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You are from a kingdom that is a long time enemy of Camelot, King Arthur's kingdom. You have sent your best spies to uncover his attack plans.

King Arthur sits at his round table with his knights. He puts down a piece of toast, engraved with a secret message. Your spies shuffle to get their binoculars, but it is too late. You cannot read the message in time.

Since the knights all like sandwiches, each knight puts one topping on the piece of bread, and passes it on to the person counter-clockwise to them. The spies cannot remember what each knight put on, but each spy has remembered one detail:

There were 5 knights and 5 types of toppings on the sandwich. The toppings were cheese, ham, pickles, lettuce, and tomato. Since we do not know the names of the knights, we have named them by number. They are ordered by their clockwise position on the circular table.

Knight 4 put ham on the sandwich.

Knight 2 either put cheese or tomato on the sandwich.

Knight 1 did not put a vegetable on the sandwich.

A knight sitting next to knight 3 put cheese on the sandwich.

Knight 5 put a vegetable that has two letters in it's name. (you consider firing that spy after hearing his horrible detail)

Finally, the sandwich rotates back to King Arthur, who puts on the top piece of bread.

The head alchemist of Camelot puts his new potion on the sandwich. It took him years to uncover the secret recipe, which was buried with Caesar. The secret message engraved on the first toast transfers onto the top piece of bread, but it appears to be nonsensical. The spies were ready with their binoculars. The code they saw was:

Dl ruvd fvb'yl zwfpun vu bz, mvvsz! Dof lszl dvbsk dl il thrpun zhukdpjolz?

Your spies also hear the alchemist mutter, "I do not have enough potion. It shall use only the first letter."

Back at your kingdom, you offer 15 reputation and a green check mark to the first answerer to decode the king's plans. Good luck!

Hint 1:

Once again, the sandwich went around counter-clockwise.

Hint 2:

The spies were all fired.

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2 Answers 2

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Well, the message is:

We know you're spying on us, fools! Why else would we be making sandwiches?

With:

A Caesar cipher, with table: 

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
tuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrs

I decoded it:

by just trying a Caesar cipher and it turned out to work.

I think the cluing is:

The sandwich went counterclockwise (so we go back in the alphabet), and to 7 people (so we use a shift of 7)

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  • $\begingroup$ Good job, you got it right. Please add a little more info on how you got it, and I will gladly accept :) $\endgroup$
    – yummypasta
    Jun 2, 2017 at 0:28
  • $\begingroup$ ROT13: V qvqa'g guvax guvf guebhtu irel jryy nf vg jnf fhccbfrq gb unir zhygvcyr ynlref bs Pnrfne pvcure. Na havagraqrq pbafrdhrapr vf gung vafgrnq bs fgnpxvat, vg whfg nqqf hc naq pna or qrpelcgrq va bar tb. V'yy guvax guvf guebhtu orggre arkg gvzr. Ohg naljnlf, tbbq wbo. I will accept your answer in 1 minute, it says I have to wait $\endgroup$
    – yummypasta
    Jun 2, 2017 at 0:36
  • $\begingroup$ @yummypasta N fhttrfgvba jbhyq or gb nqq va na rkgen ynlre bs NFPVV-urk be fbzrguvat yvxr gung va orgjrra rnpu pnrfne fuvsg. Lbh pbhyq chg gung va gur chmmyr ol fnlvat fbzrguvat yvxr "nqqrq fnhpr , naq gur anzr bs gur fnhpr jbhyq or n pyrire ersrerapr :) $\endgroup$
    – Quintec
    Jun 2, 2017 at 23:25
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Just so we're clear, all five spies

really deserved to get sacked.

Why? Well...

Their little game is impossible to solve, on top of being a moot point.

Spy 1 tells us that Knight 4 put ham on the sandwich, Spy 3 tells us that Knight 1 did not put a vegetable on the sandwich and Spy 4 tells us that a knight sitting next to Knight 3 put cheese on the sandwich. Taken together,

these statements are contradictory. The only two non-vegetables are ham and cheese, but Knight 1 is not next to Knight 3, so cannot have placed cheese either, leaving ham, but that was already placed by Knight 4! Someone either is either confused or lying. Or doesn't consider pickles a vegetable for some reason, which is just silly!

And this is beside the fact that

Spy 5's statement about Knight 5 is utterly nonsensical. Or that Spy 2 can't tell the difference between cheese and tomato. Or that Spy 0, who set up this silly little game, ordered the knights the wrong way round the table! I bet that's why Spy 3 couldn't remember which of Knights 2 and 4 placed the cheese.

And all that is beside the other fact that

our 'best spies' somehow thought it was a good idea to all show up at the same target, each with their own binoculars, within earshot of the 'head alchemist' - who's gotta be Merlin and therefore actually a wizard - if not the entire Round Table! No wonder the message was a simple Caesar cipher saying "We know you're spying on us, fools! Why else would we be making sandwiches?", as good sir boboquack has already determined.

For real though,

nice use of obfuscation. Especially since it was rather obvious that it wasn't going to be much use.

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