The Mysterious Magazine

Question

Story Details

You're George, an old man that usually goes to a kiosk every morning in order to buy the newspaper. So, as usual, you left home at 8:15am and you went to the kiosk to buy the daily newspaper.

It would be a normal day if you didn't find a single page of a magazine next to the newspapers. You take a look at it and you start searching for magazines with similar pages but none of them seem to be related. You take a deeper look and you notice that the page has two page numbers, one at the top (156) and one at the bottom (182), and that it seems like an entertainment page of a weekly magazine so you decide to take it home, after all, you love to solve those word games!

Page Details

Crossword

Down

1. An error or mistake.
2. A number.
3. A person who writes a novel, poem, essay, etc.
4. To cause, permit or enable to go.

Across

4. A public thoroughfare.
5. A single sheet of paper for writing.

Word Search

NY Times, Thurday, Apr 30, 2015 Martha J. Elizabeth

Ad

Amazing Opportunity! Hiring Immediately!
Our top s□les make reps over $100,000 per year with m□ny earni□g more!

Are you:
- self motivat□d
- able to communicate clearly

Th□n don't hes□tate, call t□day and we will have you ear□ing money tomorrow!
Call 273-1283 to se□ up a phone inte□view with t□e sales manager, the renowned Paul Richard.

As soon as you get home, you sit in the sofa and decide to take a look at it. What did you find out?

This is my first riddle but I hope it is challenging enough! Have fun.

I'm sorry, I messed up with the word search, I edited it and I gave away a huge hint to compensate.

Answer 1

Some partials

Crossword confirmed by OP:

Down:

Fault, Three/Seven, Author, Send?

Across

Street, Page/Side

Notes:

Could indicate page number or wordsearch author are to be used somewhere. Could indicate sending required. perhaps 156/182 are useful? Letters from answers are FaultSevenAuthorSendStreetPage; Possible anagram? Contains; Letters, pattern, reveal, unused, have, found.

Personal favourite possibility:

USE ASS FED GNU TO REVEAL THE PATTERN

Word Search (Non-image):

LFWLgZziys
FMBCoQDRWw
SSQEmDMQKm
ASWEdmiiCi
WPQYUSCNLv
cusftrMDCm
LWIOLSDNXa
APUASXUWRl
WXWAWERSAv
kcwuogWRXN

Red letters, a/d; GZIYSOWMMDMIIIVCUSFTRMALVKCWUOG d\a; CKUCSWFUGOMDTOMRGZIIIYSWMIVMALV

Found, MAX UP GO SUCK CAP VIM CUE MOG 'ZINE PEG (+ MUG, GUM, TAU, PHI, and maybe UAT thanks @GordonAllocman). Not overly helpful, cipher required? See notes. Referred to old word search. OP confirms new is cipher. 31 red letters, 31 letters from crossword answers (dupe shared letters), no luck as a key so far, no obvious shape to red letters, how to arrange? If red letters is a crossword style, we can't dupe shared letters or counts wouldn't match.

Got the word search:

Each crossword answer is a key to one of the 'words' in the word search: GOMD-FAULT-Boss, SWMIVMAL - STREET - AdvertIs, ZIYS - SEND - Help, DMII - SEVEN - Line, CUSFTR - PAGE - Number, KCWUOG - AUTHOR - Kidnap.

Result:

Including key in message, it could read: Fault Boss, Send Help! Advert Is Street; line seven, page number. Kidnap Author! .. An instruction to kidnap Martha J. Elizabeth perhaps?

Although:

No idea how this would be possible without the red letters or how the keys get transferred to the layout (I tried all of them).

Ad:

Missing letters, AANEEIONTRH. Not useful as a cipher to word search, convert to numbers (Line Number) using ordinal mod 10: 11455954088 or 004344843977?

Answer 2

Partial Answer (or just a helping guide for others)

I believe the crossword's solution is:

Down

1. An error or mistake.
   

Fault

2. A number.
   

Seven (old answer was Three)

3. A person who writes a novel, poem, essay, etc.
   

Author

4. To cause, permit or enable to go.
   

Send

Across

4. A public thoroughfare.
   

Street

5. A single sheet of paper for writing.
   

Page

The Complete Crossword: