The beautiful world of IATA airport codes has been the overarching theme of JoJo Stratton‘s WoTD posts from May 6 to May 13 2016.
Whats been distinctive about this batch is that examining the page source not only led to the usual ciphertexts but also to a series of hidden messages, hinting both at the method for solving the code and a potential upcoming Verum Inveniri story development.
Did you notice that each code has two distinct different regions?
There is the big part containing the code, then a single 6 letter part at the end.
That 6 letter part is the key for the hints and are all http://goo.gl/ links to images.
Each image has some lyrics in plain view and the previous hinting at the background story development.
Code #1
Observations
YGH JAV CXH BWL JMB VEV APF TWP YWM ONU ATT BMH XAR DGP VIL ITM WIL FRA FYV YEU YYJ ETH EMN OLI YYD AIU VLC EGS NOR FYV
dFQrbx
Pairs of 3 letters with the exception of the last 6 characters.
Since it is only 6 characters, we could assume that is a Short-URL (append http://goo.gl/) which leads us to find a picture with what seem to be lyrics on them.
Looking up the words brings us to our hint.
Since this was the first code in this theme, we would start off with dumping the entire code into Google and see what it throws back.
All the top results all mention IATA codes, this combined with resolving the trailing six characters (dFQrbx) to a goo.gl link which gave us the song “Fly me to the moon”, we can assume we’ll need to resolve the IATA codes to their actual airport names.
We found that world-airport-codes.com is a nice reliable search engine for IATA codes.
it gives back detailed airport information which will help a lot with the rest of this theme.
Using the above mentioned website, let us resolve all the IATA codes
IATA Code
Airport name
YGH
Fort Good Hope Airport
JAV
Ilulissat Airport
CXH
Vancouver Harbour Water Aerodrome Airport
BWL
Earl Henry Airport
JMB
Jamba Airport
VEV
Barakoma Airport
APF
Naples Municipal Airport
TWP
Torwood Airport
YWM
Williams Harbour Airport
ONU
Ono-I-Lau Airport
ATT
Atmautluak Airport
BMH
Bomai Airport
XAR
Aribinda Airport
DGP
Daugavpils International Airport
VIL
Dakhla Airport
ITM
Osaka International Airport
WIL
Nairobi Wilson Airport
FRA
Frankfurt am Main International Airport
FYV
Drake Field Airport
YEU
Eureka Airport
YYJ
Victoria International Airport
ETH
Eilat Airport
EMN
Néma Airport
OLI
Rif Airport
YYD
Smithers Airport
AIU
Enua Airport
VLC
Valencia Airport
EGS
Egilsstaðir Airport
NOR
Norðfjörður Airport
FYV
Drake Field Airport
Notice how the first letter of the first couple of airports spell out “five“? Looks like we are on the right track!
Take the first letter of each airport: FIVEJBNTWOABADDONFDEVENRSEVEND
Almost everything fits, there is that part of DEVEN that seems to not fit, so let us fix that error: FIVEJBNTWOABADDONFSEVENRSEVEND
Substitute the written numbers for the first solve of the theme 5JBN2ABADDONF7R7D
Code #2
Observations
HEM MCT MVD OTP TSA DOH AMS DMK W MCT VNO RKV CCS UIO BUD ESB TGU BKA CAI TLL HRE DOD W MCT TXL vNpUa7
This looks exactly like the previous code, except for the lone single characters W and applying the same techniques brings us to yet another images with lyrics written on it.
Looking up the song brings us to this code’s hint.
We’ll deal with those rogue W’s later!
Repeat the steps we did with the previous code in resolving the IATA codes to their airports.
Keep in mind that the hint mentions capital city.
