Rise of the Eldrazi Contest — the FINAL Puzzle
Sorin Markov is close to finding the mysterious culprit behind the bizarre events of the last week. All he has to do is solve this final puzzle.
Another day, another bizarre murder in Zendikar. Sorin Markov arrives at the scene to find, once again, no corpse, just a lot of gore. There’s something even more bizarre about this crime scene, however. A series of Magic cards have been carefully arranged throughout the room. A note, not encoded, has been left as well. It reads:
Hello Markov. You’re so close, and it has been fun toying with you these last few days. But I think I must reveal myself now. I won’t burn moonlight or be coy — what you have before you is a basic cipher. Encoded within are three aphorisms associated with certain powerful entities, one of them being me. The code also contains a final hint as to which of the three I am. When you know that, my initials will provide the last piece of the puzzle you need to solve this little mystery and win this little game. Do note the frequent use of non-standard words and names in Magic spells may throw off your usual frequency tables a bit, but if you keep at it, I’m sure the pieces will fall into place nicely. I’ll see you on the other side.
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April 2nd, 2010 2:24 AM
Up way too late working on this. I may be single in the morning.
But this was a fun contest. Thanks for a fun week.
April 2nd, 2010 9:53 AM
slagmacg won the contest, everyone. He beat the second place answer by about five hours (and there’ve only been two responses).
Thanks for playing. In the end, this was a lot of fun (despite me being a little too tired for puzzling Wednesday night – but hey, we won our soccer game!). With that in mind, maybe later this year we’ll try a D&D themed puzzle contest.
I’ll post all the answers next week, or later today if I have time.
April 2nd, 2010 11:31 AM
Damn you slagmacg! And damn the bogus job interview I went bed early to wake up for!
However, if you got that Bolas puzzle without the hints, then you deserve to win more than me anyway.
April 2nd, 2010 4:39 PM
That Bolas puzzle just about broke my brain and I needed the hints.
I’m also happy to report that my wife has agreed not leave me after ignoring her while I worked on these. Which translates into her stealing half of my winnings. Which translates into more games of Magic for me. So it’s a win-win.