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