Solving the Ivory Isles

This is a write up of the Ivory Isles crypto puzzle, published at https://www.reddit.com/r/cryptopuzzler/. This puzzle was the second in the series.

To solve the puzzle, we have to decrypt a language created by the puzzle master, called ‘Old Doge’. The alphabet was scrambled and contains 32 unique characters:

To help with solving the puzzle, there are two main images to de-cypher. The first is the diary of the one of the main characters:

By using frequency analysis, we were able to de-cypher the text in the diary and unlock most of the characters in the alphabet. The diary reads:

“Ivory Isles

We’ve finally done it! We reached the Ivory Isles! It really lives up to the name. Senior said that this is where we will find treasure and I believe him.
I think our luck will change.
I love camping. We always use Mum and Dad’s old camp stuff. Their tent and cushions. I miss camping with them, it was such fun.

Senior had me learn Old Doge for this. He I know he is already fluent but he thinks I should learn. It isn’t that hard. The alphabet is a bitch to learn. Doesn’t even match modern Doge! Once I got the hang of things it wasn’t so bad.”

Now that we had deciphered most of the alphabet, we were able to decipher the door to the temple:

The door reads:

“Before you there is riches untold, everything hidden is made of gold. Can you crack the puzzles ahead? Understand this greed will see souls impure belong to me.

Enter at your own risk”

The spears have 12 digits on them split in half, by joining these back together we get:

“I (or Y), A, A, B, B, T, P, S, C, T, S, A”

The first letter has double meaning throughout the text, so could be either an ‘I’ or a ‘Y’. The 12 letters obviously lead to 12 seed words, and now we have an order to enter these in.

There was one final picture to decode:

We deciphered the symbols (at least most of them, I was left with three unsolved characters, likely to translate to ‘J’, ‘Q’ and ‘X’). We then spun the wheels and soon found three words hidden in the wheel; “Poverty’, ‘Because’ and ‘Account’. As these matched up with the letters on the spears we knew we were on the right track.

Solving the Riddle

Within the story of the puzzle, there is a riddle:

“Names are the key to identity, family belongings make history, twelve words will open the treasure, what twelve will stop your poverty?”

On the advice of the puzzle, we made a list of the main names and belongings throughout the story of the puzzle.

The key names are listed below:

Chanor — Anagram of Anchor
Lord Warae — Anagram of Aware
Shrimp
Senior
Ivory (name of the island)

The main belongings referenced through the story:

Tent
Cushion
Gold Coin — was a red herring in the end

Finding the Missing Words

At this point in the puzzle we had the following seed words:
Anchor, Aware, Account, Because, Cushion (or Coin), Ivory, Poverty, Senior, Shrimp, Tent

As we knew the first letter of each seed phrase, we knew we were missing 1x T and 1x B.

Throughout the story, there are two numbers written as digits (rather than written out as words). We checked these against the BIP39 word list and translated them as shown below:

13 — Account
235 — Bubble

As we already had one of these words, and the other started with a word we were looking for, we were confident ‘Bubble’ was our missing ‘B’.

This left one ‘T’ to find, which took a lot of trial and error to finally crack. If there is a clue pointing to this, I did not find it but we eventually stumbled upon ‘Throw’ as it is referenced in the story. We did try ‘table’, ‘torch’ and ‘twelve’ before getting the right word.

Now that we had our seeds, a lot of trial and error eventually led us to the seed phrase:

“ivory aware anchor bubble because throw poverty senior cushion tent shrimp account”.

From there, we raided the temple!

Many thanks to u\coinsntings on Reddit for putting the puzzle together. We had a lot of fun decyphering the alphabet and cracking the clues!

Below I have copied a translation of the ‘Old Doge’ alphabet:

A message we left for the creator:

This translates to read:

“Dear Coinsntings,
Thank you for a really fun puzzle. We had a very very hard time cracking the throw. We really look forward to your future challenges.
Dan and Rach aka
Centurionduck!”

Thanks for reading!

Puzzle Text

The two of them had been sailing for days, searching for the Ivory isles. The Captain has acquired an old map that supposedly lead to a trove of ancient dogecoins. Lore dictated the treasure was guarded by an ancient magic, one that would bring hardship to anyone who wasn’t worthy of the treasure. The two had nothing to lose however, they were grandfather and grandson, descended from a long line of poverty. With no other family and few possessions, they took to the seas to find an adventure.

