Michael
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
New Year's Eve Snow!
Winter finally arrived in Todi a couple of days ago, bringing freezing temperatures and strong winds. This morning we have been treated to snow, which immediately started sticking on the now-frozen ground. It is going to look like New Year's Eve when we celebrate in the piazza tonight!
Michael
Michael
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Wediditwediditwedidit!!!!!!!
 |
| Chiavetta |
And then...in the afternoon...he was ready! The key, as promised, was on the ledge in our bedroom. It was a gold "chiavetta" ("little key"): a flash drive. When inserted into the computer, "Robot" came up: a retro video logic puzzle in which we had to get a robot through a maze. We could go north, south, east, west. We could turn and look, and we also had an "arm tool".
The game had little "Easter eggs" inserted, including "This wall has a plaque saying, 'Merry Christmas 2014 to my family love from Daddy'; if you use the arm tool, your robot polishes the plaque. Tricks included acid gas, electric fields that scrambled electronics, pits, moats, dying batteries that needed to be replenished, water valves that flooded the maze, furnaces, and conveyor belts. It took the fastest of us almost 2 hours of work to get get the treasure chest out of the maze...at which point the "treasure" came up on the screen: a pile of jewels! Colored jewels! (Get the picture?) |
| First question: one jigsaw or two? |
Scramble scramble scramble. Many arms were overlapping, much complaining about blocked light and stolen pieces, and eventually -- we finished putting it together! Michael had purchased a custom puzzle with pictures of all the elements that he'd used in the codes! There were Braille strips, pingpong balls, the code dials, and his coffee mug! We laughed at that reflection of how many late nights he had spent working on the puzzle for us! |
| Close family? |
Very short. Very few letters.Uh.oh. Decoded, it said "This side down" (grr!). It was a surprisingly difficult anagram to solve, given that there were enough common letters that could be anagrammed different ways that nearly made sense!
Okay, flip the puzzle back (preferably without destroying it! Time to look at the pictures more closely.
 |
| Completed Puzzle! |
 |
| Red-green decoding |
Let's see...the puzzle dial ISN'T in the "official" order. Take apart. Find the correct new order of the disks. Align.
Braille...oops! He used "level 2" Braille (a more complex and complete form) for this part. Oh, and the cards! Pull out the correct cards! Message? Says "From Daddy"...but what about the red and green elements? And the periodic table? Anything in that? And what in the world is that rodent doing in the puzzle? We haven't seen him before!
So, from top left down, we unscrambled the following:
 |
| Lifting the coffee table... maybe they could have cleaned it off first? |
"From Daddy" (first letter code of scrap of paper reading "Fabulously romantic Mistletoe dangles. Definitely dynamite"; the red-green coding reads, "it's a vole" -- a reference to the rodent!)
"With lots" (from Braille)
"Of" (decoding the nail polish colors)
"Love" (anagram of vole)
"The" (pingpong balls)
"Key" (Taken from the candies..."chi" is pronounced "key")
"To the last" (from the cards)
"Gift" (wrapped present)
"Is under the" (code disk)
"Coffee table" (coffee ring next to periodic table).
 |
| Family game! Hurray! |
 |
| And the joke? Michael's sweater incorporates Morse code...and he didn't even notice! |
A blessed Christmas to all. I'm off to play a game!
Love,
Alexandra
Saturday, December 27, 2014
Buying White Powder
Cream of tartar, as far as I could tell, is not available here.
However, upon discussing odd things that I need Michael to import, someone told me very knowledgeably that cream of tartar was no problem. It turns out that you have to get it at the pharmacy!
Since I was out of the stuff, I figured I'd give it a shot. After a little description (because I wasn't positive of its name in Italian), we knew we were talking about the same substance. How much did I want? Hmm. Hadn't thought about how much the stuff weighs, how dense it is, etc. The pharmacist suggested 30 grams, which sounded just fine to me.
She came back in a few minutes and handed me a wrapped package.
When I wanted to use it today, I took the package and unwrapped it:
Inside, more paper!
Finally, a white powder.
Time to make meringues!
Love, Alexandra
However, upon discussing odd things that I need Michael to import, someone told me very knowledgeably that cream of tartar was no problem. It turns out that you have to get it at the pharmacy!
