trying to keep all the ideas sorted in my head.”
“I’m going to turn on the speakerphone now,” Jones says. “Hello… ? Hello?”
“I am at your service,” You hear a bored-sounding voice that You recognize as that of CIA Agent Cooper. Moments later Agent White also rings in. Brown, Jones and You take seats around the table. The meeting can begin.
Jones sets the agenda. “I want to thank you all for participating in our gathering this evening. I cannot underestimate the importance of what we do this night. The White House will never give in to the spies, so unless we crack this code tonight I am afraid we will have an alien attack tomorrow. The National Guard has been called out in Eastern Tennessee. It’s the area we deem most likely for an attack. However, we really don’t know where that nut Barlow may strike. It is impossible to cover the whole area, much less watch the whole country. We have alerted local police forces, but no one really knows what to expect. And indeed, we have had to be very careful in the type of information we are releasing to anyone, because if word of an alien monster on the loose were to get out, there’d be mass panic.”
“Mass panic,” You think. “No doubt. People would act like it was the end of time.” But You do not voice this concern. Everyone at the table knows this anyway.
“I would like to first hear from my distinguished colleagues, Agents White and Cooper. Then after that young Agent Brown will give his thoughts. Finally, we’ll hear from our friend, the expert amateur codebreaker. I only ask that we remain respectful as each person speaks. OK, Agent White, what have you got?”
The speaker crackles a moment and Agent White slowly begins talking:
+++++
White: I have studied these five coded samples for several days. I am still under the belief that we are dealing with some kind of cryptogram. Don’t let the lack of “Z’s” and “Q’s” fool you. It is a simple matter to substitute common letters with other common letters, and uncommon ones with other uncommon ones. That creates the illusion that the code is not a cryptogram. But we well know that the spies are adept with tricks and red herrings. The spy codes are often deviously designed to send the solver down a wrong path. Now of course the coding is not the same throughout or we would have easily solved it. There must be some mechanism of adding letters, subtracting letters, or who knows, maybe multiplying or dividing. The good news is that I have developed a computer program that can work on multiple mathematical calculations using the different “words” in the code. While the program has produced no results yet, I am certain that if there is really a coded message to find amidst all this mess, my program will decipher it. Nothing of import can be gotten from the punctuation, which is bland. The number sign is a certain hoax. The capital letters are also obviously another red herring. I tried a bit using them to somehow change the code pattern. That was a total waste of time. And if such changing was the case, well then my computer program would have already discovered the solution.
And of course there may not be any messages here at all, you know. This whole thing might just be an effort by the spies to waste our resources by having us spend all our time fretting over codes with no solutions. I don’t really believe the spies can create ravenous alien blobs anyway. The whole thing is preposterous!
+++++
Agent White finishes and You look around the room. Brown is just shaking his head in disbelief. You have to agree with the young man. You don’t put much stock in Agent White’s analysis. But You remain discreetly quiet.
Next comes Agent Cooper’s voice over the phone. She sounds as if she is annoyed that she has even been asked to participate in this meeting.
+++++
Cooper: OK, I’ll make this quick. My friend Agent White is probably right. This is almost certainly a colossal waste of time. Still, I did try and work with the improbable “puzzle book” theory certain amateurs have been stumbling around with. The most likely type of puzzle to base a code on, it seems to me, is the “quote box.” In such puzzles you have a group of letters that drop down into an empty acrostic type grid revealing a message. But if this is the case, what grid? Suppose we take the pattern of the given words as the blank grid, and somehow line the letters up above to drop back into it. Well, I’ve tried, and this concept does not work in practice. Now, perhaps there may be some obscure way to do this dropping, but how can anyone be expected to figure it out? Really, while I think anyone who wants to suggest quote boxes as a prototype puzzle will have picked the best puzzle to have inspired Barlow, I can’t get anywhere with it. As to the other proposed puzzles…how could they work? There are no definitions for acrostic puzzles. Kriss Kross puzzles make no sense. Laddergrams and cryptic crosswords are fun, but how could they apply here? Anagrams are out. Word searches? What words should one search for? And where’s the grid? Mazes? Oh, please! And remember, these codes have been showing up on web pages. The messages might look different depending on the size of a viewer’s personal screen. A puzzle on a printed page is static. The spies could not be dependent on the “look” of a message. So really, I think it is obvious that this whole puzzle inspiration idea is a lot of hooey! Agent White is most likely right. We’re all wasting our time here on some implausible spy plot unlikely to have any real fruition other than a clumsily staged small town Tennessee revenge murder made to look more ominous than it really is just to con the White House into pardoning these spies and giving them some money.
