34
The first step is this:
Then,
27
I think the word you are looking for is
The cook is fired!
Decay! The baker's dozen!
I need a new job.
24
Each rectangle of letters gives
Top row:
Bottom row:
At first I'd thought the dots in some rectangles would be
Now, what can we do with these words we've got?
Another idea is to
Thanks to Stiv, this does indeed make sense if we just simplify the tracks a bit:
and the answer is
14
We have
(I am not sure I have correctly identified the room but it seems somewhat plausible). Here
So a doctor might provide ...
13
Got it...
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.
The problem was that I don't know how to pair up the digits, except that I'm pretty sure the inner ring goes
yielding
However it goes, the "e" and "f" must be paired with "4" or "6", yielding n/N and o/O
Edit: to ...
12
I think this is worse than my first answer, but I am going to try again.
The cook is fired!
Decay!
The baker's dozen!
I need a new job.
Original attempt:
10
The numbers
If we
then
and
And I think the secret word is
Confession:
10
Update - Thanks to @hagfy, the pattern has emereged.
The final message is:
Which fits the story quite nicely.
The message can be extracted from the cipher poem as below:
Regarding a couple of the hints:
Hint 4
Hint 5:
10
The verse at the start clearly seems to point to
and the barcodes
[EDITED to add:]
The title
Now
which is clearly referring to
[EDITED to add:]
I'm not sure whether there's more we're supposed to do.
[EDITED to add:]
9
I get the feeling the word you're looking for is:
Why? Well, (with nods to @hexomino and @LannyStrack for solving parts of the puzzle):
8
The answer is
The solution method is:
Cryptography of the day:
And to answer the question:
7
Second attempt
The two-digit number is:
I calculated it as follows:
Previous attempt
I will take a stab at it, and guess that the two-digit number is:
I calculated it as follows:
7
The wizard is:
Mix well
The letters:
Unscrambles to:
6
First step:
Second step:
Last step:
6
The picture depicts:
These resemble a famous:
Translating it:
6
My guess is:
Reasoning:
Starting with the discovery of @shoover that
I then
Solving each of these, I generated
Note:
5
The answer is:
By doing:
Then:
Hence:
Finally,
5
As Hint 1 says:
How are the stickers used?
So what does the message say?
Ultimately we are trying to find out the woman's profession, so what can this cryptic-sounding riddle translate to?
5
The answer to the puzzle is:
Puzzle 1:
Puzzle 2:
Puzzle 3:
Putting it all together:
4
Answer
First,
Breaking the code
Explanation of hint
4
Explanation for how the numbers relate to the shapes
Possible explanation for other considerations (why these particular numbers, why this ordering)
I can't immediately explain the ordering of the shapes, but perhaps that is arbitrary.
4
I think the letters are all
Based off your hint:
Going off your title:
Using this idea for DBE should mean the ??? is:
4
Perhaps the answer is
Because
And the fact that
We can deduce the answer:
Which matches Hint 6 in that (Those not after "-" is the original text):
4
Partial answer, thinking out loud.
The red and white thing above the line is
This makes me think
So let's see what we can make of the boxes.
The grid represents
Based on the hint,
For the boxes to the right,
YOU
AS
ARE
YIELD
PLAIN
STAR
BRICK
LIFT
For the boxes underneath,
AM
COME
GET
HI
MOON
LIE
LOAF
ME
CAGE
From there,
3
Partial answer:
2
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:
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 ...
2
We need to do the following:
Then
And then
2
So we can break up the solution as
which decodes as
Although I suspect there may be another level of decoding and the final answer should be
1
Partial Answer
1.
2.
3.
So overall I think
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