Since I was out of the stuff, I figured I'd give it a shot. After a little description (because I wasn't positive of its name in Italian), we knew we were talking about the same substance. How much did I want? Hmm. Hadn't thought about how much the stuff weighs, how dense it is, etc. The pharmacist suggested 30 grams, which sounded just fine to me.
She came back in a few minutes and handed me a wrapped package.
When I wanted to use it today, I took the package and unwrapped it:
 |
| Packaging with inner envelope |
 |
| Labeling |
Love, Alexandra
Friday, December 26, 2014
It's not all fun and games
While the others worked on the puzzle, I HAD to move my car for the Live Nativity. Since it was such a beautiful day, we figured we might as well take advantage of moving the car by going on an outing to Montecastello di Vibio.Sharon thought Lilleputian thoughts and folded herself in the back, while Jim and his camera populated the front.
 |
| Our coffee bar |
 |
| Oversized baby? |
 |
| The Tiber in the distance |
 |
| Inside the church |
 |
| Isn't the ceiling beautiful? |
 |
| Exterior of church faces the bar |
 |
| This is the right-hand door of the same church. We had to have our coffee here because the bar was full. |
A bit of wandering in this darling, well-kept town, and then we were off home via the ridge road!
Love,
Alexandra
As the Dial Turns...
The rest of the jar lids (10 of them) plus a long bolt and a nut were found...mostly in and around the apartment, but with the occasional oddball location -- viz., a pigeon hole on the Via Mezzomuro.
When put together, they form a dial-like cylinder (Michael had drilled a hole through the center of each one) with a pile of letters on the rims and on the center. The lids were assembled so the central letters spelled out, "xmaspuzlid" (sound familiar?). The individual lids could be turned to decode the infamous ZIQ! cipher that we'd been avoiding like the plague.
Decoded, the ZIQ! cipher reads, "Hah! I bet you didn't get far when you fed this through your online puzzle solver! Do you have any idea how hard it is to cut a circle into twenty-six equal pieces by hand? It is worth it, though, because this type of cipher is unbreakable as long as you don't encode more than ten characters on it or let any of the pieces fall into the hands of the enemy or give it to your kids as a Christmas present. Speaking of presents, if you want your real one, then give the owl the password "squiggle"."
"Squiggle" brings up a game commonly called "worm", where there is a graphic rectangle that grows in length while proceeding inside a rectangle. The goal is to eat white balls without running into the walls or yourself...106 of them! The little orange balls that come up occasionally make you shrink. It turns out that James, by virtue of much illicit nocturnal practice on his cell phone, is an expert at this game. Within a short time, he had won the game...and was told to look in the "bin in the hall." Excellent! A wrapped gift hidden in the laundry bin (Michael had rightly assumed that no one would be diving into the hand-washing "bin of shame" anytime in the near future) turned out to be...a bag of pingpong balls!
Said pingpong balls each came decorated with a number and a letter. The letters, when put in numerical order, spell out tsesafaatrotrarplseetchtpilendheorynstbgenwirgwhaenttaapial eianmottl amlginhhs relcdgaap etilobbse, where the bold letters are the ones on the yellow balls. Michael had mercy and told us "the quantity of balls is significant": aha! 100 balls = 10 squared! Quickly putting the letters into a 10 by 10 square, we get (reading in columns) "To the nearest centimeter, how tall is a triangular pyramid of pingpong balls with a base that has ten balls per edge?"
When fed "33", the owl said, "That's the answer, it's true...not that it matters...'cause there's yet one more clue under the platters." Tearing apart cabinets under the platter storage cabinet led us to find an envelope. CARDS! Two decks...red and blue!
Hmmm....that sounds familiar. Time to go back to the card puzzle.
When laid out, it reads, "Sometimes a puzzle is more than it seems; in my schemes, Florence beams and then screams, 'This one's themes are in the extremes!'" If you look closely at the cards, you notice little black markings on each of the edges; these are NOT Vegas-acceptable cards. But how to order? Our first attempt -- dividing into deck colors and then into suits -- doesn't pan out. Back to the drawing board, and Florence rearranges the deck such that the letters around the sides spell, "Speaking of on edge, there's a key on the ledge of the second bedroom wall."
We're stymied, because Michael confessed that he's still working on this piece. So we are taking a break -- to go to the Live Nativity!
