Geekdad Challenge of the Week Solution: The Clumsy Cryptographer

Welcome back for this week's exciting conclusion of the Challenge of the Week. When last we checked, our challenge looked something like this ....

Dr Enigma Cryptograms was very happy. He bought a new Lego model and wanted all his cryptographer friends to know about it. Of course he can't just send an e-mail, that would be simple. Instead he made up a bunch of tiles with a well know cipher and was going to send a picture to his friends. While carrying the tiles to his table to take a picture he dropped them all. No need to worry he numbered the tiles. Of course he did not number them numerically, that would be simple. He used a simple numeric code based on his name.

The tiles are pictured above in their jumbled state. Some of the tiles are not in the correct orientation though, that would be simple. Some tiles need to be rotated in order to get the correct orientation to solve the cipher. Sounds simple right?

The solution was pretty simple: Once you got everything oriented right it was a standard Pig Pen Cipher or Masonic Cipher. The tiles of course were numbered according to the letters in the name "Dr. Enigma Cryptograms" (a=1 b=2 c=3 etc.) Finally, after you arrange all the letters there is still the matter of putting them in the correct order because of the repeated letters, When you're done doing all that you're left with the answer ...

__The Millennium Falcon __

Simple... right? Well Giedre Subaciute thought so -- that's why she is this week's winner of our $50.00 ThinkGeek gift certificate. Nice work, Giedre -- enjoy your prize!

Well, here at GeekDad Challenge Labs we are saying goodbye to Dave Banks who will be taking a break from challenges and puzzles for a while. Fear not: Dave will still be cranking out the quality GeekDad posts we have all come to expect from him.

On Monday the irreplaceable Dave Banks will be succeeded by none other than Garth Sundem. Garth is the author of such great books as Brain Candy: Science, Paradoxes, Puzzles, Logic, and Illogic to Nourish Your Neurons and The Geeks' Guide to World Domination: Be Afraid, Beautiful People. I'm sure Garth will have plenty of brain-twisting treats for your brains to snack on. Come back Monday for Garth's debut on the GeekDad Weekly Challenge!!!