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Post by mofinn on Jan 15, 2023 21:00:18 GMT -5
If "Nine Reveals" is correct, I think the "R" is Clue #2 means "reveal". I think Clue #2 is a rebus.
We have "Treasures in Th3 Qu35t", then a pink"R", then the word Nine (where the middle letters,"IN", are written in green ink), then a green leaf.
Restating: "Treasures in Th3 Qu35t Are Revealed in GREEN."
I think this means that the Green letter pairs in the tic tac toe shape (DC BA EA DA BC BA BB DC AB) refer to the Answer to the Riddle.
These letter pairs the the ONLY thing writtne in Green.
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Post by Jenny on Jan 16, 2023 7:05:41 GMT -5
Hopefully, I have a solve for TXFYMSWYFXR. I used a One-Time Pad cipher, with the alphabet Z to A. The keyword is "fortunately". The Result is "NINE REVEALS". This was a back-solve (a reverse engineered solve), guessing that the first word would be "Nine". "Fortunately" does appear in the Story, as the first word of the SIXTH Sentence in the SIXTH paragraph. I think this is intentional, as there are 66 letters in the RIDDLE. Thanks! Awesome! NINE REVEALS is correct and is another piece to the Riddle. Mofinn gains another 5 entries. (Fortunately is also the only 11 letter word in the text - which matched the ll letter string to decode.)
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pop
Junior Member
Posts: 52
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Post by pop on Jan 18, 2023 9:03:52 GMT -5
Current status: NINE REVEALS NINE FROM T(5) N(4) FOUND BY B(9) WITH THE FIRST OF THE QUEST Current best guess: NINE REVEALS NINE FROM These Nine FOUND BY Beginning WITH THE FIRST OF THE QUEST Can we make guesses as to what the 2 unsolved 'mini-puzzles' to determine the riddle are? (because I see 3 possible 'mini-puzzles'...?) The 2 unsolved squares are both 9 letters long. T(5) N(4) and B(9) 1) HKJDSJRTC (9 letters) seems like we should use an alphabet like BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZA to solve 2) 6 2 8 5 2 6 1 9 5 (6 3 8 7 9 9 1 8) [9 numbers, and then 8 numbers below the 9] 3) "Polybius" 43 21 51 41 23 21 22 43 12 [9 characters] (I personally think this one is not a mini-puzzle because 43 would have to be a "B" which would give a word like "B? ??B?" - which is bad. Or 43 could be a "T" and 21 a "N" which would give "TN??? N?T?" - also bad.)
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Post by puzzledrifter on Jan 18, 2023 13:30:44 GMT -5
Current status: NINE REVEALS NINE FROM T(5) N(4) FOUND BY B(9) WITH THE FIRST OF THE QUEST Current best guess: NINE REVEALS NINE FROM These Nine FOUND BY Beginning WITH THE FIRST OF THE QUEST Can we make guesses as to what the 2 unsolved 'mini-puzzles' to determine the riddle are? (because I see 3 possible 'mini-puzzles'...?) The 2 unsolved squares are both 9 letters long. T(5) N(4) and B(9) 1) HKJDSJRTC (9 letters) seems like we should use an alphabet like BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZA to solve 2) 6 2 8 5 2 6 1 9 5 (6 3 8 7 9 9 1 8) [9 numbers, and then 8 numbers below the 9] 3) "Polybius" 43 21 51 41 23 21 22 43 12 [9 characters] (I personally think this one is not a mini-puzzle because 43 would have to be a "B" which would give a word like "B? ??B?" - which is bad. Or 43 could be a "T" and 21 a "N" which would give "TN??? N?T?" - also bad.) That would be interesting to confirm, if we can find of if any of those pieces are not part of the minipuzzles. A few of my own thoughts on each. I dig your best guess- I feel like NINE and BEGINNING are extremely likely but could also see it being NINE REVEALS NINE FROM their nine FOUND BY beginning WITH THE FIRST OF THE QUEST. I suspect the "nine"s might require substitution from something else- the example that comes to me is the keys at exactly the 9:00 position on the clock. Either that's a nudge that 9 is important or it means KEYS needs to be substituted into the riddle, e.g. "KEYS REVEAL" or "X REVEALS KEYS" 1. I think a Caesar shift of 1 or 2 is simple enough that it wouldn't have gotten a whole separate visual cue to hint at. My current theory is that the steps indicate that the word is double encrypted, e.g. that you apply a keyword twice in an OTP-type cipher to get the message. I haven't spent a lot of time trying to reverse engineer based on that, but H to T, H to B, and J to N are all even numbers of shifted letters so either could fit the pattern of a double encryption with the same keyword. A second theory is that the steps, which only show letters A,B,C,D, hint that the shifts per letter are dictated by the contents of that Polybius-looking table. 2. My first instinct on this one is that the numbers are indexing letters out of something, but not sure what, since I don't see any sets of 17 anything. If that is the case, the fact that it would return (9 8) implies to me that there's something more here than the answer to one of our riddles. 3. This one does scream Polybius, but I also noted that the second letter is never D or E, which could mean a few things. If we're treating these as a 3x5 table instead of a 5x5, then the yielded numbers in positions 1 & 6 are what we'd need to translate H and J to T and N- but the rest of the letters return gibberish with this message. One other detail I noticed about the potential for Polybius is that BEGINNING uses all letters from the first three rows, so the lack of D and E in the second position would make sense if this is similar to a Polybius cipher. The problem there is that if we're assuming it's BEGINNING, that has three Ns, and there's no three-peat in the table. A few options from there- 1) the word isn't BEGININNING but a similar B word and the Polybius cipher has a short key (tried KEYS with no luck), or 2) there's some logic to selecting an adjacent letter to what the vanilla Polybius results return.
