"I feel I'm just not looking at it in the right way"

In the first L5R RPG contest, "Riddle of the Hare Clan," contestants had to break a cipher from the line's first supplement, the GM Pack. Contestants were given until October 31st to solve the puzzle; from the flood of entries received in the final week it would appear that many Kolat Codebreakers work best under deadline pressure.

When the dust finally cleared, we had received 44 entries, 43 of them successful. There were an unprecedented number of contributions from other countries: five entries from Canada two from England, one from France, and one from Australia. Indeed, the final entry - one of the English contributions - didn't arrive until the second week of November.

Common solution times mentioned ranged from ninety minutes to six hours. It turned out not to be as unbreakable as Greg had hoped, but evidently it was still challenging.

Some entrants responded in Rokugani fashion: Justin Carmical and Stephen Muray both wrote back in character as Doji Genjiru and Bayushi Murai, while a number of folks included their RPG character's name as part of their signatures. One entrant, who shall remain nameless, wrote the answer on the back of printed notes from a Department of Defense presentation. Actually calling in the NSA on the solution wasn't necessary, guys!

Possibly our favorite entry came from the Kolat Code Team of Garfield High School in Seattle. They threw up their hands in frustration in a short note: "Our methods included plain encryption of every arrow, Hyaku division, following the arrows on both kinds of keyboards, Ouija boards, picking out letters from the book, the Internet, [...] and generally just staring at those little arrows forever... and forever is a really long time" Their letter went on to explain how close theyd gotten to the solution. Thanks for trying, guys..

Later in the contest, we began receiving entries from entire groups of players who had been given the puzzle in charader by their GMs. Many of them were enthusiastic about the contest, and told us to keep it up. With this sort of response, be assured that well be including more contests in the future. Greg was terribly upset that twoscore people broke his unbreakable code, so he's come up with something even more fiendish for next time.

Our winner, selected at random by Malrog the Frog, was Chris Emslie of Topeka, Kansas. He wins the signed leatherbound 1st printing of the RPG, as well as copies of the GM Pack (again), Honor's Veil, Way of the Dragon, and Way of the Unicorn. He said "So far my players haven't figured it out" Keep them away from this article, then, because it's time to blow the lid off of the Kolat Code.

Thanks to all of our entrants, and to everybody who worked on the puzzle.

The Solution

Yes, it was a substitution cipher, but one with a twist. The four kinds of arrows which were right-angle bends are not letters, but are control codes. Starting at the top left-hand corner of the puzzle, with the paper held right-side-up, start reading from left to right. When you hit the first right-angle bend, turn the entire page sidezways and keep reading. The arrows snake through the entire message, turning it this way and that, until you reach the square box in the bottom line. Not only are the letter codes not in standard left-to-right order, they change depending on the orientation of the paper, meaning that the same symbol could stand for up to four different letters, depending on the direction the paper had been turned.

If you follow the arrows and copy out the message in a straight line, it then becomes a standard substitution cipher. The boxes are periods, and the vertical lines are spaces. The final message is:

Our master has learned of an investigation of our work in Forest Shadow City. Defend our agent by killing the magistrate and giving the appearance of suicide.

The Entrants

Justin S.P. Carmical
Kurtis Enoksen
Joseph Carlock
David Smith
Dana Jacobsen
Forest Bryant
Eric Suess
David Phipps
Tim Wooten
R. Martin
Steve Keck
Yannick Chevallier
Tim Berryman
Neil Laughlin
Dwan Parkyn
Peter Skanes
Chris Sneary
John S. Olson
Stephen Muray
Mark Skidmore
Chris Bird
Jonathan Gaudart
Gilles Bussiere, Jr
Russell Reading
Eric Bergstrom and group
Ashley Dennis
Daniel Green and group
Charles M Stucker
R Russell Kelland
Joe McNiff and group
Dennis and Lisa Hardin
Kolat Code Team of Garfield HS
Andrew Madsen
Jerry Jazbec
Jeff Kyer
Jeff Furnish
Thomas Dowler
Chris Emdie
Stuart Eastman
Mike Stevens
Jeff Stockton
Andy Armstrong
Lee Kenworth
Manny Brillakis

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