Chartz

Owner:

Drewes/Sarah

Solution:

POLARIS

GC Notes:

GC to update day-of-game.

Presentation:

A large, weathered piece of paper with a long poem on one side and a grid with letters on the other side.

Walkthrough:

The first step is to find the Bacon Cipher. While most letters are Serifs, there are a few letters that are sans-serif. These are the letters to look for. There are two letters per section, and they form coordinate pairs on the back of the grid.

Once the coordinate pairs are mapped on the back of the grid, they form the Little Dipper constellation. If you hold the poster up to the light, the points on the grid on the back are each exactly lined up with one letter on the front of the poster. If you read these letters in order from top to bottom, you get "STAR AT JI"

This is a reference to the name of the star that is the one at the coordinate I,J on the grid on the back. If you google the stars in the little dipper, you see that this star is Polaris, which is the answer.

Hinting:

It's easy to mistake the constellation to be the big dipper. "Think smaller" is a good clue.

The bacon cipher may be difficult to find. Francis Bacon is mentioned by name in the poem, suggest that teams do some research on him.

Teams may think they are finished when they have mapped the coordinates. They should keep going.

Data:

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE FRONT:

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE BACK:

BACON CIPHER LETTERS:

Dots plotted on the grid:

Grid overlaid with letters: