The lady who answered said the envelope wasn’t there anymore. She remembered it had been left there by an Alex, but that’s all.
*** Ponder
The Google street view isn’t high-res enough to do more than confirm there’s a grocery-deli there, unfortunately. I tracked down two different business names and numbers for that location. One was disconnected, the other answered but he didn’t speak much English, sounded suspicious, refused to confirm I had reached the right location and hung up on me.
*** Ponder
I couldn’t find an online resource that gave Starbucks by store#, not even their corporate site. There’re a bunch of Starbuckses on Peachtree in Atlanta. One of them is at 2333 Peachtree. (Is that the number in the file? It’s hard to make out.) I called that one, she’d never heard of Colin Curtis (I think that’s the name) nor did she know anything about an envelope left there.
*** Ponder
A clear anagram of “Latex Penes”! Ummm…errrr…ok, I got nothin’.
But it would be a good band name.
I’ve subscribed to this thread because it is incredibly fascinating. And because I’m astounded that people have both the time and the energy to figure this stuff out.
It seems to me that the only way this whole thing can be solved is through a community like the Dope. I wonder if other online groups are working on this. For example, the missing DC envelope. But I suppose someone there could simply have fallen victim to their own curiosity and opened the envelope and pocketed the dollar.
I have not read the first thread (Part I). Is it necessary or helpful to read it?
I came up with that one, too. Another (maybe more likely possibility 
) is “Next Please.” Not like that really makes any sense, but there it is.
Algernon, there’s a LOT of fascinating stuff in the first thread, especially pulyakamell’s cracking of an interesting cipher. Definitely check it out if you think this is fascinating.
It’s possible the cut-out letters are a red herring, and the critical letters are the big letters to the left of George’s portrait, or something else that differs from bill to bill. Those large numbers are also found at the beginning and ends of the serial numbers. Another thing that differs from bill to bill is the Federal Reserve bank location. You find that in the small print around the large letter.
So it’s possible that:
#8 is “A” (from CMiller)
#9 is “G” (from Here Come Dots)
And #6, ntucker, could you please call that person back and ask them if they still have the bill, and if they do, what’s the large letter and reserve bank? Also get the serial number. It’s possible those numbers will be needed later to crack a future puzzle.
*** Ponder
Other things that differ:
[ol]
[li]The series year#, [/li][li]Names of the 2 officials who signed the bills[/li][li]Hi… Nope. Just can’t do it. ;)[/li][li]4 single digits just inboard of the big 1’s at the corners. They should match each other on the same bill.[/li][li]2 small capital letters, in the upper left and lower right, in between the corner digits and the 1’s. They should match each other on the same bill. [/li][li]Those small capital letters are accompanied by small numbers that won’t match each other. [/li][/ol]
The rest of these aren’t likely to be significant, but who knows. Better safe than sorry.
*** Ponder
Oops, I goofed on that. They don’t always match the number in the Federal Reserve location stamp, so there are more letters that need to be collected.
ETA: And there’s a small number on the reverse side, to the lower right of the big “ONE”.
*** Ponder
Yeah, I tried a bunch of possibilities, including addictedto.com, with no luck. I also found a repository of all websites registered with Dreamhost.com (where itsanenigma.com and simianagent.com are registered) since April 11 (which is when itsanenigma.com was registered), and tried looking for all domain names containing the letters itsanenigma, as well as all 10-letter domains with at least two Ts and a D. To the first query, I only found “itsanenigma.com” and “simianagent.com.”
To the latter query, I couldn’t find anything that looked like our webpage. I’m brute forcing a couple other possibilities, but the most obvious ones didn’t seem to work. This is making a huge assumption that the website has been registered since April 11 at dreamhost.com. That may not at all be the case.
Link?
I don’t think the cut outs are red herrings, because there haven’t been any red herrings yet (doesn’t mean whoever’s doing this couldn’t throw one in, I guess). I initially thought the the serial numbers of the bills could be something, but I’m betting it HAS to be the cut-outs. It’s the only thing the orchestrator of this puzzle can control. Otherwise, someone (or someoneS) would have to collect bills until they had exactly the ones they needed. Sure they could go and get $50 worth at a bank an go through them all, but I don’t think so. No, I think it the cut outs. And I think it only makes sense that it’s not another “It’s an Enigma” anagram. If it were, I think it’d be way to easy to brute force.
And like Algernon, I’m fascinated by this thread, and subsrcribed hoping to witness the resolution, but also to see if I could lend a hand in any way. I love this type of stuff.
PS - did anyone else notice that all of the books they referenced on the Twitter pages were on the iPhone Classics app? It was probably just done that way as a universal point of reference, but we know whoever put this together is an iPhone user.
Yeah, I’ve listened to it some more and it definitely* says “Ask for Colin Curtis in the Starbucks ?? building number 2333 on Peachtree Street in Atlanta.”
Where the ?? marks are is a word (or two) I don’t quite understand. Something “quede” or “queden” (is/are)?
*I do admit my Spanish is very rusty.
You’re probably right. But for those of us attempting to collect the information over the phone, it won’t hurt to be thorough, just in case. And even if that extra info isn’t critical to cracking the website address, it’s possible that the puzzle creator used some or all of the varying letters & numbers as keys for a future stage of the puzzle.
I’m not going to be able to call the Baltimore location back this afternoon. (Housemate is taking her cellphone with her). Could someone else please try after 2pm (EDT)? Just punch the address into google; you’ll find the grocery store’s name and number easily. I’m not sure, but I think there’s a board rule about posting that info directly.
I tried to call the bar in NYC, but didn’t get an answer. That one is easily googled too. I suspect they won’t be open until sometime in the afternoon.
I know someone I might be able to implore to go visit the two NYC locations if necessary, but it will help if we can confirm envelopes in one or both locations first.
*** Ponder
Just go through here. I manually changed the URL for each date, and cut and pasted the results.
I tried to brute force the URL by writing a script that contained 10 characters, and 3 characters had to be D, T, & T. The only hit was www.drportrait.com. The URL is registered, but the page hasn’t been created yet. So they may have registered somewhere else, or on a earlier date than the 11th.
Thanks for the tip. I’ll go do some reading.
Not necessarily… The riddler could have built a puzzle out of the serial numbers, not vice-versa. They might, for instance, be used as a one-time-pad to encrypt something.
Plugged the new letter in and got two hits: www.dstmonline.com and www.zoetdesign.com. Neither looks like a lead.
I’ve been following this for a while but I haven’t been able to contribute anything until now.
Looking at the images of the dollar bills I noticed the Federal Reserve Bank numbers (one is to the left of the seal). If you place the cut-out letters into their corresponding bank number location in the domain you get this: www.D___N_T___.cm
From there it wasn’t too hard to find: