The Mind of Madness

Dan Amrich, formerly editor for Official Xbobx Magazine and now EIC of World Of Warcraft Magazine, is a man of many talents. Co-host of the OXM podcast with Ryan Mcaffery, Dan presents himself as nothing less than a passionate, articulate advocate for gaming, print and the art of writing.

He is also a madman.

On his blog, www.bunnyears.net, Dan presents a variety of unique events and projects both past and present, including his parody band Palette-Swap Ninja, his Ghostbusters fixation, and his love of pinball. Perhaps most importantly Dan also outlines an extensive exploration of “The Masquerade”, an epic puzzle hunt for a golden hare that took place in the early ’80. Here, then, is where we find the first glints of madness.
Dan’s fascination with puzzles has lead to several of his own creation appearing online and in print, most notably in the Sept 2009 issue of Maximum PC. On his blog, http://bunnyears.net/dan/?page_id=2, Dan has fashioned his most insidious creation yet, and therein lays the crazy.

I am documenting my attempts to solve this puzzle in order to have something to give my kids when they ask “why did daddy go to the mental asylum?” It’s either that hard, or that fiendishly simple.

You can see the original puzzle on the blog, but below is an outline of my process to try and solve it and all the missteps along the way.

• The first sentence of the blog is a series of clues, most importantly referencing “Initially” “enigmatic” and “cryptic”. I take these as references to Dan’s initials, perhaps as a key, and a reference to the historical “Enigma machine” used in WWII by the Germans to encrypt message. Does “cryptic” refer to the recent invention of Dan Brown’s in The Da Vinci Code, the “cryptex”, a cylindrical puzzle using a letter key found from solving riddles?

• Taking the enigma machine as a starting point, I researched the workings of a machine, including downloading several simulators. This created several problems. To solve an enigma code you need more than a key. Given it was a mechanical device using cylinders known as rotors and a reflector (numbered 1-5 or 1-7 using roman numerals) as well as a 1-to-1 plug-in patch that allows for the transposition of letters (a=z, z=a), the complexity has gone way up. To date I have found nothing on the site that would lead me to the correct rotor orientation, or plug setup, I think I have gone too far in the wrong direction.

• After advising Dan I have done way too much research trying to find a key, he updates his blog with information that should provides clue.

• Researching ciphers, I begin applying a variety of letter transposition ciphers, such as the Caesar cipher, moving my way through ciphers that require mathematical formulae in order to decrypt the letters. Again I think I am getting way too complicated.

• I try going in the diametrically opposed direction into simplicity by doing a word and letter count, resulting in the following image.
• I try mathematical variations on Dan’s date of birth against the numerical order of the alphabet, in case that too may be a clue. Blood has started to seep from my ears and nose.

To Be Continued?