Posted on 18 June 2015
Puzzle[]
Today's Challenge will polish your skills of symmetry and cryptography.
Hint 1 |
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Step 1: The symmetry part doesn't have to do with manipulating the image or the order of the letters. @\
Hint 2 |
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Step 2: Decode each group of letters separately. The 9 letter key should be fairly obvious.
Hint 3 |
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Step 3: We did this before, in Imagine.
Solution |
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In the image, we see these letters:
SOXZ HHF QIAQY AWER KNE EWBZNZ ALXY BHVXAO SWE YCFZN LLR DIUQAO
For the "symmetry" part, convert each letter to the opposite letter of the alphabet, which can be done with an AtBash converter. Or simply use the following table:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N M L K J I H G F E D C B A
This results in the letters:
HLCA SSU JRZJB ZDVI PMV VDYAMA ZOCB YSECZL HDV BXUAM OOI WRFJZL
We see a spider web in the upper left corner of the image. Decode each group of letters using a Vigenère Cipher with the key SPIDERWEB. This results in the letters:
ABLE LID CHING STEM ICE OTHERS SELF RINGED ATE UNDER HER PHONED
The two words ABLE and ATE appeared in the Imagine challenge puzzle, where a prefix or suffix was added to each word to make a new word. In this case, it's just a prefix.
Adding the same prefix to each of the three words in the first two columns and to the first two words in the remaining columns results in:
NOTable SOlid ITching SYstem NOTice SOothers ITself SYringed NOTate SOunder OTher SIphoned
(Not sure why, but for each of the bottom words in the last two columns only one of the two letters is right.)
The letters which have been added to the first two rows to make new words are NOT SO IT and SY. The solution is http://stl.la/notsoitsy, a giant spider attached to the side of a water tower in Urana, Australia (picture).
Reward[]
(image by Andrew Whitehead from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Itsy_Bitsy_by_Andrew_Whitehead.jpg)