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[CXF714]

[jessie1326]

[thebruce]

Ok, just got word from Felicity that the missing line 20 is indeed a mistake. it should be 26 rows. Forget anything that has to with focusing on line 20, and press on

[CXF714]

[jessie1326]

I also tried putting every third letter from the blog posts into the grid one at a time. Nothing.

And NDJFFH also crytograms to ASLEEP. Although I like THREES better. Is anyone confident about the symbol/number in the bottom right hand corner of the grid page? It definitely ends in 3, but is it 10 3? 103? 163? Any ideas what it could mean?

Aaaand my husband pointed out that the random number diagram from the PO box letter (with the 1, 2, 3, and 4) looks like a ballroom dance diagram. I searched for similar diagrams briefly and didn't find any, but who knows. At this point I'm really just searching for some way to make headway here on something.

[cherrytree98765]

Well I can safely say I've tried everything related to "3s". I've done 3 spaces sideways and up and down. I've also tried reading one space or every three spaces. I even tried to change the letters 3 spaces back or forward in the alphabet.

On the off chance I even went with the table and tried to use the sayings you guys found and tried vignere and keyed. If there is a second step to the process then I have no clue whatsoever.

The vignere did produce "New" at the start of the sequence and then what might have looked like "Year" but otherwise there was nothing.

[Moontje]

I'm just so bad with codes, but I thought you had to read the numbers as 14,4 10,6 and 6,8. That in combination with the grid you get:

[oraclle]

Hi guys, just a few thoughts on this:

The grid is 16 characters wide and the Dante's solve is two 32 character sentences. As they're on the same sheet of paper I think it's not too much of a reach to say they're related (maybe the sentences are the key to decoding the blog posts?). I've tried some stuff, but can't do much as I'm at work.

Also, is it just a coincidence that there are 26 rows? Might be alphabet related, or a multiple of four due to the four lines of keycode (if above spec is correct). Or just an even number if the first sentence decodes the first post and the second sentence decodes the second (again contigent on the above).

Finally, this is almost certainly a coincidence, but N D J F F H also rots to YOUQQS - as in "you quitters" Can't think that's intentional, though.

[jessie1326]

[catherwood]

[thebruce]

ooh, yeah didn't notice that the coded message was actually two 32-character phrases...

definitely suspicious that the cipher results in a block that matches the grid width:

[thebruce]

New tip from @FelicityVelius:

[jessie1326]

Hrm. So what we have now in the way of hints is:

14 4 10 6 6 8
10 10 14 12 10 4

Two sets of six numbers, all even. My instinct now is that we're not looking to change them straight to letters (like YOUQQS)? Although short of using them to locate letters in the grid, which was tried with the first clue, I've no idea precisely what we are looking for. Maybe they're some kind of index? We know she likes those... I've tried pairing them up and heading back to Dante. I've also tried using them to find letters in the Dante quote or using the first or last letter of the corresponding line in the grid of the first post; no luck. Plus, an index would have the same problem of repetition that a straight translation would have, assuming that each number by itself represents a single letter (somehow). With the new clue, we'd have AABCAD, which doesn't fir the pattern of any word I know of. Another possibility, of course, is that we aren't looking for a word at all.

If you put them into Google maps, the first pops up a location in Niger, and the second a location in Nigeria. I have no idea, however, how they're turning 14 4 10 6 6 8 into a location, so it's probably nothing.

[oraclle]

I tried using 14 4 10 6 6 8 to find letters in the grid in a similar way to how Catherwood used the phrases. As none of the numbers go above 16, I took the numbers to be column identifiers and their position in the sequence to be row identifiers.
For the first blog post I get rpatro, which anagrams to parrot or raptor.
For the second blog post I get gbeenu, which anagrams to bungee.

No luck with using 10 10 14 12 10 4 as column identifiers. However, if I use them as row identifiers I get rioter and ageist as anagrams from the respective blog posts.

These might just be chance as I don't see how they help us.

I was thinking about my theory on the relationship between the blog posts and the Dante decode last night. Manipulating one with the other in any way I can think of, other than Catherwood's method, would make it impossible to keep them both as legible text while enciphering a message.

Basically, I'm stumped

[thebruce]

ditto.

Also, new tweet @FV: