The Secret of Site Q

There are a number of hidden messages in this box. If you haven't found any yet – take a look at:

The Notional Geographical Magazine

Barcode on the book jacket

The Barcode is a number to letter cipher

Notional Geographical Magazine: Look for acrostics in the text. Front and back, plus large text on inside. All three contain acrostics.

There are directions for how to read Mayan on the reverse of the article about Charles Campbell Taylor. Mayan is read in a specific order. Knowing this will help.

This is a simple letter substitution cipher. If you struggle to replicate the symbols, we would suggest arbitrarily substituting the symbols with a letter, then decoding as normal to speed you up.

To solve a letter substitution cipher you need to look for the most common letter – E, plus repeated letters which are often SS or LL etc. This will help decoding. Full details on how to decode letter substitution ciphers can be found HERE (link to blog about it).

Once translated into standard numbers (We'd suggest doing this first) you can then translate as a letter substitution cipher.

1=A, 2 = B etc

This is a simple letter substitution cipher

Look for common letters e.g E, and repeating letters which are often SS or FF or LL.

Full details on how to decode letter substitution ciphers can be found HERE (link to blog about it).

C is the letter E; S is the letter L, L is the letter S, C is the letter V

This is in Mayan symbol code which is the same as previous boxes and should be decodable.

This is in knock code where 2 letters become 1 letter. Knock codes are created with a 5 x 5 grid, and can be solved by a simple letter substitution cipher.

Look for repeating word STOP. That will give you letters S, T O and P

Two of the repeated letters are N's (unusual) another pair is R.

The first word is CONTACT

The cipher in box 4 is in pigpen. Solutions to this code are readily available on the internet.

There are two possible ways to encode pigpen, so if one doesn't work, try the other!

The first is on the postcard from Charles.

That is an acrostic.

There are two hidden messages in the transcript of the interview.

The first message – read the word immediately following the crossed out words.

The second message – read just the handwritten corrections.

There is a number cipher on the baggie. (we never like to miss the chance to add a cipher though in this case this one has nothing to do with the case!!)

The first telegram uses the same knock code as the previous box

The second telegram uses a temporary code

It uses phonetic alphabet to create a cipher.

F1 = F in foxtrot. F2 would be O in foxtrot, F3 would be X in foxtrot. Etc. So J2 would be U for example.

The last telegram uses a new knock code this is contructed in the same way as the previous one, so look for STOP and repeated letters.

First word is FUNNEL.

Read only the circled letters.

There are two messages hidden in the barcodes

Take each number as a binary pair so 19 = 19, but 09 = 9

This uses the same knock code as the second telegram in box 5

This is a simple letter substitution code.

This is a simple number to letter cipher.

Two hidden messages which can be decoded in the same way as the previous box and contain hidden messages both with the crossings out and the hand written amends.

Look for an acrostic message.

This is a one time cipher pad.

Use the newspaper to provide your cipher key.

We'd suggest obtaining online assistance with 1 time ciphers, several are available – Decodr is our favourite.

One-time ciphers work by converting letters into numbers and back again.

The key needs to be the same size or longer than the message that needs to be encrypted. In this case we supplied a newspaper article to act as the key.

In order to decode it you had to convert that key into numbers. (A=1, B=2, etc)

And convert your "cipher text" into numbers. (A=1, B=2, etc)

It is important to write all of your numbers directly above each other so you can easily work with them, as one mistake throws out the entire code.

Once your one time pad and message are lined up, the next step is to subtract the numbers from each other.

Now there's a final twist on this one as there's also a Caesar shift of 1 on the final conversion – something you won't have noticed if you used an online converter as we did!)

If you have missed this entirely – this concludes in this box.

If you look very closely at the reference number on each letter from Fairhall and Brett you receive you'll notice there are two reference codes.

SQ-031512120503200315040519 is a letter substitution cipher.

You need to "collect" the codes that are between the dashes, until you can spell out the message. All Easter Egg prizes have been claimed now. However well done if you spotted it!

There are some acrostics.

One acrostic takes the first letter of every word, so if the language seems odd, that's why!

Look at the sea article.

Look at the article on Bedouin – caption under photo.

Same knock code as previous box.

As before there are hidden messages which can be read by reading the words after the crossings out, and also the annotations.

These translate the same way as previous boxes.

This is a Vigenère cipher.

The key is the St Christopher text "STCHRISTOPHERPATRON…"

There is LEET code on the stamps. ( LEET uses various combinations of ASCII characters to replace Latinate letters.)

Look on the reverse of Raitby's sketches.

Take each capital letter in each word.

There's two codes in transcripts

These decode as the previous transcripts did.

Unfold the crane to reveal a hidden message.

These numbers provide directions to specific words.

Use the Crane folding instructions as your cipher text.

First number is a line, second number is the word on that line.

Look in the transcript of the interviews. These are found as they are in previous boxes.

Look at the postcard there is an acrostic.

Look at the postcard – there is morse code hidden on the page. Morse code translates with a standard morse code alphabet.

This is a new one time cipher.

The key has been provided with the news article starting "The Dow Jones".

This translates in the same way as the last one time cipher in box 7 but without the last cipher shift of 1.

Look on the solution report – there's a letter to number cipher

Look on the postcard to Miami – there's an Acrostic.

Look on the stamp – there's a hidden Caesar cipher (number you shift by is given with the price of the stamp.

Book signing flyer – has an acrostic on the right hand side (rather than the left).