Love,
Alexandra
When put together, they form a dial-like cylinder (Michael had drilled a hole through the center of each one) with a pile of letters on the rims and on the center. The lids were assembled so the central letters spelled out, "xmaspuzlid" (sound familiar?). The individual lids could be turned to decode the infamous ZIQ! cipher that we'd been avoiding like the plague.Decoded, the ZIQ! cipher reads, "Hah! I bet you didn't get far when you fed this through your online puzzle solver! Do you have any idea how hard it is to cut a circle into twenty-six equal pieces by hand? It is worth it, though, because this type of cipher is unbreakable as long as you don't encode more than ten characters on it or let any of the pieces fall into the hands of the enemy or give it to your kids as a Christmas present. Speaking of presents, if you want your real one, then give the owl the password "squiggle".""Squiggle" brings up a game commonly called "worm", where there is a graphic rectangle that grows in length while proceeding inside a rectangle. The goal is to eat white balls without running into the walls or yourself...106 of them! The little orange balls that come up occasionally make you shrink. It turns out that James, by virtue of much illicit nocturnal practice on his cell phone, is an expert at this game. Within a short time, he had won the game...and was told to look in the "bin in the hall." Excellent! A wrapped gift hidden in the laundry bin (Michael had rightly assumed that no one would be diving into the hand-washing "bin of shame" anytime in the near future) turned out to be...a bag of pingpong balls!Said pingpong balls each came decorated with a number and a letter. The letters, when put in numerical order, spell out tsesafaatrotrarplseetchtpilendheorynstbgenwirgwhaenttaapial eianmottl amlginhhs relcdgaap etilobbse, where the bold letters are the ones on the yellow balls. Michael had mercy and told us "the quantity of balls is significant": aha! 100 balls = 10 squared! Quickly putting the letters into a 10 by 10 square, we get (reading in columns) "To the nearest centimeter, how tall is a triangular pyramid of pingpong balls with a base that has ten balls per edge?"
When fed "33", the owl said, "That's the answer, it's true...not that it matters...'cause there's yet one more clue under the platters." Tearing apart cabinets under the platter storage cabinet led us to find an envelope. CARDS! Two decks...red and blue!
Hmmm....that sounds familiar. Time to go back to the card puzzle.
When laid out, it reads, "Sometimes a puzzle is more than it seems; in my schemes, Florence beams and then screams, 'This one's themes are in the extremes!'" If you look closely at the cards, you notice little black markings on each of the edges; these are NOT Vegas-acceptable cards. But how to order? Our first attempt -- dividing into deck colors and then into suits -- doesn't pan out. Back to the drawing board, and Florence rearranges the deck such that the letters around the sides spell, "Speaking of on edge, there's a key on the ledge of the second bedroom wall."We're stymied, because Michael confessed that he's still working on this piece. So we are taking a break -- to go to the Live Nativity!
Love,
Alexandra
Thursday, December 25, 2014
Another update before bedtime
Okay, we're tired.
Used the "See nine x nine think rows cols diags" and fed the owl the numbers of the rows, columns, and diagonals. Sometimes the owl gives a snarky response, others provides "look behind the..." type clues.
We're too tired to find them all tonight. But the first package we opened was a jar lid with letters on the edge. This is likely to require a lot of energy tomorrow.
Love,
Alexandra
Used the "See nine x nine think rows cols diags" and fed the owl the numbers of the rows, columns, and diagonals. Sometimes the owl gives a snarky response, others provides "look behind the..." type clues.
We're too tired to find them all tonight. But the first package we opened was a jar lid with letters on the edge. This is likely to require a lot of energy tomorrow.
Love,
Alexandra
Morse Update
Eleanor was able to decode the auditory Morse.
Practice level: "It wouldn't be Christmas without a Morse code." "
Easy level: "Now that you have it, you're on the right road."
Normal: "Faster and faster as if chased by a host"
Fast: "To get the next puzzle you need the red Pacman ghost."
More head scratching. More research. The red Pacman ghost's name is Blinky, so we tried feeding Blinky to owl.
Tada!
Our "task" if you will was to memorize a sequence of pressed tiles from a 5 X 5 grid: 20 tiles to be exact. It started with one tile that was illuminated. We had to press it. Then two tiles. And so on, up to 20. Not easy, for certain.
