Gang symbols, Underground Railroad quilts, Russian prison tattoos—the February issue of Wired magazine was packed with codes used by people living below the law. Like all underworld activities, if you weren't looking closely, you might have missed them. But the trail led deep into the underworld—specifically into a speakeasy in San Francisco where charter members of a nefarious group called the Ring of Dishonor were inducted. With a full spoiler alert in effect, we'll take you on a guided tour of the puzzles in the issue, on the website, and in the speakeasy. If intricate duplicity is what you like, read on.
The puzzles in the issue and on the website were designed by Mark L. Gottlieb, Teeuwynn Woodruff, and myself, under the guidance of Wired senior editor Chris Baker. Here's part one of a step by step guide to cracking the codes.
Step 1: Crack the Nü Shu puzzle
The series started off with a puzzle using Nü Shu, the forbidden written language of Chinese women. The straightforward puzzle required determining which of graphic designer Alice Cho's beautiful characters was missing, but surrounding that puzzle was a series of cryptograms in Nü Shu. Using a simple transposition (the characters were in order from A-Y in the middle of the puzzle), these border cryptograms spelled out the following phrases: HOBO CODE, POLARI, VICE LORDS SYMBOLS, ROGUES LEXICON, RUSSIAN PRISON TATTOOS, UNDERGROUND RAILROAD QUILTS, TIC TAC, and THUGGEE OMENS. This crypto-list indicated eight codes that needed to be found in the magazine, whether in print or on the iPad.
Step 2: Find the codes
Throughout the issue were eight pages laced with codes. On each of these pages were three to six examples of one of the codes in the Nü Shu cryptolist. Each of these led to a popup quiz on the iPad, and an online quiz on the Decode site. Finding the examples in the magazine told you which answers to select in the quizzes, each of whose multiple-choice letters spelled a word in order.
Underworld Code #1: Hobo Code
Code location: Page 24, in the photograph of the Most Dangerous Object in the Office, a mushroom box
Examples on magazine page: cat, triangle with hands, locomotive, bird, 2/10
Quiz answers: 1-S, 2-J, 3-N, 4-C, 5-T, 6-G, 7-E, 8-P, 9-A, 10-D, 11-R, 12-I, 13-Q, 14-M, 15-L, 16-H, 17-K, 18-F, 19-O, 20-B
*Word spelled in example answer letters: * SCARF (1, 4, 9, 11, 18)
Underworld Code #2: Underground Railroad Quilts
Code location: Page 26, in a black bar by the Members Only headline
Examples on magazine page: log cabin, shoofly, flying geese, bear's paw
Quiz answers: 1-B, 2-D, 3-K, 4-F, 5-I, 6-L, 7-H, 8-A, 9-J, 10-C, 11-E, 12-G
*Word spelled in example answer letters: * DICE (2, 5, 10, 11)
Underworld Code #3: Russian prison tattoos
Code location: Page 28, in an illustration of a tattooed arm
Examples on magazine page: skull, fire, stars
Quiz answers: 1-E, 2-R, 3-L, 4-Q, 5-D, 6-I, 7-N, 8-O, 9-B, 10-P, 11-C, 12-F, 13-G, 14-K, 15-J, 16-A, 17-H, 18-M
*Word spelled in example answer letters: * DOG (5, 8, 13)
Underworld Code #4: Vice Lords symbols
Code location: Page 58, in an illustration of symbolic band names
Examples on magazine page: eye on pyramid, star, cane, circle
Quiz answers: 1-J, 2-E, 3-I, 4-C, 5-K, 6-G, 7-A, 8-D, 9-B, 10-L, 11-H, 12-F
*Word spelled in example answer letters: * CALF (4, 7, 10, 12)
Underworld Code #5: Tic-Tac
Code location: Page 66, on the sleeve of a narcocorrido singer
Examples on magazine page: monkey, net, kite bottle
Quiz answers: 1-J, 2-M, 3-B, 4-H, 5-I, 6-A, 7-E, 8-L, 9-G, 10-D, 11-C, 12-K, 13-O, 14-F, 15-P, 16-N
*Word spelled in example answer letters: * MILK (2, 5, 8, 12)
Underworld Code #6: Thuggee Omens
Code location: Page 134, in the corner of the map
Examples on magazine page: wolf, hare, rain shower
Quiz answers: 1-B, 2-J, 3-F, 4-C, 5-K, 6-L, 7-A, 8-D, 9-I, 10-E, 11-G, 12-H
*Word spelled in example answer letters: * KEG (5, 10, 11)
Underworld Code #7: Rogue's Lexicon
Code location: Page 10, in the Lexicographers listing of the masthead
Examples on magazine page: neddy, stepping-ken, Queen Dick, bludget, autumn-divers
Quiz answers: 1-S, 2-M, 3-N, 4-F, 5-C, 6-P, 7-L, 8-J, 9-A, 10-G,11-B, 12-K, 13-R,14-D, 15-Q, 16-E, 17-O, 18-T, 19-I, 20-H
*Word spelled in example answer letters: * SNAKE (1, 3, 9, 12, 16)
Underworld Code #8: Polari
Code location: Page 131, at the end of first paragraph of the colophon
Examples on magazine page: dolly, basket, chicken, troll, handbag, cottage
Quiz answers: 1-P, 2-H, 3-A, 4-M, 5-O, 6-L, 7-F, 8-I, 9-N, 10-D, 11-G, 12-C, 13-B, 14-K, 15-E, 16-J
*Word spelled in example answer letters: * POLICE (1, 5, 6, 8, 12, 15)
Step 3: Use the key to open the door
Now you had eight words: scarf, calf, dog, dice, milk, keg, snake, police. This could be used on the key, a sepia-tone image with 21 pictures. Each picture matched a Nü Shu letter. The words gained from the code decoding step were depicted among the pictures, so decoding the Nü Shu characters of the scarf, then the calf, and so on spelled TIM S. HOPE, the name of a Ring of Dishonor member who, if you emailed him at wired.com, autoreplied with an invitation to the gathering.
The induction ceremony was to take place on February 16th at Bourbon & Branch in San Francisco, at a book release party for Wired.com senior editor Kevin Poulsen's new book Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground. Now you knew the date and location of the Ring of Dishonor induction ceremony, but not the password to get in the door. That had to be gained by emailing Tim S. Hope's "underworld name" at wired.com. For many potential inductees, this proved to be the hardest task of all.
A hint was dropped in the form of another Nü Shu message, which read ANAGRAM ADDRESS EMAIL NAME INTO THE THING REVEALED BY MY ARGNET RESPONSES INITIAL LETTERS. On the ARG news site ARGNet, an unwitting Jane Doh had me sit for an interview, leaving the door wide open for me to drop a clue into my responses. Reading down the initial letters of the ten responses spelled the phrase DEVIL'S NAME. Anagramming TIM S. HOPE into a devil's name gave the missing answer: MEPHISTO.
Emailing Mephisto got the password question: "The password is Max Butler's six-letter hacker name." A quick read of advance postings for Kingpin produced the answer ICEMAN. However, Butler used many aliases. So we knew we had to accept VISION, DIGITS, or anything else the inductees could find a source for. Sneaky hackers.
Step 4: Get in the Ring
That got us to the door. Next time, we'll go into great detail about what happened behind that door.
