Challenge 1
RULE REMINDER: Rapid fire multiple submissions put an unreasonable load on the servers and make it difficult for others to submit. Anyone who makes an unreasonable number of submissions will be open to disqualification. In the first instance this will mean that anyone who submits more than 20 times in 10 minutes will be disqualified.
A Country Retreat
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Top Secret: For your eyes only
Dear Jodie, thanks so much for the book, the recommendation, and the challenge! Christie is one of my favourite authors, and of course she shares a first name with my great Aunt, Agatha Highfield. We have a file on her in the Archive and I am sure you would enjoy reading it. The Mansion is fabulous, I can easily imagine Miss Marple or Poirot taking tea here and it is the ideal background for a sabbatical. It has a real gothic feel, though I must admit, the current owner didn’t seem all that happy when I said so to her. She was polite, but not amused, and muttered something like “will they never stop haunting us” as she walked away. Ghosts seem to be the theme at the moment - I decrypted the paper you sent and found the acrostic. At first I thought the initial letters spelt out Red Rum, and assumed the note was associated with the kidnap of the famous racehorse, but it didn’t take long to realise that it should be read backwards: Murder. Can you say more about where the note came from? Is it a cold case you are working on? Sounds fun. Sudoku is all very well, but to really stretch the little grey cells (as Poirot would say) I would love something a little stronger, so if there is anything else in the file that I could assist with, let me know. You mentioned that you are working with the trainees again. I suggest that we encrypt our messages to one another and set them as an exercise for the team. We could start with something simple for the newbies and then ramp up the difficulty. What do you think? Anyway, it is time for coffee. They serve it in the Orangery mid-afternoon. To be honest I expected tea in a country house like this, but that is the power of this place – it completely sells the illusion that I am back in England, rather than New England. Right down to the panelling and the carpets. Whoever built it had an eye for detail. I will look forward to hearing from you. Don’t forget to send me something interesting to do - I need to keep my brain sharp for when I get back, and even the great Agatha is no match for the BOSS archives. All the best, HarryMurder she said
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Check out our beginner's guide to code breaking which has a caesar wheel on the last page that you can print.
Top Secret: For your eyes only
Welcome to the BOSS training division, my name is Jodie, and I will be supervising your development here in the agency. It is great to have so many new recruits and I hope that you will enjoy the exercise. I have had several roles in the organisation since I joined, with extended periods working in the field, but for now I head the Archaeologists Division, our name for the BOSS cold case section. Here we mine sources of historic intelligence that might be useful in live cases. We also research novel cryptographic techniques and use the case files we hold as exercises for staff training. I am borrowing the material we will use from Scotland Yard. I came across it a few years back in the Shadow Archive, during The Kompromat Files investigation. It wasn’t relevant at the time, but it caught my eye: a request from the Pinkerton Agency in the US for information about a young man whose body had been found in the library of a country house in New England. It sounded like a classic of the genre, but I was too busy to read it then. I think it might be fun, so from next week we will have access to the original documents and we will try to solve the mystery together. If we need anything that is not contained in the files then I have an agent on the ground in the US who should be able to help. Harry suggested that as part of your training I should give you access to the encrypted communications from that agent, Harry himself, so you will be able to practice breaking them too. It will be fun to see what he comes up with to test you! Good luck, Jodie.This challenge closed on 11/10/2023. Please click the Official Decrypt button above to see the correct answers.
RULE REMINDER: Rapid fire multiple submissions put an unreasonable load on the servers and make it difficult for others to submit. Anyone who makes an unreasonable number of submissions will be open to disqualification. In the first instance this will mean that anyone who submits more than 20 times in 10 minutes will be disqualified.