Can You Crack The Code? #1 (Solved)
First published: Tuesday June 21st, 2022
Preface
As many of you will know, most JetPunk Daily Word Searches utilise their leftover letters to spell out a word or phrase, often related to the theme that day.
In particular, only 1 of the last 100 Word Searches did not do this (number #131 - see DogDeeDer's blog here: The 131st Word Search Mystery.
Many have enjoyed finding them, and up to now they have always been spelled in order, with no scrambling or decryption necessary to read it. Today that changes.
Word Search #141 - Africa
Today's Word Search is themed around the geography of Africa. It is an 11x11 grid with 23 words featured within it.
Once the puzzle is complete, the leftover letters appear... garbage. I can confirm, they are not!
I have used a secret logical code (which I came up with myself) to encode the message hidden within.
You can find the hidden letters in the grid after completing the Word Search. You may discuss on this blog your findings and progress if you wish.
The first person to get it will be rewarded somehow (yet to be determined how) should they want to be.
At 12pm EST I will reveal a hint if nobody has solved it. Further hints will appear at 2pm EST and 5pm EST, if needed.
If nobody solves by tomorrow (I doubt that), since the grid will be gone, I will update this blog with the results!
Congratulations to overtired for solving the puzzle! See the comments for how he did it (explanations reverse-engineered by Simon and Baptiste!)
Now, for a prize... We have decided to give overtired a whole word search to create! This will come mid July hopefully! (The first ever word search not created by myself)
Imagine if all the French server was on it.All my ideas are completely useless for now, but I won't give up that easily.
Should the remaining letters be read horizontally or vertically?
Is the Code a single word or more?
Is the Code written in French?Hope the 1st hint helps us!
Feel free to explain your method ;)
itsvdrkgtgqsi
I saw the It's there, but didn't know what to do with it. After reading overtired's comment, you can produce "it's tanganyika" by shifting each letter individually using the following pattern:
[j, u, t, w, e, s, l, h, u, h, r, t, j]
[-1, -1, -1, -3, -4, -5, -5, -7, -7, -9, -9, -9, -9]
[i, t, s, t, a, n, g, a, n, y, i, k, a]
But why that pattern specifically I don't know. Maybe overtired did something else altogether :)
Indeed, the trick here was that you needed to use the grid itself, you could not do this by purely extracting the letters and playing around with them :)
(And I'm glad I didn't have to come up with any hints)
(maybe I'll do them monthly, no promises though)