+++++
Agent Brown is really chomping at the bit to respond. You can see he is not in any more agreement of Agent Cooper’s ideas then he was of Agent White’s.
Jones takes a sip of coffee and speaks. “Thank you Agents Cooper and White for your thoughts. They are much appreciated. Now I’d like to ask Agent Brown to speak. He’s got a number of ideas, so please listen carefully.”
Brown shuffles his notes and looks at You pleadingly.
+++++
Brown: I don’t think we’re dealing with a bluff, do You? On the contrary, I think we are looking at disaster very soon. Now I have to respectfully say I disagree with both Agents White and Cooper. I think it is very significant that the letters are of a common mix as opposed to having a lot of “Z’s” and “Q’s”. Furthermore, I think the capital letters ARE important. Has anyone noticed their patterns? The capital letters are almost never next to each other. Also, every coded message we have begins with a capital letter. Now I don’t know what this means, but I sure think it means something. I agree that the punctuation is bland. Almost too bland! There are no commas in any of the codes and no exclamation marks. In the past the spies have used phony punctuation. I’d bet that’s the case here. And I just know the number sign has some use. I just know it!
I think our puzzle magazine idea is very much worth pursuing. I talked with some of Barlow’s doctors at the asylum. Barlow was obsessed with those Dell magazines. Now, I’m not saying that these codes are puzzles lifted straight from a magazine. Clearly they are not. A spy cannot send out puzzles to another spy. No such coded message can be a puzzle for the intended recipient. After all, what if the recipient couldn’t figure out the puzzle? The message wouldn’t get across! No. A coded message has to be something easily decoded by someone who knows how to do it. There has to be a method, and it has to be a consistent method. I think it is possible that Barlow looked at the layout of a certain type of puzzle and thought to himself, “Hey, there’s an idea!” I don’t know what kind of puzzle inspired him, but somehow I don’t think the quote box is the right answer. But which of the others is the prototype? I don’t know. Another of Barlow’s doctors did say he once designed a hedge maze for the gardens behind the asylum. Barlow explained it might help the insane find their way to sanity again. I’m not sure if that tidbit is important or not… but still, it is suggestive is it not?
+++++
Brown sits down and smiles at You weakly. Despite all your inner gloom You cannot help but admire the man’s hard work and obvious effort. Brown is true blue.
From the speakerphone you hear a yawn from someone. There’s some low chatter In the background. It is obvious one of the agents has a TV on. It sounds like an episode of My Three Sons. You want to get angry, but there is no time for such emotion. Not now.
Now it is your turn to speak.
You refill coffees all around and slowly pick up your notes. Though it is well after dark now and the spy deadline is only a day away, You feel a tiny bit better. Maybe all this dread You have been feeling all week is unwarranted. Maybe all is not lost after all.
You stand up holding your notes, and gather your thoughts. You get ready to speak.
But all of the sudden there is a distant boom. The lights in your home blink twice and go out. Jones, Brown and You are cloaked in a deep darkness.
For a moment all three of you sit and wait for the power to come on. But that sounded like the transformer from down the street blowing out. This darkness might last for a while.
Brown turns on his cell phone, but the light it casts is minimal.
