Case 201: Abducted

John Malvone's Notes

Hey,

I see you made the right decision and want to work with me. Even though King’s conclusions will probably match mine, who knows how long it will take him to figure things out. That said, if you’ve already emailed him about the clues we’ve found, you’re not going to learn anything new here.

Since I’m running through other leads, you’ll still need to email King about the Location Celest was kidnapped from. You’ll also have to email him the case’s Solution when you’ve figured out where Celest has been taken.

If you haven’t emailed that putz yet, you can visit SleuthKings.com/Case-201 to send him your first email. When you want to talk to him about either of the issues above, include the appropriate underlined word from above in the body of your email.

To see my thoughts on the clues in your case file, click the corresponding buttons below.

On the back of the postcard, Dr. Dutkofski gives some advice. Take a closer look at it – her advice seems like it’s the key to cracking the alien transmission.

When you remove each of the “ADJ” gibberish from the transmission, you’re left with:

“PIHSREHTOM/TEN.SELIFEGAROTS”

If you pay attention to Dr. Dutkofski’s advice, you have to read from the end – in other words, from right-to-left. When you do, it gives you a web address:

Storagefiles.net/mothership

When you visit the site, you’ll see it’s password-protected. Lucky for you, I clicked on the “Forgot Your Password” button and got a hint. It turns out the alien brochure that King marked as Clue 2 is the key to finding the password. If you need help with it, click the Clue 2 button to see my thoughts.

It took a while, but I found the answers to the brochure’s questions. From top-to-bottom they are:

antimatter, light year, extraterrestrial, dark energy, exo-planets, and gravity.

The highlighted letters that make up the password are “ayxgla.” Whatever word those letters spell should be the password to the website Clue 1 gave us.

I just figured it out. The only word that can be spelled from “ayxgla” is “galaxy.”

I just plugged it into the website using all lowercase letters, and it worked. Take a look at the site yourself – it should help us figure out where Celest was kidnapped.

If you need any help making sense out of it, click on the Abduction Location button to see my thoughts.

King said he found some kind of note at the place where Celest was kidnapped. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’ll need to get in touch with him. You can email him at SleuthKings.com/Case-201. Once you let him know where Celest was kidnapped – see the instructions at the top of the page for details on how to do that – he’ll send you the note.

From what King said, the note mentions the alien species that are talked about in the magazine’s personality test. It also gives three sets of words and talks about things coming between them.

You’ll need to see the note yourself, but it sounds like you need to try finding the word sets throughout the personality test’s questions. When you do, you’ll want to read whatever words are between the designated word pairs to find the real message you’re looking for.

I don’t have the note, so I can’t go through the entire article to pick out the full message for you – you’ll have to email King for that.

What I can do is give you an example of how I think things should work.

One of the word pairs from the note King found is “said” and “weapon.” Question A has both of those words in it. Sandwiched between them are the words: “Alien, use this.”

In other words, the only important part of Question A is the words “Alien, use this.” Everything else is irrelevant. With that in mind, take another look at the note King found along with the personality test.

If you need an additional explanation, get in touch with King and let him know you’re working on Clue 3. Once he gets back to you – probably with the same thing I’ve already said – you can tell him you’re lost and maybe he’ll be able to help you out some more.

If you haven’t emailed King yet, you can visit SleuthKings.com/Case-201.

King just sent me a note saying the note he found helped him decode the symbols on the memo. Apparently, it says:

“Read Personality Test. Real Message Only.

D W 7

D W 4

C W 1

D W 11

A W 1

G W 7

E W 6

F W 4

G W 4”

It sounds like you need to look at the magazine’s personality test. The letters and numbers from the above sequences have to be pointing to specific words you need to look at. Judging from the message, however, you’ll want to ignore everything except for the article’s true message. In other words – your count should begin with the first word after the beginning keyword in the question you’re looking at.

If you need help finding the article’s actual message, take a look at my notes on Clue 3.

Since I don’t have the full message from the personality test, I can only help you a little bit here.

The only important words in Question A were: “Alien, use this.”

One of the memo’s pairings seems to be referring to these words. It’s the one that reads: “A W 1.”

The “A” stands for “Question A,” the “W” stands for “Word,” and the “1” means we need to look at the 1st word in the applicable message. In other words, it’s pointing us to the first word in Question A’s message, which is “Alien.”

If you need an additional explanation, get in touch with King and let him know you’re working on Clue 4. Once he gets back to you – probably with the same thing I’ve already said – you can tell him you’re lost and maybe he’ll be able to help you out some more.

If you haven’t emailed King yet, you can visit SleuthKings.com/Case-201.

Here’s a quick recap for you: Clues 1 and 2 gave us a website and its password.

Based on the website’s information, we need to look at the star map to figure out where Celest was kidnapped.

From what I can tell, the “locator device” will show three numbers in the outside holes and a letter in the center hole. We need to figure out what three numbers can be added together to equal one of the sums on the website. When the locator device is lined up so that the numbers are in the outside holes, the letter in the center hole is what the sum is pointing us toward.

When you’ve found all of the sums and their matching letters, the list of sums on the website will spell out where Celest was kidnapped.

I’m chasing down some other leads, so get in touch with King when you’ve figured out the location. If you haven’t emailed him yet, you can send him your first email from SleuthKings.com/Case-201. When you want to tell him where Celest was kidnapped from, include the word Location in the body of your email so he knows what you’re talking about.

I hate math but, so far, I’ve figured out which letters four of the sums are pointing us toward:

D = 72 (26 + 22 + 24)

O = 105 (67 + 17 + 21)

T = 186 (75 + 62 + 49)

S = 98 (49 + 25 + 24)

The rest is up to you. If you need help finding the remaining sums, you’ll have to get in touch with King. If you haven’t sent him your first email yet, you can do so at SleuthKings.com/Case-201. When you do, include the word Location in the body of your email so he knows what you’re working on.