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Obama has hired you as a PI and you walk into the Oval Office.

He steps up from his desk, shakes your hand and hands you a page torn from a diary. "Don't ask where I found it." As you glance down, you see written in a vivid blue pen:

"Dear diary,

It's 2 months to the day since the election, and with the new president about to take office I need to hide some of my stuff in the safe."

You glance up and ask Obama why he doesn't just hire a locksmith to which he responds after the Clinton emails, he is very wary with who he trusts, and thus he only wants a 4 digit numeric combo (xx-xx), he won't even let you know where the safe is or any details about it.

You ask, "Is this it?"

He hands you another page. The 2nd page has the following on it:

1499 B

♠FXà╧

After you glance up he gives you a 3rd page saying, "This one is for you to keep and test. It's probably unimportant, so find out whatever you guys find out, maybe radiocarbon date the age of the page or something, I'm not even sure which administration it's from. For consistency sake, this final page is the same type of paper and ink."

You nod and glance down at the final page. Here you see a scribbling of a person like thing wearing a tie and a vest over it. It has a huge head and something large is behind its back.

You say your good byes and when you are finally away from the penetrating glares of the Secret Service you begin to think. First, you guess it will take 24-48 hours to get back the results of testing the page (this means the hints if needed). Secondly you begin to wonder what this combo is?

HINTS

A chromatography test reveals that it is a BIC rollerball pen and the page is from the late 90's early 2000's

The 1499 could also be 1501

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  • $\begingroup$ Would 14-99 work? $\endgroup$
    – Areeb
    Commented Jul 12, 2016 at 0:21
  • $\begingroup$ That is not the answer, but I would love to see how you got it... $\endgroup$
    – qwertylpc
    Commented Jul 12, 2016 at 0:27
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    $\begingroup$ I took the number "1499" on the second page and took a guess $\endgroup$
    – Areeb
    Commented Jul 12, 2016 at 0:33
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    $\begingroup$ Lol it is a little harder than that $\endgroup$
    – qwertylpc
    Commented Jul 12, 2016 at 0:35
  • $\begingroup$ :( I figured it would be harder $\endgroup$
    – Areeb
    Commented Jul 12, 2016 at 0:36

3 Answers 3

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Partial

Could ♠FXà╧ be:

Phoenetic.. as in 'Spade affects a grave something', I don't know what the symbol ╧ is unfortunately.

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  • $\begingroup$ good idea but not it $\endgroup$
    – qwertylpc
    Commented Jul 13, 2016 at 2:38
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I think The symbols ♠FXà╧ are to be arranged so that it looks like a person wearing tie over a vest and has a huge head? So 91-9B

ie. take the original characters and assign each one to the one below it

1 4 9 9 B
♠ F X à ╧

Now flip them to be vertical instead of horizontal, then re-order those so that the left-hand column makes a picture matching the description of the third clue (4/F would presumably be the "something large [...] behind its back").

♠ 1       à 9
F 4       ♠ 1
X 9       X 9
à 9       ╧ B
╧ B
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  • 3
    $\begingroup$ Can you arrange them in this manner? $\endgroup$
    – Mithical
    Commented Jul 12, 2016 at 9:16
  • $\begingroup$ They do go together, but each of those lines must be decoded first $\endgroup$
    – qwertylpc
    Commented Jul 12, 2016 at 18:26
  • $\begingroup$ i believe à is the huge head,X is the vest,╧ is tie up to the waist,so F is a large something behind his back.. so they must be arranged to fit the 3rd clue ... So F comes first since it is a large object gives us 4 then the head that is à gives us 9 and the vest that is X gives us 9 again. The tie would be at the last that is B. so it will be 49-9B, I dont know if the spade has any role to play,if the spade can be considered as knot of the tie then the answer would be diffrent. $\endgroup$
    – Nishan Khadka
    Commented Jul 13, 2016 at 4:05
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Another partial:

First note:

I think 1499 B is ᒙ VT in Unicode this could show the tie and the VesT

The third note

BIC could refer to Bill Clinton, which would also align with the late 90s, early 2000s. This picture could therefore be from the early Clinton-years and show himelf. The large shadow behind him might foreshadow (pun intended) the upcoming Lewinsky-scandal. Another possibility could be, the picture is a bit older and shows either Clinton and the shadow symbolizes the presidency of George W. Bush or it could be Bush and show 9/11 or the upcoming Iraq war (which might be a stretch).

Coming back to the first note

Clinton maybe had something to hide concerning the war in Kosovo or Lewinsky again. Can't think of much more.

That's all I got so far. Maybe it can be helpful to others. :)

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