“I’ve got a flashlight in my kitchen drawer,” You say. You stumble into the kitchen and feel around inside the supply drawer. Odd. You were sure You had a flashlight here. You scrounge around some more. There was a flashlight here. You are sure it was here.
But now it is gone.
Brown comes up next to You holding out the phone. “Any candles?” he asks.
“Maybe in the pantry?” You vaguely recall some decorative candles given to You a few Christmases back by an aunt. Brown guides his light over to the pantry. “I see one in here. Looks like the scented type someone gives at Christmas when they don’t know what else to give. I’ll bring it over to the table.”
Meanwhile You sift through the junk in your supply drawer and find a book of matches. Brown sets the candle on the table and You light it. The room is now dimly lit by the single tiny flickering flame.
“Our speakerphone is dead. I guess we’ll have to continue without White and Cooper,” declares Jones.
“I don’t think they were much here at all anyway,” Brown remarks coldly. You nod to Brown in agreement.
Courage! This is no time to give up. The spies aren’t going to wait for the electric company to fix your power. You pick up the pages You had planned to present.
“I think I can see well enough.”
You take a deep breath and look to the candlelit faces of Jones and Brown. They appear eager to hear your thoughts despite the power outage. You stand, casting a large shadow. The candle flame causes large freakish shadows behind your friends as well. You feel You are almost at a séance instead of a meeting of the minds. The burning wax has a sickly sweet mall candle smell.
You begin:
“I have to say I am very impressed with Agent Brown. He talked about the capital letters. They surely indicate something. And the capital letters are an even more common mix of letters than the rest of the texts. They are real, in my opinion.”
You look at the capital letters on the barely visible pages in your hand. They seem almost too large for the paper.
“And the number sign has to have a use. I like Brown’s idea of the punctuation being phony. These codes are longer than the usual spy messages. That’s surely something to note. Also, the word length and letter pattern is obviously crazy, and the number of letters per word seems… um… forced… er… almost uh …unreal. I think we don’t really know where the real words um… begin… or… end.”
You are staring at the page in front of You. Suddenly all the periods but the first roll off the page and onto the floor. You turn to look at Brown. But Brown is grimacing. Now he is grinning. Brown looks like… like he’s turning back into a werewolf! Jones is standing. His face slowly begins morphing. Is that the evil spymaster Klaus? But that villain is in jail. For the love of God, what is happening?
“What. is. going. on?” You yell out. But the words seem to come out slow as if on a tape machine played at the wrong speed. You slump down into your chair and the figures around You rise higher and fly away. The room spins.
And now You are sitting alone in the dank crypt-like tunnel of your dream. You can hear the dripping water, but the faint light is gone. The overhead bulbs are off… or are they even there to shine at all? You feel your way down the stone passage and hit a wall. You are in an underground prison of indeterminate size. You must get out. You drag yourself down the hallway, feeling for a path of escape. It is impossible, but no matter the direction you crawl the passage leads downwards. If this is the hallway from your dream then this horrible place is just a maze leading into the depths of nowhere. Down into Hell itself. Mildew reeks. It is so very cold. The floor of the hallway is icy. Are You crawling though snow? You cannot tell. Too much darkness. Too much cold. You try to yell but nothing comes out.
What is that? Is someone there? Ahead a large figure approaches. It is clothed in a glowing black robe. The figure carries an ax.
“Barlow?” You manage to gasp out. It is so damned cold. Biting cold. The snow and ice feel…ancient? The ax rises above You. Must get away. Got to crawl into the darkness. Bitter cold stones. Was that a rat skittering over your hand? This reminds You of the time when You were a child and the room was cold and where was mother cold cold cold coooold daaaarrrkk I don’t know help darkness ax oooo so cold …
And then there is nothing more.