You will see that the first couple of codes do not give anything useful when taking just their first character, but looking at what countries they are the capital cities of, that brings us closer to a solve. So I am including the country which the airports reside in, in the table below 😉
IATA
Airport name
City
Country
HEM
Helsinki Malmi Airport
Helsinki
Finland
MCT
Muscat International Airport
Muscat
Oman
MVD
Carrasco International/General C L Berisso Airport
Montevideo
Uruguay
OTP
Henri Coandă International Airport
Bucharest
Romania
TSA
Taipei Songshan Airport
Taipei
Taiwan
DOH
Doha International Airport
Doha
Qatar
AMS
Amsterdam Schiphol Airport
Amsterdam
Netherlands
DMK
Don Mueang International Airport
Bangkok
Thailand
W
MCT
Muscat International Airport
Muscat
Oman
VNO
Vilnius International Airport
Vilnius
Lithuania
RKV
Reykjavik Airport
Reykjavik
Iceland
CCS
Maiquetía (Simón Bolívar Internacional) Airport
Caracas
Venezuela
UIO
Nuevo Aeropuerto Internacional Mariscal Sucre Airport
Quito
Ecuador
BUD
Budapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport
Budapest
Hungary
ESB
Esenboğa International Airport
Ankara
Turkey
TGU
Toncontín International Airport
Tegucigalpa
Honduras
BKA
Bykovo Airport
Moscow
Russia
CAI
Cairo International Airport
Cairo
Egypt
TLL
Tallinn Airport
Tallinn
Estonia
HRE
Harare International Airport
Harare
Zimbabwe
DOD
Dodoma Airport
Dodoma
Tanzania
W
MCT
Muscat International Airport
Muscat
Oman
TXL
Berlin-Tegel International Airport
Berlin
Germany
Noticed that the first letter of the country name is giving us something good?
We can also now determine what the W can mean: Keep the W as they are, or as I did in my original index build up, W = World, which is the capital city of World 😀
Taking the first letter of each country, we get the following: FOURTQNTWOLIVEHTHREEZTWOG
Simply sub out the numbers for the final solve 4TQN2LIVEH3Z2G
This time we don’t have the IATA codes pre-paired into 3, but rather what seems like sporadic at first and interchanging upper and lower cases.
But take a closer look how the are paired 😉
You already know what to do with those last 6 characters, roger? 🙂
Since we are within an IATA Codes theme, first see how we can make proper IATA codes from the code that we are given.
Pairs of 3 looks to be good, I made them all upper case for this step just to make it easier to read: DHR AMS LID RTM AMS DHR RTM LID AMS RTM AMS LID DHR
Looking up the unique codes, we see that all the airports are from The Netherlands, also known as Holland.
Now think back to our hint from the lyric: “Where I come from”
We know Holland is a known keyword, so looks like we have our keyword already, but no pre-/suffix.
Even looking at the distances between the airports did not give any good ranges (everything from 17KM to 109KM apart!)
Let us look at our original code again: DHRAM sl iDRT ma MSDh RR Tm LIDAM srTm AMSLI dDhR
Notice how we have pairs of 5 characters in the spots where we would expect numbers?
We know that this is one very big hint to Morse!
Let us assume lowercase is a - and uppercase is a ., we get a substitution of ..... -- -... -- ...- .. .- ..... --.- ..... -.-.
Converting this from Morse to text gives us something very useful: 5MBMVIA5Q5C
We know what to do with them Roman numerals! 5MBM6A5Q5C
Combine the keyword with the pre-/suffix for the final solve: 5MBM6hollandA5Q5C
Code #4
Observations
Duke Field 132
Tianshui Maijishan 213
Naone 123
Batouri 123
Ngot Nzoungou 123
Covilha 123
Yerington Municipal 132
Fort Worth Meacham International 123
Otjiwarongo 132
Portoroz 321
5y2o4G
This time we don’t have IATA codes, but Airport names and numbers next to them.
Let us take a look at the given image hint.
This one seems to be fairly simple to solve. Numbers are always some order of 123 and the song title confirms that.
We know that IATA codes are always 3 characters long, which matches with the numbers.
What I am assuming now is that the order of the given numbers indicates in what order the IATA code of each airport needs to be written, let us try it out and see what comes from it.
In the table below I am going to list the airport, it’s IATA code, the 123 sequence given and the IATA code written in that sequence.
Airport name
IATA
Sequence
Sequenced IATA
Duke Field
EGI
132
EIG
Tianshui Maijishan
THQ
213
HTQ
Naone
MWF
123
MWF
Batouri
OUR
123
OUR
Ngot Nzoungou
DIS
123
DIS
Covilha
COV
123
COV
Yerington Municipal
EYR
132
ERY
Fort Worth Meacham International
FTW
123
FTW
Otjiwarongo
OTJ
132
OJT
Portoroz
POW
321
WOP
Well now! See how the re-sequenced IATA codes now spell out numbers? Looks like this was the right path.
