Post by artofhiddenmessages on Apr 15, 2018 16:48:00 GMT -5
A Famous Grandson: Key
The first, and probably easiest puzzle to solve is the flowers on the banner in the top right. The yellow flowers spell “POEM” in braille.
Results
⠏ ⠕ ⠑ ⠍
Looking at the artwork, there are hints to the poem, some seem more specific than others:
Waning moon
Caves of ice
A damsel with a dulcimer
Music
Floating hair
Close your eyes
Bee (for honey bee, and also a symbol used by Rush, which you will see later)
Milk
If you google “girl with dulcimer”, “dulcimer poem”, “ice cave”, “caves of ice”, “ice cave poem”, you get hits on “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This was a poem about Xanadu.
If you google “Kubla Khan”, you get a hit on the poem, Kubla Khan by Coleridge, and a link to Kublai Khan, the emperor. If you read about the emperor, you find that he was the famous grandson of Genghis Khan. You can also read that Kublia Khan’s birthdate was 9-23-1215 and his death date was 2-18-1294.
If you look at the equation on the left, you will notice that some numbers are missing, or are erased. The bottom numbers 10m – 4a – 2017p = -1150.676 contain a date: 10-4-2017. (This is the date that the painting used for the treasure hunt was completed.) If you follow this trend, you will see that 9m + 23a – 1?1? is one of these numbers, and also 2m -1?a + 1??? Is another. If you caught on, you will realize that 9-23 is Kublai Khan’s birthdate, so the missing numbers must be 1215. And his death date was 2-18-1294. So you can fill in those missing numbers too.
The equation is called a matrix equation. This is probably the most difficult part of the puzzle, but the puzzle can be solved without this bit. It does help with the solve. If you can solve for m, a, and p, you get the numbers, 101.07, 32.06, and 1.008. These are the atomic masses of the following elements:
Ruthenium Ru, Sulfur S, and Hydrogen H. Put these letters together, and you have RuSH. The letters m, a, and p, spelling the word “map” is a red herring. They were just arbitrary letters.
Rush is a rock band. We know music is involved because there is a girl playing music in the artwork, there is a piece of sheet music in the artwork, there is a line in the clues that says, “listen closely and you will hear, the sounds you seek float through the air”. So let’s concentrate on the sheet music.
I used dCode for my encryption of two words. They explain how they encrypt and decrypt music.
Here is a link to their site.
www.dcode.fr/music-sheet-cipher
Tool to decrypt/encrypt a music sheet. Each item of a music sheet can be associated to a letter or a digit.
Answers to Questions
How to encrypt using a music sheet?
Encryption uses 14 notes and eighth notes, quarter notes, half note and whole note, this is 4*14=56 symbols + 3 extras. There are many ways to encode letters with these 59 symbols.
dCode try common combinations in an automatic way and allows you to tell your own character list.
Example: Example 1 : alphabet is composed of 14 eighth notes then the first 12 quarter notes : do1 = A, re1 = B, ... si1 = G, do2 = H, until sol2 = N then quarter notes do1 = O, etc. until fa2 = Z.
Example: Example 2 : alphabet is composed of the first 13 eight notes then the 13 first quarter notes.
How to decrypt using a music sheet cipher?
Decryption requires the 59 characters corresponding to the 59 symbols, it is a simple substitution.
Once the music cypher is solved, you get, “A FARWELL”. You will see that the music sheet is ripped, indicating that there was more to it than just those two words. It was “A Farewell to Kings”, an album by Rush, which included the song, “Xanadu”. Xanadu is the topic of the poem in Coleridge’s poem.
If you google “Rush” and “Xanadu” you will find that the band did a song titled “Xanadu”. You really didn’t need the “A Farewell”. It was there as a confirmer, or another way to get to “Xanadu” if you didn’t already have it.
Many of the clues overlap and act as confirmers. You didn’t have to solve every clue in order to solve the entire puzzle.