The following message was posted yesterday on the web site of Trenchcoat!, the online “spy-wear” fashion and lifestyle magazine. As it is policy there for site members not to engage in actual espionage, the cryptic communication was taken down by the moderators. Unfortunately, because the site was unmonitored on Thanksgiving Day, the post was not removed until this morning after more than three hundred views.
WwW eHe ndSsS pyp down eorrreshH ass For. est cave fox raT snoOot pPuuoOeebB sky AHaaa veSt Mouse wiffle. tonguue due fox nath dead gatOr a sWaTs Midriftf amen. ovUvv TeEeeene fume tthh nest FfHfrr niLe peas sloppy dOoM eneeeee#e woof muFf#f dG. iIiii loS eeeeeee Grim W fox whom eeee aol summer punk mmmm raln elle. TaCid vvv top whicH minOr blemisA sCars oust Traced dennis beatles summer aaaa. Riss ooHoA NnNn aaaa ss air mars shine Brew eaTs loser data HaTs hiss Bb haTe nile vile hile. Www ooeooooo TrAp exam eeoo iiii eeee iee snot duh sJash coho wwzz tttttt roOoto KAz GaTo Wrap Itch To H fox. Aanaaaaa noSh nnn ee heroics diets our strUt liCeeeee odd heeeee low. cdefg uhF stash at roLl Www BiTe Cake#s eeeeee soda aaizz quoit buM aa#aoaaa TnNnnn Leer nice heed. Oovoooo disedged hide toys OkAy kept Th#eir larNewee breeB aaalll pent Memo hemp noBle.
BREAKING
Mount Airy, NC 12th May 2014
Federal agents surrounded a property this morning in Mount Airy, NC, about 3 miles south of the Virginia state line. Acting on what is understood to be an anonymous tip off, agents gained entry to the building through an open basement window and apprehended a number of suspects. Several refrigeration trucks believed to have recently been stolen in the area were also recovered in nearby woods. Eyewitnesses reported that one of the suspects apprehended was wearing what appeared to be a white laboratory coat.
Can it be true…after all this time…?
Yes! Congratulations hammos1 for solving the “impossible” code. Wow. Or should I say, “Shazam!”
Details to follow…
Holy Cow! hammos1 cracks the long lost unsolved mystery! You can live again!
Knock! Knock! Knock!
“Come in.”
Jones opens the door to your hospital room. You smile weakly.
“The raid on the Grimshaw house was a success,” says Jones. “We captured many spies.”
You process the news and lift your heavy left arm to give a thumbs-up sign. As you do this You look at the calendar date on your watch.
Can You really have been in a coma for almost six months?
Yes. Yet …You know You were also keenly aware, at least some of the time. You were just lost in a very dark place. And lost as You were in the deepest passages of your mind, there was little else to do there but go over the codes again and again. So that’s what You did. You also pondered puzzle prototypes, capital letters, and mazes. Days and then weeks and then months passed. Finally, as You stumbled back and forth through the sea of letters it suddenly all became clear. Yes. You saw the way. You found the path out from the darkness.
The doctors say your first word upon regaining consciousness on April 30th was “Eureka!”
It was a several more days before you could talk and tell Jones the solution. In the meantime, Jones related to you about how he and Brown had managed to be rescued last November by a team of CIA special agents that Jones had placed around your home. At the time, Jones hadn’t wanted to tell You that they were there. He knew You would not like special protection. Jones had sounded an alarm when he realized that your group was in danger. Moments later the cavalry arrived.
Brown and Jones recovered completely in a day or two. Unfortunately, You had inhaled by far the heaviest dose of devil’s foot from the candle and were also the last rescued from the room because You had crawled over into a corner. There was even fear at the time that You had died. But they DID rescue You in time, thank God!
You reach for the cup of water by your bedside. “What about the alien blobs? And Barlow, did we catch Barlow?”
Jones shakes his head. “Barlow escaped, unfortunately.
