A SIGN OF THE TIMES

This is the last part of my six-part series of interconnected crossword puzzles, each of which contains a piece of a larger mystery which leads to a final answer. I'm not doling out any hints on the meta-challenge, but I will write up a little debriefing to be released after the contest is over. I do want to take this opportunity to thank Will, Joel, Frank, and the testers for all of their help with this — and uber-thanks to Will for allowing me to do it. I had a blast. If you had fun, consider virtually visiting me at www.patrickblindauer.com where you can try one of my free monthly crosswords or purchase one of my Puzzlefests. I'm also available to make customized puzzles, if you've got an occasion that needs some puzzlization. Good luck on the meta-challenge, everybody!

SOLUTION:

The main inspiration for this crosswordy experiment was the paper itself. Knowing it was going to be in the Times, it made sense to start (and end) with something related to time. Brainstorming gave me my theme concepts for the week: units of time, TIME in the clues, FACETIME, and Times Square. I wanted the Friday and Saturday puzzles to be themeless, though I did put in some time-related clues on Friday and there were the two meta-hint entries on Saturday. The letter X is used to make a multiplication sign or "times sign," so it seemed appropriate to use that letter, utilizing the grid numbers themselves to spell out the final answer. The first X appears in Monday's puzzle in a square with the number 20, and if you use alphanumeric replacement (1=A, 2=B, 3=C, etc.) you'll get the letter T. Continuing similarly with each square containing the letter X, you get TEMPUS FUGIT, or "time flies."

Thanks again to Will for the opportunity to do this — it was a dream come true.

Contest week! Jim and I decided to keep everything quiet until the contest is over, including the grid solutions. I doubt we'd give anything away by publishing all the clues and answers, but this method better preserves the mystery.

Speaking of mysteries, this week is an appropriate time for me to delve into some of my favorite cryptological mysteries throughout history. None of these write-ups have anything to do with the contest, I promise (I'll put up a post summarizing how I solved it afterward, assuming I solve it). I simply like sharing my obsession with unsolved coded puzzles throughout history. And my posts will need to get shorter anyway, as a certain 13-day-old little dictator has grown quite strong. Won't be long until she starts pounding a shoe against a podium.

CICADA 3301

I only ran across Cicada 3301 a few months ago, as I was researching a topic for a book I'm mulling over. It's such a mysterious project that I'm not even sure how to describe it. Part puzzle, part sleuthing operation, part recruitment tool — but no one has a definitive answer for who's even behind it. Not even whether the goals of the organization are for good or for chaos.

Back in 2012, an enigmatic set of posts were released to lure in the cryptanalysts throughout the world. It looked like a "puzzle hunt" in the vein of The Game at Stanford or The MIT Mystery Hunt, but it came with connotations of higher-level consequences. Imagine a real live version of The Matrix, if you will, where Cicada 3301 was searching for Neo.

And the level of difficulty of the puzzles! I enjoy puzzle-solving, but when it starts to involve higher-level cryptanalysis, I find myself well out of my league. Simple Caesar shifts, Vigeneres, usage of primes in security keys, yes, but much of Cicada 3301 went well beyond. To make it even more interesting, whoever is behind Cicada 3301 wove in references from literature and philosophy, eliminating people who are one-track-minded hard-core programmers, looking instead for well-rounded individuals able to pull information from numerous areas of knowledge.

Some have claimed to have solved it, but reports are varied. I eagerly await an announcement of the "winner," except that whoever Neo is, he/she will likely remain as covert after discovery as the entire Cicada 3301 organization.

Thus ends our exploration of cryptological mysteries throughout history.

I have highlighted the X's in all the contest puzzles. Each is in a numbered square: 20, 5 13, 16 21, 19, 6 21, 7 9 20. The corresponding letters in the alphabet spell TEMPUS FUGIT, Latin for "time flies".

Using puzzles as a recruiting tool has a long history. In 1941, the Daily Telegraph ran a crossword contest to find Nazi code breakers for Bletchley Park. Google ran its famous billboard contests in 2004.