Write all the re-sequenced IATA codes in one line EIGHTQMWFOURDISCOVERYFTWOJTWOP
Sub in the number and we have our final solve! 8QMW4DISCOVERYF2J2P
This one seems a bit different than the others that we have had in this theme so far.
We can spot the some IATA codes in there, but deeper investigation will be needed to determine what needs to be done.
The first step will need to be to determine which IATA codes we have. Notice that each section is dividable by 3, so let us split each section into that. ATL LHR SXF VIE VVB / IQN PUF TOJ LIS / DDG PSY ABX / HOU / EXT ACE BBU SOB GOI / HAJ CNS XCH IKT / ORD CDG KGL / ADC AAU MHP FKB / CPG AGT YCC VID / TIA CPT BRU SOF / DIG / RMS TBU JFK / KIW TOF RPR TLL LIN / AKL EDI FUN MPM / LCY DME OMR YCV NOV / IAD ZAZ CEP
Now something seems very familiar. Look at how they are grouped.
We have 5 IATA codes in the first section and 5 again in the 5th section. We know one code that always has 5 “things” for numbers! Yupe, that would be Morse! 😀
But how do we turn these IATA codes into Morse? What was the hint? “North and South”, hhmm… where on earth are these airports located?
Let us gather the information for all the airports, including their Latitude and Longitude in our list.
Bare with us here, this list is looooong, I will also include if the Latitude is north or south of the equator (determined by it being either > 0 or < 0) and if the longitude is east or west of the Greenwich line.
IATA
Airport name
Lat
N/S
Long
E/W
ATL
Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport
33.63
N
-84.42
W
LHR
London Heathrow Airport
51.47
N
-0.46
W
SXF
Berlin-Schönefeld International Airport
52.38
N
13.52
E
VIE
Vienna International Airport
48.11
N
16.56
E
VVB
Mahanoro Airport
-19.83
S
48.79
E
IQN
Qingyang Airport
35.79
N
107.60
E
PUF
Pau Pyrénées Airport
43.38
N
-0.41
W
TOJ
Torrejón Airport
40.49
N
-3.44
W
LIS
Lisbon Portela Airport
38.78
N
-9.13
W
DDG
Dandong Airport
40.02
N
124.28
E
PSY
Stanley Airport
-51.68
S
-57.77
W
ABX
Albury Airport
-36.06
S
146.95
E
HOU
William P Hobby Airport
29.64
N
-95.27
W
EXT
Exeter International Airport
50.73
N
-3.41
W
ACE
Lanzarote Airport
28.94
N
-13.60
W
BBU
Băneasa International Airport
44.50
N
26.10
E
SOB
Sármellék International Airport
46.68
N
17.15
E
GOI
Dabolim Airport
15.38
N
73.83
E
HAJ
Hannover Airport
52.46
N
9.68
E
CNS
Cairns International Airport
-16.88
S
145.75
E
XCH
Christmas Island Airport
-10.45
S
105.69
E
IKT
Irkutsk Airport
52.26
N
104.38
E
ORD
Chicago O’Hare International Airport
41.97
N
-87.90
W
CDG
Charles de Gaulle International Airport
49.01
N
2.55
E
KGL
Kigali International Airport
-1.96
S
30.13
E
ADC
Andakombe Airport
-7.13
S
145.74
E
AAU
Asau Airport
-13.50
S
-172.62
W
MHP
Minsk 1 Airport
53.86
N
27.53
E
FKB
Karlsruhe Baden-Baden Airport
48.77
N
8.08
E
CPG
Carmen De Patagones Airport
-40.77
S
-62.98
W
AGT
Guarani International Airport
-25.45
S
-54.84
W
YCC
Cornwall Regional Airport
45.09
N
-74.56
W
VID
Vidin Smurdan Airfield Airport
44.02
N
22.81
E
TIA
Tirana International Mother Teresa Airport
41.41
N
19.72
E
CPT
Cape Town International Airport
-33.96
S
18.60
E
BRU
Brussels Airport
50.90
N
4.48
E
SOF
Sofia Airport
42.69
N
23.41
E
DIG
Diqing Airport
27.79
N
99.67
E
RMS
Ramstein Air Base Airport