After having survived the tile, we were rewarded with a text that included "jangling jingle"...sounds like more owl food. Having "fed" the owl a jangling jingle, we were rewarded with tiles that had little Christmas pictures on them....sweet trees, ornaments, and so on. Each one played a fragment of tune, and this challenge was to create "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." How did we know which tune was expected? Well, the kids received a singing Christmas card yesterday from You-Know-Who.
When we recreated the tune, we were rewarded with "Um...earthly music. UnlockMe!" We fed the owl "UnlockMe" and ... well ... there was a combination lock! Scramble scramble scramble through the sheaves of paper to find the combination that we had discovered in the Christmas Lights puzzle.
The lock included six fields for numbers. Above each number was an "up" arrow, and below, similarly, a "down" arrow. The thing is, these arrows did not exactly do what one might expect. One of the arrows even made the lock skip around! After figuring out what each arrow did, we were able to UnlockMe...and the smartypants had made the title bar of the congratulations message say "Kudos!"
Obvious...feed the owl Kudos. And we get...sudoku! Response? "Kudos? Really?"
We're stumped. This is really hard. However, we have several puzzles that we've put off cracking. I guess it's time to work on the really tough stuff.
Love,
Alexandra
Practice level: "It wouldn't be Christmas without a Morse code." "
Easy level: "Now that you have it, you're on the right road."
Normal: "Faster and faster as if chased by a host"
Fast: "To get the next puzzle you need the red Pacman ghost."
More head scratching. More research. The red Pacman ghost's name is Blinky, so we tried feeding Blinky to owl.
Tada!
Our "task" if you will was to memorize a sequence of pressed tiles from a 5 X 5 grid: 20 tiles to be exact. It started with one tile that was illuminated. We had to press it. Then two tiles. And so on, up to 20. Not easy, for certain.
After having survived the tile, we were rewarded with a text that included "jangling jingle"...sounds like more owl food. Having "fed" the owl a jangling jingle, we were rewarded with tiles that had little Christmas pictures on them....sweet trees, ornaments, and so on. Each one played a fragment of tune, and this challenge was to create "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." How did we know which tune was expected? Well, the kids received a singing Christmas card yesterday from You-Know-Who.
When we recreated the tune, we were rewarded with "Um...earthly music. UnlockMe!" We fed the owl "UnlockMe" and ... well ... there was a combination lock! Scramble scramble scramble through the sheaves of paper to find the combination that we had discovered in the Christmas Lights puzzle.
The lock included six fields for numbers. Above each number was an "up" arrow, and below, similarly, a "down" arrow. The thing is, these arrows did not exactly do what one might expect. One of the arrows even made the lock skip around! After figuring out what each arrow did, we were able to UnlockMe...and the smartypants had made the title bar of the congratulations message say "Kudos!"
Obvious...feed the owl Kudos. And we get...sudoku! Response? "Kudos? Really?"
We're stumped. This is really hard. However, we have several puzzles that we've put off cracking. I guess it's time to work on the really tough stuff.
Love,
Alexandra
In the Home Stretch
We are EXHAUSTED! We have been working on these codes (off and on) for more than 2 weeks, and are getting very close (we hope!). I'm going to narrate roughly how we have proceeded...and I won't remember exactly who was responsible for what because there was a TON of teamwork involved.
So, in a roughly chronological order of solving, I offer a walk-through of the solutions.
"More Christmas Cards/Codes" is a simple anagram that reads "Periodically these puzzles contain clues to other ciphers, but in the spirit of cryptic crosswords those elements are not always obvious."
From this came the brainwave of using the periodic table of elements (get it? "Periodically" and "elements"?) to solve "Christmas Puzzle Countdown". When the symbols for the elements were put together (and, yes, we forgave spelling when working with a limited set of letters), we obtained “Watch this space for updates. I think you sharp kids know more ciphers now. I know you think very hard solving different clues. This one is not a cinch for novices.”
A "chance" remark from Michael as we were discussing the meaning of the color variations in the lettering led to the use of binary on "Christmas Cards": Substituting ones and zeros for red and blue (not guaranteed in that order) gave us the binary numbers that represent the letters "Red Herring." Sheesh.
And then came "Christmas Lights". We HATED this one. This was a complete headbanger and we were stumped on it forever. However, eventually (probably based on a hint from Michael), we plotted it in black and white, used circles for dashes and snowflakes for dots. The snowmen separated the letters. And the helpful message? “Pretty good kids, but you won’t find your present without cracking the colors.” Drat it. Back to square one on that. Time went by.
