BackCipher · Briefing
Case File · Cipher · No. 092
Cipher #092Mastermind
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.
The rules
- Four people in this building are known to write coded notes. Each has a different cipher style.
- Six clues describe their habits and one important property of the note itself.
- Use the clues to decode the message and name the encoder.
- One submission. You can’t change your answer.