Daily Casefile · Cipher
Decode the note. Name the encoder.
A short message intercepted at the scene, encoded by hand. Six clues tell you about the encoder — their habits, their methods, what they might have substituted for what. Decode the message. Name the encoder. One shot.
Cipher #092 · The Unanswered Extension
Grand Hotel Aldoria, seventh-floor switchboard alcove — a cramped walk-in closet of a room lined with a Siemens crossbar panel, jack cords dangling like a curtain of copper vines, and a worn leather logbook open on the supervisor's stool.
When day-shift supervisor Petra Vaux arrived at six in the morning to relieve the overnight operator, she found the switchboard alcove empty, every cord still plugged in, and the leather logbook open to a fresh page bearing a single short message in block capitals pressed into the paper so hard the pen had scored the card beneath. The overnight operator, whoever it was, had already gone.