"Christmas Puzzle News Feed" looked like a "read every fifth letter" or something, but it took a silly amount of time to get it to make sense. After writing it out word by word in a column, and taking the first and/or first AND second letters, a message emerges: "It is Christmas time and that means treasure hunts and puzzles and codes and clues for my five children. Not even Alexandra knows all of the secrets in store this year." Yes, no doubt. Which is why I'm going as crazy as the kids.
"Balance at Christmas" is a basic letter substitution cryptogram. The message read, “It is quite difficult to strike a balance between interesting and solvable with such a diverse and experienced set of kids. No one wants, “Aw, Dad, that’s boring” but it would be nice if they eventually got their Christmas presents.” Bearing in mind that it did NOT address the red-green coloration, but only the cryptogram. The picture? We STILL have no idea what Michael was thinking.
"Christmas Garlands" had us scratching our heads. It turns out to be Braille, using the shapes to indicate top, middle, and bottom rows for each six-cell set, and the different objects (snowflake, dot) to indicate blanks or dots. This message? “Happy Christmas to owl and to owl a good-night. If you’re stuck on the 12th, o’s a blue and green light. With much love from your father this poem does come and remember what Horner pulled out with his thumb!” Oh, dear. The owl MUST be significant. And plum? What's that about? And blue and green light? That must have to do with Christmas Lights, but in what way?
Then "Christmas Scene"...ridiculous, and quite hilarious to read. If you do a similar thing to "Christmas Puzzle News Feed," you obtain, “The cypher key for Christmas Day is Xmaspuzlid.” Good to know...looks like a Playfair cipher is coming up..but where? How? Are owls involved? Is it the Christmas owl? We even looked up the species name for the Christmas Owl. Goodness.
At some point, we had the bright idea of putting the "Christmas Puzzle News Feed" in columns of five letters (inspired by the underlined "five-fold verse" segment) and highlighting the different colors. Turns out that the red and green are 5-bit codes that correspond to different letters. For example (to help understand), green-green-red-green-green means a space. It's Michael's version of a Bacon cipher...which really had us going for a while, because we kept trying Bacon, drat it, and finding dead ends. Turns out he'd never HEARD of the Baconian cipher.
So, going back to solve the red-green component of earlier ciphers, we got (this method didn't work for "More Christmas Cards-Codes") :
1. “Merry Christmas haha Eleanor Florence Ashley Jeremy and James Some binary codes used eight bits in their games” from Christmas Puzzle News Feed. This obviously refers to the Christmas Puzzle Cards red herring.
2. "SEE NINE X NINE THINK ROWS COLS DIAGS" from "Balance at Christmas"...we still haven't used this.
3. “Pay attention to upper vs. lower” comes from "Christmas Scene", and helps us know -- when deciphering that one and "Christmas Puzzle News Feed" whether to take the first letter (capitalized words) or the first and second letters (lowercase words). We got this too late, having already kind of muddled through the solving.
4. "Christmas Continues to Come" yields “If you look at the garlands puzzle long enough you will get a feel for it.” Which merely tells us what we had figured out...that the Garlands were Braille. Drat. No additional help.
Christmas morning (ahem...closer to afternoon) when we got up, we were greeted by Christmas lights draped over the family room. Said lights were NOT the standard white OR colored. In fact, my darling husband had colored the individual lights to have the same tints as "Christmas Lights." Okay, time to be brave and figure out the lights element. We wrote out the order of the light colors and then did the same with "Christmas Lights"...and then the brainwave happened: each of the letter sets was to be taken as a pair, with whites for spaces. Phew. Once again, after a good bit of work with rewriting the pairs for individual letters (to make solving easier), "Christmas Lights" reads "Christmas puzzles for Hooks while they hit the books. What will the world come to? That we don't know, but stick around for the show...seven five nine twelve two."
And the lights themselves read, "Buon natale a tutti! Christmas is here and a present from me. All you need is the owl in the ONHH." Huh? Widespread panic among the solvers...until we pointed out the error. Yes, ONHH was "tree." Some discussion of running out to the giardinetti to check on the knitted owls...until Jeremy found an owl ornament in the Christmas tree. Oh! Nope! It's a flash drive!
