Phase 1 Answers!

Here's the translation of the mysterious coded letter I got on May 26th. The instructions in the letter led to some web pages with riddles on them, and I've got the solutions to those, too. Thanks again to all the people who helped!

I'm going to hide the answers so as not to spoil the fun for people who want to try to solve the puzzles on their own. To see an answer, click your mouse above one of the pink boxes and then drag down until you can read the highlighted text.

Question 1 - What does the coded message say?

Hint:

The letter mentioned two different types of codes. Triple-DES is supposed to be unbreakable. (And "H." says that I used to be able to break Triple-DES in my head? That must be some kind of joke!) Anyway, a ROT-13 Caesar cypher is much easier to break.

Full answer:

http://www.andrewu.co.uk/tools/rot13/ is a ROT-13 utility we found on the web. I'm not sure I understand the stuff at the bottom...I mean, how can you add letters to numbers???

Luckily we don't need to understand it. We just need to type the coded message into the box and hit the button. That gives us this URL: http://www.extraordinary-popular-delusions.com/atc/phase1/index.shtml

Question 2 - What's the answer to the "Superman" riddle?

It turns out that there's a lot of kryptonite information on the Internet. Here's a good site: http://theages.superman.ws/Encyclopaedia/kryptonite.php

So the answer is "gold", which leads us to the URL: http://www.extraordinary-popular-delusions.com/atc/phase1/gold.shtml

Question 3 - What's the answer to the "Golden Treasure" riddle?

This is apparently a pretty famous riddle. It's in J.R.R. Tolkien's book "The Hobbit", as well as some riddle collections out on the Internet. The answer is "Egg", which leads here: http://www.extraordinary-popular-delusions.com/atc/phase1/egg.shtml

That's all!