Also, you still did not need the math or the sheet music, because all you needed to know is that music was involved in the solve. You could google the words, “music” and “Xanadu”, or “music” and “Kubla Khan” and Rush’s song, “Xanadu” would come up as a hit.
In the artwork, there are some clock gears in the background. By now, if you have figured out that there is a connection to Rush, you could google “Rush” and “clock”. Immediately, among the hits are symbols from Rush’s Clockwork Angels. These are the same symbols around the border of the artwork. They translate into numbers from a clock.
Reading the bottom first: 27-5-8-9-27-17-25
Left Column: 25-6-15-13-13-12-38
Right Column: 6-17-?-11-18-?-14-15-16-1-4-15-?
The right column has some symbols obscured. (Thus the ?)
So now that you have the numbers, what do you do? It is similar to a book code, only it is a poem code. You count letters. However, you must start on Stanza 2. How do you know to start on Stanza 2? The abbreviation for Stanza is “ST”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ST) ST2 (somewhat stylized) appears on the bottle of milk, indicating that we start at Stanza 2. Stanza 2 of Coleridge’s poem begins, “But oh!...” We start counting letters here. We get the following:
WHAT WAS
STOPPED
TA?EN?ROMBOO? (You can deduce that the missing letters are K, F, and K to give you, TAKENFROMBOOK)
The instructions around the border tell you, “Questions to answer there are two”.
What was stopped?
What was taken from book?
The instructions tell you “each answer is a word of one”.
We have yet to do anything with Rush’s song, “Xanadu”. So now we read the lyrics. Here are the important lines we need to answer our two questions:
From an ancient book, I took a CLUE.
A thousand years have come and gone. But time has passed me by. STARS stopped in the sky.
The instructions say, “Turn two in and you are done”. You email in the two words, CLUE and STARS.
Also in the art, are stars in the shape of a U. Then there is ONE lone star. “Stars stopped in the sky”. U ONE = YOU WON.
The hair also had a Morse Code cipher that was a red herring, that literally, “herring”. This was on the female’s left. The curls were dots, and the straight pieces of her hair were dashes. It begins with the first four curls at the top of her head: /…././.-./.-./../.-/--./
The End
The first, and probably easiest puzzle to solve is the flowers on the banner in the top right. The yellow flowers spell “POEM” in braille.
Results
⠏ ⠕ ⠑ ⠍
Looking at the artwork, there are hints to the poem, some seem more specific than others:
Waning moon
Caves of ice
A damsel with a dulcimer
Music
Floating hair
Close your eyes
Bee (for honey bee, and also a symbol used by Rush, which you will see later)
Milk
If you google “girl with dulcimer”, “dulcimer poem”, “ice cave”, “caves of ice”, “ice cave poem”, you get hits on “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This was a poem about Xanadu.
If you google “Kubla Khan”, you get a hit on the poem, Kubla Khan by Coleridge, and a link to Kublai Khan, the emperor. If you read about the emperor, you find that he was the famous grandson of Genghis Khan. You can also read that Kublia Khan’s birthdate was 9-23-1215 and his death date was 2-18-1294.
If you look at the equation on the left, you will notice that some numbers are missing, or are erased. The bottom numbers 10m – 4a – 2017p = -1150.676 contain a date: 10-4-2017. (This is the date that the painting used for the treasure hunt was completed.) If you follow this trend, you will see that 9m + 23a – 1?1? is one of these numbers, and also 2m -1?a + 1??? Is another. If you caught on, you will realize that 9-23 is Kublai Khan’s birthdate, so the missing numbers must be 1215. And his death date was 2-18-1294. So you can fill in those missing numbers too.
The equation is called a matrix equation. This is probably the most difficult part of the puzzle, but the puzzle can be solved without this bit. It does help with the solve. If you can solve for m, a, and p, you get the numbers, 101.07, 32.06, and 1.008. These are the atomic masses of the following elements:
Ruthenium Ru, Sulfur S, and Hydrogen H. Put these letters together, and you have RuSH. The letters m, a, and p, spelling the word “map” is a red herring. They were just arbitrary letters.
