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It was a chilly winter night when I was hanging around with some friends. We were gossiping about the recent kidnapping cases where a few of the people from the town were missing. There was a news about a gang with a long history of crimes. They had a kind of weird style of kidnapping. I say this, because, none of the earlier victims were harmed and they safely returned back home. But of course, it was due to the fact that the FBI was able to track the precise location in a short amount of time. If they hadn't, they could have starved to death!

Some say, these criminals do leave behind some clues once they vanish from the crime scene, and then they will leave the kidnapped victim in some remote place to rot alone until someone comes and rescues them. Bizarre and horrible!

It was already too late when I finally decided to skip the talks and head back to home. It was unusual, I felt something creepy. I hadn't received a single call today from my Uncle John. Something was not right, I guessed.

I was just outside the main gate of my house when I saw the lights were off. "This doesn't look good," I thought. I opened the gate and went ahead to push the bell, when I saw something hanging on the doorbell. It seemed like a torn piece of paper with some weird looking things. I didn't want to go inside the house until I made sure that it's safe inside, hence I decided to have some patience. And yes, I knew, my Uncle John was kidnapped!

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With shivery hands I took the paper off the door and started reading the things. It seemed like it was full of clues, but I was clueless as to what it was pointing to? I sat down on the stairs to take a closer look, when I found something interesting in there, and so started working on it. In a few minutes, I was able to get the idea about the note. It was time. I rushed in to see what else was there for me. To my surprise, the room was messy. The tiles were all colored. Yellow, Green, Red and White all over the place.

![enter image description here

There were 4 pieces of notes, again torn into pieces. I picked them up and started reading -

R k s q, yksp sjthn eq kbjk s qn. J kw r dmr y ks dm vn pnm tdna rd eq b mp, h nr i n rn hh y ks rdmr yk sp sj thn e q hkt mrna e j k jn t ksjrpy. R k pnm td rd npn, rd eq weh h u n yk sp bej mh qrn l rk bej a mja up nmg r dn qnp enq k b tk anq.

223->33->30->380->966 968->(Color pattern?)->66 93->975

Dc l t ys qcg m x vf riki cnc fz zxi! M s z u m s Al off w, Zph no .

Can you help me rescue Uncle John?

(Note-Story is a fiction! Images credit - Google!!)

HINT 1

All the information for decoding the cipher & cipher type are mentioned. Just apply knowledge and find it.

HINT 2

What word do you see formed out of the lines connecting SENORITA?

FINAL HINT

Hint 2 speaks about the cipher being used.

Techidiot
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2 Answers2

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Partial Answer:

Since these clues were presented in some order, my guess is we're supposed to use those items in that order. Therefore, I've started to look at the piece of paper on the door:

The alphabet in the top left corner is missing precisely the letters "AEINORST", or, "SENORITA". Those letters appear further down the page. I'm not sure what the relevance of the remainder of the alphabet is.

Regarding SENORITA, there is a number pattern above that word which follows the same placement pattern as SENORITA, and, when read in the same order as SENORITA, is in numerical order, 013456789 (missing 2). However, the numbers and letters don't match 1-to-1 because where the T in SENORITA is, there are 2 numbers, 7 and 8. Which means there is some other mapping. My guess is that, because the 7 is red and the 8 is black, then the black 8 and 9 together map to A while 7 maps to T. I don't know the significance of the red 5.

EDIT 1:

When I made the comment above, the OP noted that he missed a digit and added in that digit. Subsequently, the note at the bottom changed. This means that the added digit is related to the decryption key for the note at the bottom.

That's what I have so far.

Ertai87
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  • I missed a digit there. Your findings are good. But you need to find the reason behind those findings :) +1 for the attempt – Techidiot Jan 12 '17 at 15:39
  • Question: Is the kerning of the alphabet at the top of the note relevant to the solution? That is to say, if the spaces between the letters is increased or decreased, does that affect the ability to solve the puzzle? – Ertai87 Jan 12 '17 at 16:05
  • Note at the bottom was changed not because of the changes made to the above part, but due to another reason. 2. Everything you see is relevant to the solution.
  • – Techidiot Jan 12 '17 at 16:07
  • No, the spacing is not relevant.
  • – Techidiot Jan 12 '17 at 16:13