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N1I3UjhOM1M4TzgwODM1U05STjM3N1E2UTBQNg==
clue

The alphabet was 26. That wasn't enough.

So they took it again — lowercase this time — then counted to ten, and borrowed two more.

The tail end always gives it away.


paste what you find
clue

Caesar never finished the alphabet.

Halfway through, he stopped — and found that halfway back was the same door.

Apply the same shift twice and you're back where you started.


paste what you find
clue

This one was made, not borrowed.

Each character carries its position like a weight. The key multiplies that weight.

Then it crosses itself — the key, shifted by where it stands.

The key is a number. Find it first.

find the key
  • A whole number. No smaller than one, no larger than fifteen.
  • Odd.
  • Not cleanly divisible by three.
  • Larger than five.
  • Multiply it by the number that comes before it. The product is 42.
the formula

Each pair of hex digits is one byte, at position i (starting from zero).

It was encoded as: ( ascii + i × key ) mod 256, then XOR'd with ( i + key ).

Reverse both operations. In the right order.


enter the message
solved
you did it wow
base64 → rot13 → positional drift hex
key was 7

three layers. no tools. good.