The Headlines puzzle was created by an NSA employee for
recreational purposes for cryptographers who just want to kick back
and solve something "easy" while honing their skills during lunch
breaks and off hours. Headlines puzzles require solving five
related cryptograms, each a simple substitution cipher with spaces
and punctuation shown. Each of the five is encrypted using the same
mixed alphabet shifted for each headline. See the full description
on the
American Cryptogram Association website. Headlines are
enciphered using a setting, a key, and a hat, which combine to form
the mixed K3 alphabet and its shifts. Be sure you understand this
description before you attempt to solve this puzzle.
There are three caches in this series using the same five
headlines. For the second puzzle you must find the key. To do this,
solve the five cryptograms below, recover the equivalent K3 key,
and from that recover the original key alphabet block which will
contain the key. To do this you will need to master a technique
called double-chaining. If you can't figure out how to do that, and
few of you will, here is a link that explains the whole process:
How to solve a Headlines Puzzle .
Once you have found the key (just the key word, not the whole
alphabet block), assign numbers to all the letters according to
their places in the alphabet, i.e. A=1, B=2..., Z=26. Multiply the
middle four numbers together to get a five-digit number.
Add to that 3004 to get another 5-digit number, and call
that nnnnn. The North coordinate is N37 nn.nnn. Next add all
the numbers of the key word, multiply that value by 50 and add 30
to get a four-digit number, and call it wwww. The west coordinate
is W122 0w.www.
Here are the five headlines:
1. XLI HS QGGL HBDZQ SE DOCIGBI NK *ANZJ.
2. *M.Z. VJDOKE NJARM UX FAD OXDUKMU XD UY
3. *BCNW'Y INUGBM YANUB OZFEO ... OZFEO ...
4. *ESLGEJ YJMLWFJ OH *HGDZEVM EYWOSLHW
5. YNDTHZDJRHCF NHSCFT TBCND TRCPD, KNHDAFM, CR AQNEU
This cache is a micro. Bring a pen.
The other two caches are:
Headlines: The Setting and
Headlines: The Hat.
You can check your answers for this puzzle on
Geochecker.com.