13
$\begingroup$

A short one this time around.

Jack and his crew reach the top of Oholu's Heart. They look around and see a cave further away. Tired but determined, the crew marches ahead towards the cave.

Just a bit further Jack sees an old woman sitting by a tree, mumbling something to herself and looking into the far beyond. Jack sat down beside her. For a while neither of them spoke anything. Then she turned her head towards Jack and looked deep into his eyes as if searching for something. Finding what she was looking for, she spoke ...
"If your first is left, then just take the rights."
Then she turned her head away, back the way she was looking and started mumbling again.

Jack sat there for a bit longer thinking. He then got up suddenly, smiled and yelled ...
"Boggles the mind .. doesn't it fellas."
and started walking towards the cave again.

They reach the cave entrance, a rather small one, and see that it is blocked by a huge boulder. Jack turned and spoke to his crew ...
"My dearest of dearsees, you might be wondering how to go about our business now. But fear you not. Our friend Mr. Spook here, ", pointing to a short and pitifully thin sailor whose name obviously wasn't Mr. Spook, "will have this massive monstrosity out of our path in a jiffy."

"Mr. Spook," now speaking to the sailor directly "would you be kind enough to kindly move this king sized rock out of our kindly way."

The sailor now completely perplexed, moved towards the boulder reluctantly. As he approached the boulder, he noticed something etched on the rock.
"Captain, there something written on the rock. Some words and such." he yelled.

Jack got close to the rock and read ...

enter image description here

Jack took off his hat and bowed in respect.

He started looking around, trying to find something that might show him a way. A few moments later he saw something poking out from between two smaller rocks. He walked towards the rocks and carefully removed a piece of parchment where it was stuck. Something was written on the parchment.

enter image description here

776c397fa66d801e9102db8390038920c28a4ba398e6f2d6616a221a613620d4

He took out a book from the inside pocket of his jacket and referred to it. After a few moments he started to smile. He went to the boulder and whispered the magic words. And everyone saw in amazement as part of the ground on one side of the boulder started sinking in, and the boulder slowly rolled to that side opening the entrance to the cave.

What were the magic words.
And just for fun, Why did he bow down in respect?

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
10
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ I'm disappointed they used hex instead of base64. $\endgroup$
    – user88
    Jun 6, 2015 at 14:27
  • $\begingroup$ Oooh another one! Once I finish off the cats in the zip file I'll take a look at this one. $\endgroup$
    – LeppyR64
    Jun 7, 2015 at 2:11
  • $\begingroup$ I have the bonus figured out :) $\endgroup$
    – LeppyR64
    Jun 8, 2015 at 1:51
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Could the puzzle be solved if all you had was a printed copy? $\endgroup$
    – Engineer Toast
    Jun 8, 2015 at 12:58
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ yes, you can solve it by just printing out the puzzle. But, as you'd have guessed that you need to decrypt the encoded message in it. I'm not sure if you'd want to do it by hand. $\endgroup$
    – Dipped Bits
    Jun 9, 2015 at 2:40

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
8
+50
$\begingroup$

Jack started singing

"It's the honky tonk women that gimme gimme gimme the honky tonk blues."
- Honky Tonk Women by The Rolling Stones

First Riddle:

The keeper of code
has a stone of note
Though honor he has
his own father he snort

The "keeper of the code" is the title of Edward Teague in Pirates of the Caribbean. Teague is Jack Sparrow's father, which is why Jack bows in respect. He is played by Keith Richards, guitarist for the Rolling Stones. Richards, has also admittedly had a drug problem and at one time snorted his fathers ashes. So, the stone of note is Keith Richards and this is a key for the cipher.

Second Riddle:

A ghostly whisper
In the airs
Hexed is the master
And so are his heirs

Code:

776c397fa66d801e9102db8390038920c28a4ba398e6f2d6616a221a613620d4

ghost refers to the GOST cipher. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOST_(block_cipher)

Running it here: http://www.tools4noobs.com/online_tools/decrypt/ with key KeithRichards spits out:

bhootnikeyettopngklwbogmqevns

The old lady's clue:

If your first is left, then just take the rights.

