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Ever since that evil witch put a hex on me, my head's been spinning in circles and I constantly feel like I'm about to fall down backwards.

As she fled the scene, she left behind this note. It seems to have lots of random numbers on it.

Maybe it hints to the magic word that will get rid of this curse?

puzzle

I'd appreciate some help solving this mystery. This hex is making me sick!

Hint 1:

Every character in the grid is important.

Hint 2:

The 4 with the blue ring is the beginning of the riddle and the 3 with the yellow ring is the end.

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3 Answers 3

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Got it...

Bitter Crust Spin For Sweetness

Looking at the numbers, I find that all the numbers on a light colored background are 4, 5, 6, or 7. And only five are 4 and 5.

I realized: This is ASCII! Including five uppercase letters, and the rest lower case.

The problem was that I don't know how to pair up the digits, except that I'm pretty sure the inner ring goes

65 73 73

yielding

...ess

However it goes, the "e" and "f" must be paired with "4" or "6", yielding n/N and o/O

Looking further, we start at the marked blue triangle, go counterclockwise in pairs. The first three are 42 69 74. Then we do the next 3 pairs clockwise, and so on.

42 69 74 74 65 72 43 72 75 73 74 53 70 69 6e

The we step to the middle ring and repeat the pattern

46 6f 72 53 77 65 65 74 6e

and then the inner

65 73 73

Putting it all together, and decoding ASCII yields:

BitterCrustSpinForSweetness

At which point, we need simply break up the words.

Edit: to answer the "riddle"

I think the final answer is:

Honey

In that you spin the waxy honeycomb to release and collect the honey.

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  • $\begingroup$ Great job! That's the riddle. Can you figure out what it's referring to? $\endgroup$
    – DenverCoder1
    Mar 23, 2020 at 15:09
  • $\begingroup$ @eyl327 the only thing that seems relevant is an anagram indicator yielding "curst", an archaic variant of "cursed". Altenatively rotate the note, or the inner rings of the note. Or maybe just spin yourself. $\endgroup$
    – David G.
    Mar 23, 2020 at 15:33
  • $\begingroup$ There are no anagrams or cryptic clues in the riddle. It's just a description of something. Hint: rot13(Vg svgf jvgu gur urkntba gurzr). $\endgroup$
    – DenverCoder1
    Mar 23, 2020 at 15:44
  • $\begingroup$ You got it! I was thinking of a rot13(ubarlpbzo). $\endgroup$
    – DenverCoder1
    Mar 23, 2020 at 16:46
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Thinking out loud, no answer yet. Unraveling the code:

4253e 77756 95249 66776 24330 47477
25e 766 f74 677 635 456
737563

30 + 18 + 6 = 54 total, which fits 9 hex-a-decimal colors: enter image description here

There must be a lexicon based on the 54 characters which could be sliced evenly by it's factors of 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 18, 27. Unfortunately beside the 6 digit color codes I don't know of any others.

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An obvious answer (probably too obvious) would be:

fee

As in:

You forgot to pay your fee for services rendered.

From:

An anagram of the three letters in the note.
In this case, the digits would probably relate to the amount you owe.

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2
  • $\begingroup$ Great answer but that's not it. I will add some hints. $\endgroup$
    – DenverCoder1
    Mar 23, 2020 at 13:11
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ If this was the right answer, it would be a very bad puzzle: so much wasted information and clues that go nowhere. $\endgroup$
    – Rand al'Thor
    Mar 23, 2020 at 16:44

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