Mad leap for computers. Flash drive into the computer. Filename: "owl". Groans all around. Screen pops up: an owl saying "feed me." Random guesses..."rabbit...mouse..." Michael was scratching his head..."With all your clues, why are you guessing wildly?" "PLUM!" Yep. Oh...if you put your cursor on the owl before he's fed, he changes to different animals...like a bat, turkey, bear, frog, ant, bumble bee...and so on.
Screen background changes to plum. Four choices: "Practice, slow, normal, fast". Auditory morse! Oh NO!
Working hard on it for over an hour. And it looks as though there's another puzzle coming.
I'll let you know what we find out.
Love,
Alexandra
So, in a roughly chronological order of solving, I offer a walk-through of the solutions.
"More Christmas Cards/Codes" is a simple anagram that reads "Periodically these puzzles contain clues to other ciphers, but in the spirit of cryptic crosswords those elements are not always obvious."
From this came the brainwave of using the periodic table of elements (get it? "Periodically" and "elements"?) to solve "Christmas Puzzle Countdown". When the symbols for the elements were put together (and, yes, we forgave spelling when working with a limited set of letters), we obtained “Watch this space for updates. I think you sharp kids know more ciphers now. I know you think very hard solving different clues. This one is not a cinch for novices.”
A "chance" remark from Michael as we were discussing the meaning of the color variations in the lettering led to the use of binary on "Christmas Cards": Substituting ones and zeros for red and blue (not guaranteed in that order) gave us the binary numbers that represent the letters "Red Herring." Sheesh.
And then came "Christmas Lights". We HATED this one. This was a complete headbanger and we were stumped on it forever. However, eventually (probably based on a hint from Michael), we plotted it in black and white, used circles for dashes and snowflakes for dots. The snowmen separated the letters. And the helpful message? “Pretty good kids, but you won’t find your present without cracking the colors.” Drat it. Back to square one on that. Time went by.
"Christmas Puzzle News Feed" looked like a "read every fifth letter" or something, but it took a silly amount of time to get it to make sense. After writing it out word by word in a column, and taking the first and/or first AND second letters, a message emerges: "It is Christmas time and that means treasure hunts and puzzles and codes and clues for my five children. Not even Alexandra knows all of the secrets in store this year." Yes, no doubt. Which is why I'm going as crazy as the kids.
"Balance at Christmas" is a basic letter substitution cryptogram. The message read, “It is quite difficult to strike a balance between interesting and solvable with such a diverse and experienced set of kids. No one wants, “Aw, Dad, that’s boring” but it would be nice if they eventually got their Christmas presents.” Bearing in mind that it did NOT address the red-green coloration, but only the cryptogram. The picture? We STILL have no idea what Michael was thinking.
"Christmas Garlands" had us scratching our heads. It turns out to be Braille, using the shapes to indicate top, middle, and bottom rows for each six-cell set, and the different objects (snowflake, dot) to indicate blanks or dots. This message? “Happy Christmas to owl and to owl a good-night. If you’re stuck on the 12th, o’s a blue and green light. With much love from your father this poem does come and remember what Horner pulled out with his thumb!” Oh, dear. The owl MUST be significant. And plum? What's that about? And blue and green light? That must have to do with Christmas Lights, but in what way?
Then "Christmas Scene"...ridiculous, and quite hilarious to read. If you do a similar thing to "Christmas Puzzle News Feed," you obtain, “The cypher key for Christmas Day is Xmaspuzlid.” Good to know...looks like a Playfair cipher is coming up..but where? How? Are owls involved? Is it the Christmas owl? We even looked up the species name for the Christmas Owl. Goodness.
At some point, we had the bright idea of putting the "Christmas Puzzle News Feed" in columns of five letters (inspired by the underlined "five-fold verse" segment) and highlighting the different colors. Turns out that the red and green are 5-bit codes that correspond to different letters. For example (to help understand), green-green-red-green-green means a space. It's Michael's version of a Bacon cipher...which really had us going for a while, because we kept trying Bacon, drat it, and finding dead ends. Turns out he'd never HEARD of the Baconian cipher.
So, going back to solve the red-green component of earlier ciphers, we got (this method didn't work for "More Christmas Cards-Codes") :
1. “Merry Christmas haha Eleanor Florence Ashley Jeremy and James Some binary codes used eight bits in their games” from Christmas Puzzle News Feed. This obviously refers to the Christmas Puzzle Cards red herring.