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Post by Jenny on Jan 18, 2023 13:59:27 GMT -5
A few hints/confirmers for completing the Riddle:
The two mini puzzles are the 3x3 Grid and the 9 numbers in the top right (ignore the 8 (it's separate)).
Solving those two puzzles would fill in and complete the Riddle. A hint for both of these: Nine, as shown, is important. There are actually many sets of Nine to find/see/discover/realize in different ways, and from nine, these last two mini puzzles can be solved. Each with a different thing of nine.
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pop
Junior Member
Posts: 52
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Post by pop on Jan 18, 2023 14:29:57 GMT -5
Me: "I don't think the 3x3 is a mini-puzzle" Jenny: "The 3x3 Grid is a mini-puzzle." Me: -Insert slap face emoji.....
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Post by puzzledrifter on Jan 18, 2023 22:49:26 GMT -5
Me: "I don't think the 3x3 is a mini-puzzle" Jenny: "The 3x3 Grid is a mini-puzzle." Me: -Insert slap face emoji..... I was pretty similar with essentially ruling out the nine numbers. So looking for unused nines, I spot a few more things. -There are nine symbols around page 1 -Keys are at the 9 o'clock position on page 1 -The word Mouse is the only word that appears in the story exactly nine times -There are nine cards -There are nine building blocks in the small image for building blocks at the bottom of page 1 -Counting "MW" there are nine blue/green words or phrases around the border Looking back at those cards a second time, I notice a few more things. -If ace = 1 and jack = 11, red sums to 38 and black to 35- could have something to do with TH3 QU35T hint that 3+35 = 38 = ?. Not sure about that, though, since for spelling QUEST, ace meant 11 and jack meant ten. -The cards can be used with the 3x3 grid if the first letter indicates which red card and the second letter indicates which black card. That yields 15 21 20 20 16 21 21 15 17, and I suspect that lines up with BEGINNING as the solution to one of the mini puzzles. There are a few spots in the text I find that almost work for making the pull- the pattern seems likely, though, since this yields 21 three times (N occurs three times) 15 and 20 twice (G and I each occur twice), and 16 and 17 once (B and E each occur once).
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pop
Junior Member
Posts: 52
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Post by pop on Jan 19, 2023 10:12:36 GMT -5
I count "mouse" 9 times on page 1, and 1 time on page 2. (I like this idea though.)
Words that have 9 letters are (11 occurrences, with 'something' 3 times): swallowed whimpered something something something sometimes situation whispered Excitedly forgotten invisible
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Post by puzzledrifter on Jan 19, 2023 23:21:39 GMT -5
I count "mouse" 9 times on page 1, and 1 time on page 2. (I like this idea though.) Words that have 9 letters are (11 occurrences, with 'something' 3 times): swallowed whimpered something something something sometimes situation whispered Excitedly forgotten invisible 9 distinct words- would have been a good set to pull one letter from each, but it doesn't seem like that works here. Also it might be early to jump the gun and skip to the riddle, but something else that occurred to me about it- it could very well be: NINE REVEALS NINE FROM THREE NINE FOUND BY BEGINNING WITH THE FIRST OF THE QUEST It could also be "third nine" or "third name" but I like THREE NINE the best... My biggest rationale on that would be clue 1. "Top of Three" is something we haven't used yet (unless it refers to the clock ultimately giving us WITH?) so that suggests to me that it may go with something in the riddle. I'm a few layers in on assumptions at this point, but if indeed that is THREE NINE then I wonder if THREE might substitute for TOP in the riddle for the final message- it's a three letter word that's part of the set that goes with the clock showing 3, so it would fit with the base puzzle and fit extremely well with the clue "TOP OF THREE." And while TOP works as a noun depicted as a toy, it also makes a wonderful noun or adjective referring to the top of something.
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Post by Jenny on Jan 20, 2023 6:27:29 GMT -5
Maybe those nine letters are not pulled out quite in order, like how THE FIRST wasn't?
