Posted on 3 April 2015
Puzzle[]
There is a picture of a box with these letters:
CW -- RACTEFABQE FTEDBBIHXX BKMLTSIJVO 39CHABOFKP RSSHIFPEDH YEFAATXNQE
Hint 1 |
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Hint 2 |
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Notice words that might be formed if things were shfited around.
Solution |
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Start by dividing the original letters into four quadrants and move each quadrant clockwise one position:
39CHA RACTE
RSSHI FTEDB
YEFAA BKMLT
+
BOFKP FABQE
FPEDH BIHXX
TXNQE SIJVO
This gives you the phrase "39 characters shifted by" and the remaining letters:
EFAABKMLTBOFKPFABQEFPEDHBIHXXTXNQESIJVO
These are encoded with a Ceaser Cipher where each letter was shifted. Use a Ceaser Cipher Decoder such as this one to Decipher the characters encoded with a right shift of 23 to get:
HIDDENPOWERINSIDETHISHGKELKAAWAQTHVLMYR
Which leads to the phrase "hidden power inside THIS" and some additional letters that can be encoded using a Vigenère Cipher. The key is "THIS". But note that if you rotate the original letter quadrants backwards (counter-clockwise), by 3, that matches the number of steps to get to the solution of this challenge and the number of letter positions that the letters in the Ceaser Cipher would be rotated if they had been encoded by rotating backwards (left). So you also have to decode the Vigenère Cipher as if it had been encoded backwards. For a Vigenère Cipher the backwards equivalent key for "THIS" is "HTSI".
Use a Vigenère Cipher decryption tool such as this one to Decrypt the letters "HGKELKAAWAQTHVLMYR" using the key "HTSI" to get "ANSWERISPHYLACTERY".
The answer is stl.la/phylactery .