Rush is a rock band. We know music is involved because there is a girl playing music in the artwork, there is a piece of sheet music in the artwork, there is a line in the clues that says, “listen closely and you will hear, the sounds you seek float through the air”. So let’s concentrate on the sheet music.
I used dCode for my encryption of two words. They explain how they encrypt and decrypt music.
Here is a link to their site.
www.dcode.fr/music-sheet-cipher
Tool to decrypt/encrypt a music sheet. Each item of a music sheet can be associated to a letter or a digit.
Answers to Questions
How to encrypt using a music sheet?
Encryption uses 14 notes and eighth notes, quarter notes, half note and whole note, this is 4*14=56 symbols + 3 extras. There are many ways to encode letters with these 59 symbols.
dCode try common combinations in an automatic way and allows you to tell your own character list.
Example: Example 1 : alphabet is composed of 14 eighth notes then the first 12 quarter notes : do1 = A, re1 = B, ... si1 = G, do2 = H, until sol2 = N then quarter notes do1 = O, etc. until fa2 = Z.
Example: Example 2 : alphabet is composed of the first 13 eight notes then the 13 first quarter notes.
How to decrypt using a music sheet cipher?
Decryption requires the 59 characters corresponding to the 59 symbols, it is a simple substitution.
Once the music cypher is solved, you get, “A FARWELL”. You will see that the music sheet is ripped, indicating that there was more to it than just those two words. It was “A Farewell to Kings”, an album by Rush, which included the song, “Xanadu”. Xanadu is the topic of the poem in Coleridge’s poem.
If you google “Rush” and “Xanadu” you will find that the band did a song titled “Xanadu”. You really didn’t need the “A Farewell”. It was there as a confirmer, or another way to get to “Xanadu” if you didn’t already have it.
Many of the clues overlap and act as confirmers. You didn’t have to solve every clue in order to solve the entire puzzle.
Also, you still did not need the math or the sheet music, because all you needed to know is that music was involved in the solve. You could google the words, “music” and “Xanadu”, or “music” and “Kubla Khan” and Rush’s song, “Xanadu” would come up as a hit.
In the artwork, there are some clock gears in the background. By now, if you have figured out that there is a connection to Rush, you could google “Rush” and “clock”. Immediately, among the hits are symbols from Rush’s Clockwork Angels. These are the same symbols around the border of the artwork. They translate into numbers from a clock.
Reading the bottom first: 27-5-8-9-27-17-25
Left Column: 25-6-15-13-13-12-38
Right Column: 6-17-?-11-18-?-14-15-16-1-4-15-?
The right column has some symbols obscured. (Thus the ?)
So now that you have the numbers, what do you do? It is similar to a book code, only it is a poem code. You count letters. However, you must start on Stanza 2. How do you know to start on Stanza 2? The abbreviation for Stanza is “ST”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ST) ST2 (somewhat stylized) appears on the bottle of milk, indicating that we start at Stanza 2. Stanza 2 of Coleridge’s poem begins, “But oh!...” We start counting letters here. We get the following:
WHAT WAS
STOPPED
TA?EN?ROMBOO? (You can deduce that the missing letters are K, F, and K to give you, TAKENFROMBOOK)
The instructions around the border tell you, “Questions to answer there are two”.
What was stopped?
What was taken from book?
The instructions tell you “each answer is a word of one”.
We have yet to do anything with Rush’s song, “Xanadu”. So now we read the lyrics. Here are the important lines we need to answer our two questions:
From an ancient book, I took a CLUE.
A thousand years have come and gone. But time has passed me by. STARS stopped in the sky.
The instructions say, “Turn two in and you are done”. You email in the two words, CLUE and STARS.
Also in the art, are stars in the shape of a U. Then there is ONE lone star. “Stars stopped in the sky”. U ONE = YOU WON.
The hair also had a Morse Code cipher that was a red herring, that literally, “herring”. This was on the female’s left. The curls were dots, and the straight pieces of her hair were dashes. It begins with the first four curls at the top of her head: /…././.-./.-./../.-/--./
The End
