Imagine one day, out of nowhere, someone emails you a cipher. You can't solve it, so you post it online. You ask people what it means. But all they tell you is, "Your friend must be up to something big." "Could you be a bit more specific about where this comes from? I ask because the decrypted plain text makes me wonder whether it comes from some sort of competition." Then your question is closed, and you can't rephrase it. When you get close to an answer, the mystery just gets bigger. What do you do next? Do you forget about it? Maybe delete the email and forget it ever existed. Than again, you could keep pushing until you get an answer. If you are like me than you would keep pushing for the answer.
Some time later, you find a site that can decipher the cipher. Thank god, you will finally get the answers that you were looking for. You enter in the text and… your heart stops. The text is deciphered, but what it says chills you to the bone. All the sudden, everything that people were telling you made sense. Except now nothing else does. Before now you did not think much about why you got the cipher. Now that is all you can think about. What could you have done to receive this message? Maybe they sent it to the wrong person. Maybe this was all the result of a mistake. Although does it matter if it was meant for you? I think not, once I set my mind to solving a mystery, I’m going to solve it.
Let’s go over the next move, the plan to solve this puzzle once and for all. We could spam the sources email and hope they respond eventually. We could ask tons of people on every site that we can think of, and hope we end up asking someone who knows something about it. Maybe track down the name of the source on social media. Plan A probably won't work. It didn't work with the past ten emails. Plan B could work, but the odds of finding a select few out of the internet is not so likely. Plus I’m sure that if someone did know, they would not tell me. So plan C, find this one person. Let’s be honest; this is a crap-shoot at best. Hopefully no harm in trying.
It actually worked, I can’t believe it! You found him, and now it’s time to message him. You start by asking about the message and what it means than why you received it, and if it was a mistake. It takes him a day or so to respond, but he does. He says that the message was meant for someone else, but anyone can join. He then gave you a cipher, unlike anything you have ever seen. Yet again you are left with more questions than answers. The worst part is that you can’t seem to solve this new cipher, no matter how hard you try. Furthermore, this sadly is where my story of the cipher ends. I never solved it, no matter how many people I asked. No matter how many deciphering sites I went to, I never even got close.
Your turn
- “gnkx bzud skoo xgzfg dzxh, tjg kg kx tkbbdf gnzy hlj uzh iyls. ky gnkx bzud hlj ezy nzrd gdzux. hlj skoo td fzekyb lgndfx. gnd ulfd hlj vkyc gnd ulfd hlj iyls.”
- “3s8t0t6c3t4t”
