Hush! Everyone knows you need to be quiet in libraries.
The posted coordinates are at the entry to the Norwood Public Library, a place where you can go and immerse yourself in a favourite book. Books can also be used for creating puzzles. One such puzzle type is a Book Cipher.
So let’s learn a bit more about Book Ciphers.
While there are many ways of creating a Book Cipher a common way involves using pairs of numbers. The first number may indicate a page and the second number a word. So 3:15 would mean the 15th word on page 3. Of course you also need to know which book!
It could be more complex. For example the two numbers may mean other things. The first could be a paragraph or line or word. The second could be a letter instead of a word. And the "book" may be any piece of text. A very famous one involved the US Declaration of Independence.
Here is an example which we will keep simple> This one just uses pages and words.
Our example Book Cipher is 5:23 6:12 7:25 4:16 2:1
and we will tell you this gives you these five words The help right egg every
So what should you do with these words once you have them?
There are a few options.
- Firstly, they may make a sentence. But these words don't seem to make sense as a sentence.
- Secondly, the number of letters in each word may be the answer. Here this gives 3 4 5 3 5 but unless these numbers seem to be useful then maybe not this time.
- Thirdly, the first (or perhaps another) letter from each word may be the key. And the first letters spell here T H R E E which is unlikely to be a coincidence! We have our solution.
Okay so far?
Providing pairs of numbers often gives you a clue that the puzzle is a Book Cipher. So sometimes people will try to hide that fact and only provide one number. Now you might need the word (or letter) counted from the start of the story/text. Or perhaps from the start of a page. In that case you would need to know which page as well as which book. You can see how it could become very difficult to crack. Some famous ones are still unsolved. If you are interested you can look at Freddo’s GC35R5V Tamám Shud for a famous SA still unsolved example.
So now that you know a bit about how Book Ciphers work, we have a short Book Cipher puzzle for you to try your skills on. Here it is -
52 40 70 65 71
51 69 69 61 42
There are a few things we can tell you about for our Book Cipher puzzle.
1: There is nothing you need to solve this that is not mentioned above.
2: As these are not pairs of numbers we will let you know that you need to count from the start of the story.
3: But you will still have to work out which book it is....
So here are some hints to help you identify which book you need.
- Perhaps it is (or was) a favourite of yours?
- Perhaps it is one you have never read but have been meaning to?
- Perhaps it is one that many people recommend?
- Perhaps it is one which children love?
- Perhaps it is an Australian classic?
- Perhaps we have left you a clue with our choice of cache title?
Once you know which book, the numbers will help you find the words that you can count on to get a solution. The checker will confirm your answer.
Thank you for replacing the cache out of sight exactly as found.
Hush!
