Relic hunters
Aditya Rishi

BPMOWTLQAQVBPMKMTT

——————(cipher, top line)———————

——(19 places down the alphabet)———

THEGOLDISINTHECELL (+19,-8)

——-(8 down in the reverse order)———

AOLMVSKPZPUAOLJLSS

————(bottom row)———————————

A monoalphabetic substitution is one where a letter of plaintext always produces the same letter of the cipher text. Julius Caesar wrote to his friends using a simple substitution cipher, where the plaintext letter was replaced by the cipher text three places down the alphabet, so that the letter A is replaced by D and so on. Any cipher whose cipher alphabet consists of the letters in their normal order is called Caesar’s cipher. The decoder should have the size of the shift.

Bhavna Anand and U.K. Gupta are the first ones to reach the shore of Egypt after breaking the code. As they prepare to sort it out in the boxing ring, they realise that they are not alone in this treasure hunt. Soon, they are joined in Alexandria by Marut Pawla, Umeshwar Singh, Sameer Madan, Tarsem Mohan, Saurabh Sood, Inderjit Paul, Aman Aggarwal, Ravneet Kotwal, Geetika Gupta, Nitin Khanna, Suhail Singh Shergill and Mohit Rodeja. One of them will take home the treasure.

This is how one of them, Sameer Madan, had solved it: first we write the given cipher in a line:

BPMOWTLQAQVBPMKMTT

Next, we use the given clue, +19 -8.

Let A=1, B=2, C=3`85 Z=26, A=27, B=28...

First, we add 19 to B and get 21 or U. Then, we subtract 8 from P and get 8 or H. We continue with +19, -8 alternately and get:

UHFGPLEITIOTIEDEML

Let this be the first series. We do the same thing again, except that this time, we start with B-8(B=2+26=28). Then, we add 19 to P and get I. We now have a second series

TIEHOMDJSJNUHFCFLM

We write the first series under this one:

TIEHOMDJSJNUHFCFLM

UHFGPLEITIOTIEDEML

Join the first letter of the series above with the second of the series below, and then join with the third letter of the series above and so on. The deciphered message is: "The gold is in the cell". U.K. Gupta, being a telecom man, finds the connection. "First, we have to find the cell," he says. Having spent all their money, their only way out of Egypt is to know the cell number (We are not talking about mobiles here).

The first man they approach for directions looks mysterious. He is wearing his traditional Arab costume in a way so as to hide his face. Asked for directions, he says: "I agree that the construction of the Chinaman problem statement lays it open to many interpretations and the phrase "repeatedly divided" should have been used judiciously, but since the two problems given that week were similar, I hope you know what I meant.

Somewhere in Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, it is written:

NO

MAN

BEARS

+SORROW

————————

BETTER

This time the code is better." Before they can react, a sand storm blows away their guide. After it is gone, Ravneet Kotwal is the first one to raise his head and yell: "I know that creep; he is Aditya Rishi." Tarsem Mohan though, has jotted down the code in the sand and it looks to be an alphametic problem, where the letters when replaced with digits give a true and unique solution. He keeps the discovery to himself because he knows that this time, the first one to crack the code will walk away with the treasure. Time is running out for everyone in the desert, as a vulture starts hovering over them... and vulture is a patient bird. (Write at The Tribune or adityarishi99@yahoo.co.in)