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Post by puzzledrifter on Jan 20, 2023 8:27:54 GMT -5
Maybe those nine letters are not pulled out quite in order, like how THE FIRST wasn't? I think that does it! Skipping over multiple instances of SOMETHING and running through the words in order in the story, I extract: swallOwed wHimpered somethiNg someTimes sItuation whispEred Excitedly forgotteN inviSible And those letters anagram to THOSE NINE! Thanks for the nudge!
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Post by mofinn on Jan 20, 2023 20:31:37 GMT -5
Nice Work, Puzzled Drifter! That was a great solve! So the 3 x 3 grid will give us "Beginning"?
It seems like the Puzzle Word Boxes might need to be reorganized? The first clue said to "mix and fix"; and, besides, the wording is kinda funny right now. (In my opinion).
One possible redrafting of the Riddle boxes that sounds a bit better (but only slightly better) to me is this:
"With The first Nine from Beginning Of the Quest; Nine reveals (are) Found by Those nine.
In any event, I guess we are supposed to obtain a new keyword to use for the letter string HKJDSJRTC. My guess is that when we decipher that letter string, using a new keyword from the Riddle Boxes, we will have our answer???
Perhaps we need to pull out the numbers "3 3 5" from those phrases? Because this hunt is called "Th3 Qu35t".
All guesses! I have no solves/answers!
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Post by puzzledrifter on Jan 20, 2023 23:53:19 GMT -5
Nice Work, Puzzled Drifter! That was a great solve! So the 3 x 3 grid will give us "Beginning"? It seems like the Puzzle Word Boxes might need to be reorganized? The first clue said to "mix and fix"; and, besides, the wording is kinda funny right now. (In my opinion). One possible redrafting of the Riddle boxes that sounds a bit better (but only slightly better) to me is this: "With The first Nine from Beginning Of the Quest; Nine reveals (are) Found by Those nine. In any event, I guess we are supposed to obtain a new keyword to use for the letter string HKJDSJRTC. My guess is that when we decipher that letter string, using a new keyword from the Riddle Boxes, we will have our answer??? Perhaps we need to pull out the numbers "3 3 5" from those phrases? Because this hunt is called "Th3 Qu35t". All guesses! I have no solves/answers! Yeah, BEGINNING seems likely. Other options might be things like BELONGING, BELIEVING, BORDERING, BRANCHING. "Beginning" is so nice for an instruction, though! I have a different theory about this that I feel pretty good about, and I'm ready to submit my first guess for the whole shebang - PERFECTLY. Might be way off, but worth a shot! I believe each of the 9 minipuzzles has another hidden letter/character we can pull if we focus on "nine", and those give us the new keyword, and in order they give us the shift for each letter for the final answer. This ultimately gives us a purpose for every single unused element thus far. 1. NINE REVEALS: E- I see two likely ways with this one- one focusing on looking for a 9-9 instead of 6-6 and one pulling the ninth letter of the keyword, FORTUNATELY, which is E. I went with the latter. 2. NINE FROM: L- Since we pulled letters from the border on this one, the 3+35 = 38 must come into play here. Rotated around the alphabet, that'd come out to 12, or L. 3. THOSE NINE: ?- Not sure about this one, but I'm assuming it has to do with the parentheses numbers. 4. FOUND BY: N- In the word NINE, the letter N comes immediately before the I. 5. BEGINNING?: ? 6. WITH: E - The 9:00 position points at the keys. That may indicate a K, or maybe 2/B because there are two keys. I'm going with E, though- since there are two keys, I'm picking the second letter of kEys. 7. THE FIRST- M- First letter of row 9 8. OF THE- N- the first letter of 9 spelled out 9. QUEST- S- The letter made by the pile of cards containing the 9 card. It could also be just indicative of 9 / I for the 9 card by itself. Applying those as the key and taking the letters I have from that pool, the S in position nine gives me a nasty J, but the I variation gives me a nice T as the result. That gives me CY?P?EEFT which can anagram nicely as PERFECTLY assuming the other two minipuzzles yield R and L.
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Post by puzzledrifter on Jan 21, 2023 0:06:18 GMT -5
Just one more observation- assuming the parentheses numbers go with the clue for THOSE NINE, then we can limit it to numbers that are eight letters long when spelled out. There are only seven of those between one and twenty six. One of those would fit this solution- if the clue yields EIGHTEEN, then that would ultimately give us the R for PERFECTLY.
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Post by Jenny on Jan 21, 2023 7:20:40 GMT -5
Maybe those nine letters are not pulled out quite in order, like how THE FIRST wasn't? I think that does it! Skipping over multiple instances of SOMETHING and running through the words in order in the story, I extract: swallOwed wHimpered somethiNg someTimes sItuation whispEred Excitedly forgotteN inviSible And those letters anagram to THOSE NINE! Thanks for the nudge! Great! Another piece to the Riddle found - congrats! 5 more entries for Puzzledrifter.
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