Too Many Secrets
Marleen's 40th birthday puzzle hunt
My sister made me this amazing birthday gift - least I could do was to write a report on it and make it look kinda of awesome to do the experience justice. So that's what I did. I didn't have time, however, to create a version that displays beautifully on small screens. So this report is only available on tablets, laptops, desktop PCs and TVs.
You can try turning your mobile device sideways (for landscape mode) - or otherwise, find a slightly larger screen and then come back!
Thank you.
- Marleen
From the New World
There was only one thing on the website: this letter. Encrypted in some way, and I would have expected nothing less!
The first thing I tried was to see if this might be a simple caesar cipher, where all letters are shifted by the same number. The text looked like that wouldn't lead to anything (because it wouldn't affect punctuation), but it's always a good idea to try some easy things even just so you can rule them out. Luckily for me, there is a host of websites on the 'net that do the heavy lifting for you.
I copied the text from the website and ran it through the Caesar tool. As expected, this lead to... absolutely nothing.
By the way... Chrome / google translate thought this was Welsh.
But I didn't have too much time to think about next steps, as suddenly music started playing (rather loudly) in my headphones. It sounded familiar, but I couldn't immediately place it, so I used soundhound on my phone to identify it.
It was Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, "From the New World".
And that... rang a bell!
Because this is a thing. I felt that I was on the right track when I ran the letter through a Dvorak decoder.
It was a very sweet birthday letter. Sorry, it's in German; however the important (for the purpose of this report) bit is the last sentence.
Beans is the cat that lives upstairs. I couldn't imagine why he would have a sore back, but it was already pretty late, so I decided that talking to him had to wait until tomorrow.