“According to the spies we nabbed, Barlow received a phone call early this morning, probably from our mysterious friend ‘the Fox’. Barlow left quickly, just ahead of our raid. He abandoned his comrades to be captured. The spies we did arrest are talking, though. They say Barlow had been trying since last fall to revive the remaining alien pods, with no success. Seems all it took was a good chill and those pods were finished. However, we did find one living monster in the back of a stolen refrigeration truck. It is being airlifted to the Arctic, where, barring global warming, it will rest frozen forever.”
Whew! The world is safe from the evil blob menace.
“It is most lucky You solved the case when You did,” Jones continues. “The spies inform us that Barlow was so frustrated he was ready to release the remaining alien Blob on Memphis next week. He had been waiting for warmer weather, which seems to increase the Blob’s appetite. We also solved the mystery of all the missing livestock from this area over the past few months.”
“What about the eerie glowing figure toting an ax?” You ask.
Jones explains that the “ghost” was merely a trick to scare locals away from the abandoned Grimshaw house. The story circulating the very rural area was that the dilapidated house was once owned by a twisted individual known as “Old Man Grimshaw.” Old Man Grimshaw had once killed his handyman with an ax. Now his ghost supposedly walks the area ready to repeat the crime. The spies exploited this legend. Various spies would put on the costume and wander around at night. That kept the area residents frightened and away from this remote location so the spies could operate in peace. One spy says the only trespassers he saw near the house were a kid and his friend playing baseball, and they took off running once they saw the ghostly robed figure.
A nurse enters and tells Jones that You need to rest. As the Agent leaves, he turns to You. “I hope sometime soon You will be well enough to tell all of us how to decode those messages. I have to say that our team has been trying for months with no success.”
You smile again and point to a puzzle book by your bedside. “Take a look at the word search puzzles… and the mazes. That’s where the answer lies.”
Your “Welcome Home” party is letting out. Family, well-wishers and admirers slowly exit, as does the media. Now, finally, it is just Jones, Brown and You. As You gaze around at the balloon-festooned living room, You can’t help but remember what happened here so many months ago. Yes, the spies came close to winning. The case had been given up as lost and unsolvable. Yet somehow You endured. Once again, You overcame a seemingly impossible problem.
(Absolutely brilliant work, hammos1!)
Although Barlow is still free, the spy ring itself appears to be done for a while. The white-coated individual arrested was Barlow’s top lab assistant, Edwin Gore. And without the aid of the brilliant E. Gore, it is doubtful our mad scientist friend will be creating more blobs any time soon. It sure would be nice to know how Barlow was tipped off, seeing as how so few people knew that You had solved the codes and a raid was in the works.
But that answer will have to come at another time.
You take a seat in your favorite easy chair, and Jones pours everyone a cup of coffee.
“Okay,” Jones says with a smile. “Let’s have it. How are the messages decoded?”
You take a sip of the hot liquid. How good it is to drink coffee again!
You begin:
**You: **
There are two types of codes popular with our spies. First there is the* letter substitution* or alteration code. If the code contains an unusual mix of letters, or sequences such as “QWHGZZ”, the indication is that the code is some kind of substitution code. The spies rarely use simple cryptogramming. Still, if a letter substitution code is methodical, it will usually be forced to have some such letter strangeness. I noted that the latest spy code is filled with common letters. So, while there are never any guarantees, the assumption I first went with was that we did not have a substitution cypher, but instead we had the second type of code.
The second kind of code is a hidden message code.
In this type of code the solution is right there…but it is obscured in such a way that the solver must locate the message somehow. Because the actual solution is not encrypted, the puzzle probably contains a much more normal mix of letters than if it were a substitution code. Now it is possible that a hidden message could be concealed among obscure letters and symbols in an attempt to fool the solver. But it is more likely that the “hidden message” will be found among other common lettering, making the actual solution harder to spot.
