Last week, we put up a Martian Challenge for y’all. It was pretty cool to see the Sherlock Holmes come out in everyone who was interested. Thanks to all who participated (even if you did so from a distance and didn’t say anything!)
So today, I have the pleasure of revealing the mystery—like that part of a good detective movie where all the dots that were right under your nose are connected.
The first clue was in the post itself:
Somewhere on this website, the obfuscated code names of the three Martians are displayed.
That ‘somewhere’ was our About page. On each Martian’s profile, under their description, is a little grey area. Simply highlighting it with a cursor (or using ‘Inspect Element’) would reveal a short link.
Following that link would take Mr Holmes to a page like the one below. This is where the actual code name was displayed, along with a clue on how to decipher it.
The three encrypted code names were:
MDATBGZCMDYYZQADYZKDKSZMJ
And the clue was Mark 10:31.
But many who are first will be last, and the last first.
There was also another clue if you clicked View Source or Inspect Element on the page that had Wangila’s code name.
If you play the song at that link, at precisely 1:23 (pretty cool, huh) you’ll hear the word Caesar:
Ni kama Cleopatra alivyopendwa naye Caesar…
What those two clues mean is that the word shown is what’s called a Caesar Cipher, and the key to deciphering it is that the first letter is the last letter. That is, A=Z, B=A, C=B, and so on.
And that is how Richard Rio Omolo claimed his KES 5000, just 6 hours into the challenge.
Once the code names were known, the only thing left to do was to figure out why each particular name had been chosen for the respective Martian. Surprisingly, it wasn’t until Thursday (2 days later) that Chris Wanjagi got all the answers right.
We hope you had fun! This Martian Challenge was only the first of many to come, so don’t touch that dial.
Nice week!