2. "SEE NINE X NINE THINK ROWS COLS DIAGS" from "Balance at Christmas"...we still haven't used this.
3. “Pay attention to upper vs. lower” comes from "Christmas Scene", and helps us know -- when deciphering that one and "Christmas Puzzle News Feed" whether to take the first letter (capitalized words) or the first and second letters (lowercase words). We got this too late, having already kind of muddled through the solving.
4. "Christmas Continues to Come" yields “If you look at the garlands puzzle long enough you will get a feel for it.” Which merely tells us what we had figured out...that the Garlands were Braille. Drat. No additional help.
Christmas morning (ahem...closer to afternoon) when we got up, we were greeted by Christmas lights draped over the family room. Said lights were NOT the standard white OR colored. In fact, my darling husband had colored the individual lights to have the same tints as "Christmas Lights." Okay, time to be brave and figure out the lights element. We wrote out the order of the light colors and then did the same with "Christmas Lights"...and then the brainwave happened: each of the letter sets was to be taken as a pair, with whites for spaces. Phew. Once again, after a good bit of work with rewriting the pairs for individual letters (to make solving easier), "Christmas Lights" reads "Christmas puzzles for Hooks while they hit the books. What will the world come to? That we don't know, but stick around for the show...seven five nine twelve two."
And the lights themselves read, "Buon natale a tutti! Christmas is here and a present from me. All you need is the owl in the ONHH." Huh? Widespread panic among the solvers...until we pointed out the error. Yes, ONHH was "tree." Some discussion of running out to the giardinetti to check on the knitted owls...until Jeremy found an owl ornament in the Christmas tree. Oh! Nope! It's a flash drive!
Mad leap for computers. Flash drive into the computer. Filename: "owl". Groans all around. Screen pops up: an owl saying "feed me." Random guesses..."rabbit...mouse..." Michael was scratching his head..."With all your clues, why are you guessing wildly?" "PLUM!" Yep. Oh...if you put your cursor on the owl before he's fed, he changes to different animals...like a bat, turkey, bear, frog, ant, bumble bee...and so on.
Screen background changes to plum. Four choices: "Practice, slow, normal, fast". Auditory morse! Oh NO!
Working hard on it for over an hour. And it looks as though there's another puzzle coming.
I'll let you know what we find out.
Love,
Alexandra
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Presepio by Paolo!
When I went to get the Christmas tree, Jeremy and I saw the most marvelous piece of wood. Ever. It's a natural arch, and was just what we needed for our presepe.
Slight problem: it wouldn't fit in the car. No way, no how. I slipped the fellow a little extra money to have the wood AND the tree delivered directly to the house. Problem solved!
Not able to wait, I set it up to the best of my ability with the materials I had. But then, one misty morning, Paolo took me aside and whispered that he hadn't forgotten about us, and WAS planning to come to fix up our presepio (I had asked him in late November, and hadn't wanted to nag). Hurray!
Yesterday was the appointed day, and Kris Kringle showed up with his ape full of wood and leaves and moss.
The result is (in my opinion) magical. Every time I see it, it fills me with absolute joy. Paolo's attention to detail is outstanding.
Hope you enjoy the photos!
Love,
Alexandra
Slight problem: it wouldn't fit in the car. No way, no how. I slipped the fellow a little extra money to have the wood AND the tree delivered directly to the house. Problem solved!
Not able to wait, I set it up to the best of my ability with the materials I had. But then, one misty morning, Paolo took me aside and whispered that he hadn't forgotten about us, and WAS planning to come to fix up our presepio (I had asked him in late November, and hadn't wanted to nag). Hurray!
Yesterday was the appointed day, and Kris Kringle showed up with his ape full of wood and leaves and moss.
The result is (in my opinion) magical. Every time I see it, it fills me with absolute joy. Paolo's attention to detail is outstanding.
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| There are lighted snowflakes above the stable |
Hope you enjoy the photos!
Love,
Alexandra
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| The woodcutter with real logs |
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| Going to the well... |
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| The shepherd in the hills |
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| The cheesemaker |
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| Lamb! Sweetness! |
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| Overall effect without baby Jesus (not born yet!) |
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| The artist! |
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| Closer shot showing lights...without baby Jesus |
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