In 2014, I subjected my brother to another gauntlet of riddles before he could get to his birthday present. My previous blog post is an updated version of one I wrote shortly after my brother solved those puzzles. This one is being written in 2024, ten years later. I’m reconstructing these events from photos, computer files, and my memory. Please bear with me.
For this second set of riddles, I wanted to lean even more into the idea of numbers stations. I like the idea of information existing in plain sight that only the person with the correct cypher can understand.
It’s about a month before my brother’s 24th birthday. He comes home to find a green envelope with a question mark painted on it waiting for him in his room. (He lives several states away and my parents planted it there on my behalf.) Inside the envelope he finds a birthday card made by me. It’s printed in full color on two layers of cardstock glued together. The thing is covered in puzzles and clues.
There’s a Word Find, a Crossword Puzzle, and several hidden messages that require a red lens to be read. I erred on the side of solvability with the red lens messages. This took some trial and error.
The back of the card is one large red lens hidden message. It tells him to follow @kingofclues on twitter. It also instructs him to carefully cut the card open along the bottom of the back of the card. When he does that, he finds two pieces of a cipher wheel. The outer ring jumbled numbers and letters. The inner ring has numbers 1 through 38 with a set of symbols below each of the odd numbers. Now there’s a lot in front of him to start solving. This set of riddles is less linear than last year’s. Here are my crazy brainstorming notes.
He follows @kingofclues on twitter and the account starts tweeting at him. “Shall we play a game?” The profile picture for @kingofclues is an actual photo of me dressed as the Riddler when I was 12, the year Batman Forever came out starring Jim Carrey as the Riddler.
The word find is my brother’s name and a bunch of names of Batman characters. The Crossword questions are about some of my brother’s favorite video games, movies, shows, and also questions pertaining to his birth date and the year he was born.
@kingofclues tweets out links to articles and youtube videos about numbers stations including this one:
Along with a few quotes from it. “This is an example of radio being used to talk to one particular person.” and “You encrypt the message which allows you to use this public broadcast medium to send a private message.”
On July 13th, @kingofclues tweets “STAND BY FOR TRANSMISSION…” and then “TRANSMISSION #1 https://soundcloud.com/kingofclues/transmission-1”
On July 18th, @kingofclues tweets “STAND BY FOR TRANSMISSION…” and then “TRANSMISSION #2 https://soundcloud.com/kingofclues/transmission-2”
This is my online version of a numbers station. I used a sound clip from Tekken as my “call-up” to signify the beginning and end of the transmission. A robotic voice reads out a string of numbers that only Alex can solve with his cipher ring set to the correct position. The puzzles in the birthday card have given him those positions.
The red lens message near the word find says “To decode transmission #1, read what is left behind.” Solving the word find leaves a series of letters uncircled that spell out: which one of these letters is most magnetic? The letter “L” has a sliver of metal embedded in the paper. Alex discovers this by using a magnet. If he lines up the magnet icon under the “1” with the “L,” he can decode transmission #1.
The red lens message near the crossword says “To decode transmission #2, unscramble the purple block and match with X on the wheel.” After solving the crossword and unscrambling the purple boxes, he gets: trumpet. By lining up the trumpet icon under the “27” with the “X,” he can decode transmission #2.
Transmission #1 reads, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEX. MY AVATAR JPG HAS A SECRET.” And transmission #2 reads, “PICSECRET PASSWORD IS 3RD WORD IN DECODER INSTRUCTIONS FOLLOWED BY HIGHEST NUMBER ON DECODER.”
Alex takes apart the cipher wheel to see the instructions that told him how to assemble the two pieces. “Push a thumbtack through the center of both wheels to build your secret decoder.” He downloads @kingofclues’s profile picture and runs it through PicSecret with the password “thumbtack38.” The text embedded in this profile picture hosted publicly by twitter is the code to redeem Alex’s birthday present, an Amazon gift card. Happy birthday, bro!