49.43
N
7.60
E
TBU
Fua’amotu International Airport
-21.24
S
-175.14
W
JFK
John F Kennedy International Airport
40.63
N
-73.77
W
KIW
Southdowns Airport
-12.90
S
28.14
E
TOF
Bogashevo Airport
56.38
N
85.20
E
RPR
Raipur Airport
21.18
N
81.73
E
TLL
Tallinn Airport
59.41
N
24.83
E
LIN
Linate Airport
45.44
N
9.27
E
AKL
Auckland International Airport
-37.00
S
174.79
E
EDI
Edinburgh Airport
55.95
N
-3.37
W
FUN
Funafuti International Airport
-8.52
S
179.19
E
MPM
Maputo Airport
-25.92
S
32.57
E
LCY
London City Airport
51.50
N
0.05
E
DME
Domodedovo International Airport
55.40
N
37.90
E
OMR
Oradea International Airport
47.02
N
21.90
E
YCV
Cartierville Airport
45.51
N
-73.71
W
NOV
Nova Lisboa Airport
-12.80
S
15.76
E
IAD
Washington Dulles International Airport
38.94
N
-77.45
W
ZAZ
Zaragoza Air Base Airport
41.66
N
-1.04
W
CEP
Concepción Airport
-16.13
S
-62.02
W
Working from the hint and looking at what we gotten from our lookups, let us see what N/S gives when using them as our Morse substitutes: N N N N S / N N N N / N S S / N / N N N N N / N S S N / N N S / S S N N / S S N N / N S N N / N / N S N / S N N N N / S N S S / N N N N S / N N S
Taking N as . and S as - and / as separator, we get ....- .... .-- . ..... .--. ..- --.. --.. .-.. . .-. -.... -.-- ....- ..-
Converting from Morse to text 4HWE5PUZZLER6Y4U
Ha! There we go, all done with this one.
Here we have IATA codes followed by numbers each time, so each code seems to be directly linked to the following number.
Lets resolve the hint and take off from there.
“Do the math“, that points to the IATA Codes resolving into something that we can do math with, probably in combination with the numbers.
Let us split the IATA codes and numbers so we have a better overview. ATL 20 PEK 34 LHR 42 HND 64 ORD 15 LAX 34 CDG 51 DFW 40 CGK 57 DXB 56 FRA 26 HKG 52 DEN 22 BKK 63
Looking up the different airports and attempting various calculations with their Latitudes, Longitudes, Timezones, Telephone numbers, etc brings us to no usable code.
Taking a different approach, forget about the airports and have a look at the codes themselves.
We always have 3 characters, we know that we could convert each character to either Decimal, Hex, Octal, Binary and even Alphabet Indexes.
Doing the calculations with Dec, Hex, Oct and Binary brings us not a single waypoint closer to our destination, but the Alphabet index seems promising!
If we take the alphabet index of each character, add them together and then add the number following each code to it, we get well within the ranges for decimal to text conversion.
Code
Alpha index
Sum
Number
Final
ATL
1 + 20 + 12
33
20
53
PEK
16 + 5 + 11
32
34
66
LHR
12 + 8 + 18
38
42
80
HND
8 + 14 + 4
26
64
90
ORD
15 + 18 + 4
37
15
52
LAX
12 + 1 + 24
37
34
71
CDG
3 + 4 + 7
14
51
65
DFW
4 + 6 + 23
33
40
73
CGK
3 + 7 + 11
21
57
78
DXB
4 + 24 + 2
30
56
86
FRA
6 + 18 + 1
25
26
51
HKG
8 + 11 + 7
26
52
78
DEN
4 + 5 + 14
23
22
45
BKK
2 + 11 + 11
24
63
87
Take our final values 53 66 80 90 52 71 65 73 78 86 51 78 45 87
and convert them to text 5BPZ4GAINV3N-W
Hhmm, something doesn’t look right there.
After some bruting of that -, we find that the right number is 7, which was decimal 54,
and such the final solve was: 5BPZ4GAINV3N7W