The hints in this problem seemed to indicate that a certain type of magazine puzzle served as a model for concealing the hidden message? But which puzzle? I tried various tricks with quote boxes and laddergrams, but had no luck. I considered the word search, and at one point was very close to seeing the solution:
And really, that was what this problem was all about. How can one to turn one of these coded message into a word search grid? For the life of me I couldn’t see how to do it. Of course, I also had the problem of the capital letters and those annoying number signs. Additionally, I believed that the given punctuation was inaccurate. Yet I kept hitting dead ends trying to make it work. It wasn’t until I was zapped by that dose of devil’s foot gas that I had the helpful hallucination that gave me the key I needed.
In my hallucination, all the periods on the page fell away but the first. If the first period was so important, what did it mean? After months of sorting the codes in my mind, I hit upon it. The first sentence in each code was the top row of letters for my word search grid. The rest of the letters followed, ignoring the periods. What a surprise to notice that each coded message exactly formed a perfect word-search-like rectangular grid if the letters were written out that way.
Once I had my rectangular letter grid, the messages were right there. Reading down the first column, then up the third and down the fifth and so on… I found the path through the maze of letters and cracked the codes. The capital letters indicated the beginning of words, and the number signs completed the sentences.
“Bravo!” exclaims Brown enthusiastically. “Shazam!”
You smile and everyone is in good cheer.
More coffee all around.
Thanks Biotop- as ever, a most enjoyable puzzle.
You had emphasized the need to count, so I did the usual letter frequency analysis. The frequency of all letters in the message matched the normal English distribution. The frequency of the capital letters matched that of the first letters of English words. Conclusions: it’s probably a transposition cypher, and the capital letters are genuine.
About 10% of the letters were capitals, which was odd. Normal English has about 4%. If Every Word In The Plaintext Was Capitalized Like This, the figure would be around 20%. I wasn’t sure what to make of this, so I assumed that the plaintext was in standard case but had an unusually high proportion of capital letters for some reason. (This was wrong, of course!)
Like others in the thread, I spent some time wondering about the quote box approach, but it was never going to work. Either you have to encode just the scrambled letters- leaving a difficult problem for the recipient to work out- or you encode both the scrambled letters and the plaintext, which is redundant.
I got stuck here for a while so I studied the text for clues. There were many references to mazes. A zigzag or back-and-forth pattern was suggested by the dream sequence in the light bulb corridor. But it was the observation that the word lengths were strange or forced that was key. I hadn’t noticed this. The fourth message, for example, has hardly any one or two letter words. I decided that the spaces, and probably the punctuation, were fake, so I removed them. There were many hints that the # symbols were important for some reason, so I kept those in.
I now had a long string of characters, and an idea that there would be some maze-like path to be found within them. The obvious thing to do was put the characters into a grid. But how wide and tall should the grid be?
My first thought was that the total number of characters would indicate the correct grid size. The simplest way of doing this would be to have the number of characters equal a perfect square. The first message is 837 characters long, once the spaces and periods have been removed- not a perfect square, but only 4 short of 29 squared (841). Then I noticed that this messaged contained exactly 4 # characters, so I decided to double up each # to bring the total up to 841 and try a 29*29 arrangement.
Of course, this is not the correct method, and I should have come up with nothing. But I made a lucky, or unlucky, mistake. I miscounted the number of columns and created a grid with 30 columns instead of 29. And suddenly the message was visible, starting at the top left of the grid and running *diagonally *down and to the right. At the bottom of the grid, it ran across for a couple of characters, and then snaked back up and to the left. If the message reached the right hand side of the grid, it switched over to the left hand side, where it continued. I read the whole message like this, not realizing that if I had only tried a grid of 31 columns, I would have had the message arranged in a much easier-to-read vertical pattern.
I was about to embark on decoding the other messages like this, when it occurred to me that a) this solution was rather inelegant, and b) there must be something in the message to define the grid width. I even said to myself, “if I was writing this code, I would put a special character in to show where the line break is”. Then I noticed the period at position 31 of the first message and felt stupid!