Brian is a Master himself!  He has claimed multiple treasures from breaking codes, and he has achieved this once again in the treasure hunt of 7H3 C0D3 by Master Mophios.  He solved this challenging puzzle shortly after release and claimed its treasure. While other searchers may have still been testing ciphers, crunching numbers, looking for patterns, or counting squares, Brian was submitting an answer.

For this reason, we need to pick the Brain of Brian a bit! Funny how he once mentioned he dislikes anagrams….but he seems to use one a lot!

Let’s see what we can learn from the Brain, or I mean Brian….. (either works. 🙂 )

Six Questions with Brian:

  • 1Q) Congrats on breaking 7H3 C0D3! Was it the column of numbers that attracted you or what? Can you share what the prize was?

Thanks for the 6-questions, Jenny.  There are so many hunts going on right now, it is hard to stay focused on just one.  I tried working on several at once, but my brain just goes crazy and I can’t handle it.  I prefer working on one at a time.  Saying that, I was working on ‘Mr. Clue’, ‘Parish’ by Natalie Nelson, ‘The Cipher’ by Niamo Speck, and I am constantly working on the ending puzzle in the purple book “Introduction to Codes and Ciphers” by Jenny Kile.  

So, when I heard about ‘7H3 C0D3’ by Master Mophios, I quickly watched the video and when I got to the ‘daunting long list of numbers’, I said, “No way. I’m out.”  Funny, because you think the numbers attracted me to it, when actually they caused me to put it away for a bit.  The ‘Rules’ section in the video had an “easy” cipher, and from there it told me where to look to find the prize amount, which was $2500!  WOW, nice!

  • 2Q) This Treasure Puzzle is one of a few different hunts now, which involve the breaking of codes, that you have taken down. You had mentioned Master Mophios is planning to release the solution himself, but can you share some of your secrets on how to ‘generally’ go about doing it? Is it the same technique for all?

You would HAVE to use that word, wouldn’t you…  SECRET !!!  I think you know that there is a SECRET in your purple book that I cannot figure out!  I see that word, and I go NUTS.  I know every page number that has the word SECRET in your book (and every location on each page, and the all words before it, and all the words after it….), but I just can’t seem to figure out that SECRET.

Anyhow, yes, Master Mophios is going to somehow release the solution himself.  It is pretty cool.  The first half of the solution is a ‘tip of the cap’ to FF.  The second half of the solution, well… that involves the ‘daunting long list of numbers’.

No, I don’t think there is a ‘one-size-fits-all’ technique for all treasure hunts.  And most of the time I feel like I am clueless of what I am doing.  I do use Excel quite often, and it came in very handy with this hunt. 

Often times, I am completely wrong.  I thought Mr. Clue was going to be near the MIT campus in Boston, as all of the names could have been astronauts and the only relationship that I could find was schooling at MIT.  It turns out it was in Indianapolis, Indiana.  Doh!

  • 3Q) It seems you might get in a ‘flow’, and of course when having fun, time is not an issue, but can you share about how much time you worked on this?

Time is always an issue.  But for a hobby I currently enjoy, I try to make time.  For this hunt, I spent about 10 hours on it.  Most of that time was stuck on ‘STEP 2’.  I could see what was happening, but I didn’t know what to do with it.  I finally decided to move on to the Keysets (daunting long list of numbers), and things started to come together quickly.  That 10 hours was sprinkled over 4 days – so my brain had additional time to reflect and think while not actually ‘working’ on the puzzle.  

Other hunts I have worked on much longer.  Like the FF hunt, I looked for 4 years for WWWH, and never was able to come up with a spot good enough worth visiting.  Custard Quest IV, I’ve been toiling with for about a year and a half now.  And your purple book I’ve been trying things for about 10 months.  I think trying things in these other hunts (that didn’t work) helped me in this one.

  • 4Q) Is it relentless attack or natural feel for what’s happening to break a code? How do you know what cipher or code to test?

It is definitely NOT natural.  For me, it’s mostly trial-and-error.  And I emphasize, mostly ERROR.  Usually, I am trying different things on the DCode site.  But for this hunt, when I copied the letters for STEP 1, I noticed something… like there were 24 lines.  There was some POEM that I studied for 4 years that had 24 lines.  And then I used my awareness to notice that each line had the exact same number of characters as that POEM!  Hmmm….

  • 5Q) What advice might you give for someone who looked at 7H3 C0D3 and was lost right from the start?

Start with the ‘Rules’ section.  That is a very simple cipher.  It is just a bunch of numbers, but numbers can be letters in the ‘ciphering’ world.  Then start writing the letters down from ‘ROME’.  Sometimes just writing them down will force you to look at them closer and you might notice something.  From there just follow the ‘Process’ that Master Mophios lays out.  And then write out ‘HOME’.  And then start looking at the numbers.  I began writing out the numbers, and then I started to notice something and that there was a better way than to just write them all out. 

  • 6Q) What do you enjoy most about this exciting hobby of Armchair Treasure Hunting?

There is no doubt what my answer is here.  It is the “AHHHHH-HA” moment.  It is a natural-high for me.  The reward is nice, but some time from now, I’ll forget what I spent it on.  But I’ll always remember the “AHHHHHH-HA” moment.  It is a very intense moment for me. 

  • I can still remember the moment from when I solved “A Day in October” (progressive Caesar cipher) and went to Pittsburgh to pick up the rock at the George Washington / Guyasuta statue.
  • I can still remember the moment my teammate (Genetic Blend) and I won FFGM #4 as we studied the ScrapBooks and we sent someone out to Georgia for us.
  • I can still remember the moment my teammates (Greg and Joe G) claimed the FFGM #6 as we studied Glen Onoko Falls Trailhead in Pennsylvania and we sent Joe W. out to get it.
  • I can still remember the moment my teammate (Genetic Blend) and I won the ‘Lamp with Four Keys’ after many months studying it.  (Although, I still think someone beat us, but just didn’t claim it… if you can believe that.)
  • I can still remember the moment I figured out Copper Dan’s hunt, where the solution was “the geographic center of the United States”.
  • I can still remember the entire day as we visited all 10 spots in the Cleveland area for the ‘Lost Skull’.  We finished in third place, but my boys loved it.
  • And now, I’ll always remember the 5 times it took me to type in Master Mophios’s e-mail address because my fingers trembled with excitement trying to type it in correctly to submit the solution.