Translates to, for each pair of letters, take only the second one:

bhootnikeyettopngklwbogmqevns

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
6
  • $\begingroup$ Ah, thank you! That solves one of my problems. $\endgroup$
    – Nefer007
    Jun 10, 2015 at 16:52
  • $\begingroup$ @DippedBits How did you come up with the plain text? I was distracted by it for a while because I could see words in it, like hoot, key, and the most distracting, png. Curious if those were intentional or if the added padding was just random. $\endgroup$
    – LeppyR64
    Jun 10, 2015 at 17:56
  • $\begingroup$ Good job! I think that finishes up the question. Now how do we divvy up the loot? $\endgroup$
    – Nefer007
    Jun 10, 2015 at 19:32
  • $\begingroup$ @LeppyR64, the text was just random and then i added the song title in it. :). Well done once again. $\endgroup$
    – Dipped Bits
    Jun 11, 2015 at 2:36
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @BaileyM I am far from a master. I'm learning while you guys are posting them. I'm just a fast learner. ;) $\endgroup$
    – LeppyR64
    Jun 12, 2015 at 13:33
2
$\begingroup$

NOTE: This is showing my entire thought process. So I apologize if it doesn't really seem like an answer until the end.

77 6c 39 7f a6 6d 80 1e 91 02 db 83 90 03 89 20 c2 8a 4b a3 98 e6 f2 d6 61 6a 22 1a 61 36 20 d4

Hexed is the master and so is his heirs... heir=air=breath
By "his own father he snort" I'm going to assume that the father was cremated, and the ashes confused for coke by his son. By the fact that his airs/heirs are hexed like the master, they are likely smokers. Solely from that, I'd say they died from pulmonary problems... But that's really not the point now, is it?
Hold it a moment... Hexed. Oh man, that one was good. I was going by Joe Z.'s comment about hexadecimal instead of base64, but I'm sure that clue was sneakily hidden in to the note.

Clearly, Jack bowed to pay respect to the dead, and/or the fact that the "son" confused his fathers ashes for a drug. Actually, scratch that. As mentioned in the comments, he was paying respect to his father, who was the Keeper of the Code.

The hexidecimal string returns the nonsense string:
w l 9()¦ m()()()Û()()()() Â()K£()æòÖaj"()a6 Ô or approximately the following:
wl9¦m€‘Ûƒ‰ ŠK£˜æòÖaj"a6 Ô

It's clear that I don't know what the frick I'm doing here...
EXCEPT, as a flash of revelation just told me, "Hexed is the master and so are his heirs" is relating to their NAMES as well. THE MAGIC WORDS ARE THE NAMES.(Obviously, keeping in setting would churn out something silly, like Davy Jones or Barbossa. The second one sounds more plausible, but it couldn't possible be that one now, could it?)
wl9 broken vertical bar m euro ' U f percentile ASK British pound ae o O aj"a6 O...
Again, more nonsense that I can't make sense of. It sounds almost like a name that Twitch would assign to one of their Pokémon, but that's even more besides the point than the heir=breath idea. <.<
Well, nine... bar, m-euro...mural? Yeah, that's not right. I'm 100% positive that the only thing he's going to reference is Pirates of the Caribbean.
The old lady's comment, "If your first is left, then just take the rights" seems to make sense in this puzzle, if only I could figure out what the "first" is referring to.

Hex 20 through 7E is regular letters. 80 onwards through FF are special characters. 00 through 1E are function operators.

Here's a screenie of the text in Minecraft when I went to get some help: A screenshot of the string Ignore the other players, please.

EDIT:

At the suggestion of a commenter, I converted the string into the heir of hexadecimal, octal. It returned this string, broken up into groups of three numerals (sans possible starting zero) by four:
167 154 071 177
246 155 200 036
221 002 333 203
302 212 113 243
230 346 362 326
141 152 042 032
141 066 040 324

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
9
  • $\begingroup$ "Hexed us the master and so are his heirs".. maybe the "heir" of hexadecimal is octal, or base-32? $\endgroup$
    – user41805
    Jun 9, 2015 at 18:55
  • $\begingroup$ Ah, I'll try that. Don't think it'll lead anywhere though. $\endgroup$
    – Nefer007
    Jun 9, 2015 at 19:00
  • $\begingroup$ I've been waiting for the first partial to throw down some info that I have in my head as well. I've not made it much further than you but I have more information about the first poem. The Keeper of the Code is Captain Teague. Teague is Sparrow's father. Teague is played in the movies by Keith Richards, guitarist of the Rolling Stones. Depp actually modelled Sparrow's character off Keith Richards. Richards admitted that he snorted the ashes of his father. What does all this mean? I don't really know. $\endgroup$
    – LeppyR64
    Jun 9, 2015 at 19:45
  • $\begingroup$ Ah great! You are a wonderful man, thank you. $\endgroup$
    – Nefer007
    Jun 9, 2015 at 20:55
  • $\begingroup$ Last time, he had hidden an encryption software name inside of a riddle with a clue in the other riddle. $\endgroup$
    – Nefer007
    Jun 9, 2015 at 21:22

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.