An island jutted out of the sea, white marble cliffs smoothed by the sea loomed over the boat. The waves crashed against the rocks, sea foam and bubbles spraying everywhere. Then there was a sudden silence. The boat had pulled into a quiet bay where the waves were still and peaceful. A white sand beach lay before them. The captain steered the boat close to the shore.

“Throw the anchor Shrimp” Roared the captain to the young sailor.

“Yes Senior!” He said cheerily, doing as told.

The Captain rolled his eyes, “I do wish you wouldn’t call me that” he grumbled, “makes me feel old”

The sailor, Shrimp, laughed cheerfully. He was a scrawny boy but eager and keen to help. A life of adventure was all he’d ever wanted and now here it was. His grandfather was the most important person in his life. When his parents had been lost to the seas his grandfather had stepped up almost instantly, in his words, because thats what families do.

The two disembarked and began unloading their camping equipment. It wasn’t much, just a tent and cushions, previously belonging to Shrimps parents, but that was enough for comfort.

“Have you been practising Old Doge?” Senior asked.

Shrimp nodded, “I write my diary in Old Doge, good practice”

Senior smiled approvingly, “Be sure not to get caught out, its a bigger alphabet but only uses 25 symbols for our modern alphabet, the rest of the symbols are made up of letter pairs for lack of better words”

Shrimp sat down cross legged and began writing in his diary, Senior on the other hand set about making a fire. The two sat in comfortable silence as the sun sank below the horizon and the air grew cold.

“Did you know, the treasure is hidden in the temple of Chanor?” Senior asked Shrimp.

“Chanor? He’s an old God isn’t he? I think I’ve heard of him”

The Captain shut his eyes and began the tale, “Chanor wasn’t always a God. He started his life a peasant in the Kingdom of Old Doge, a boy who stole and lied and cheated to survive. His one treasure in life was a single gold coin. Eventually these crimes caught up to him when he was caught stealing from Lord Warae, and so was sentenced to the fighting pits armed with nothing more than two spears. The Lords believed this scrawny child wouldn’t last one round, so imagine their surprise when he dispatched every single one of his enemies with only a spear. He rose to fame as a gladiator slaughtering a record of 235 gladiators and countless other criminal fighters and beasts, his past crimes were eventually forgotten. He became a Lord himself, his wealth and fame beyond what one could imagine.Eventually he retired comfortably, well liked and respected, far from where he’d started life. He attended a gladiator event and upon arrival realised it was a sentenced punishment, just as he had been sentenced to years before. The boy in the arena was slaughtered. Chanor realised he’d lost his way so hosted a party that night with the 13 Great Lords, including Warae and before the dinner was over, they were all dead for their food had been poisoned.Chanor calmly engraved one of his prized spears from his first fight with letters of the Lords family names. He excluded Warae, the Lord who had started this all. Legend tells us he made a deal with the Gods, to become one of them he would guide pure souls away from greed towards prosperity and punish those unworthy and so he became a God. Warae supposedly is stuck between their world and ours, in eternal torment. The treasure we are looking for is supposedly Chanors treasures, the temple is built upon his home”

“Chanor sounds like a badass” Shrimp concluded, “Although why would he want to be a God? He had it all, and is he was a gladiator that good he must’ve been untouchable”

“After killing all the Lords society would have descended into chaos and no matter how good a gladiator he was, no one can defeat an angry mob. Becoming a God would’ve been the only way for him to redeem himself, by not letting others repeat his mistakes” Senior said.

Shrimp paused, then in a small voice said, “I hope we’re worthy of his treasure”

“We are Shrimp, don’t you worry, get some sleep, tomorrow will be a busy day” Senior said, laughing.

The two of them stopped, Senior looking up from the map.

“This is it” He said.

They had passed numerous ruins at this point, the remains of a fallen society and now they had found what they were looking for. Before them stood two large spears leaning against the mountain below which there was a great doorway. The spears both bore heavy signs of fire damage, someone had tried to burn them in the past. Upon the door Old Doge characters had been carved.

Senior looked down at his grandson, “Can you understand the door?”

Shrimp nodded.

“I told you old doge would come in handy, come on lets go”

The two of them pushed the door open, lighting their torches as they entered the cave. Inside their torches cast eerie shadows on the walls, outlining engravings of artwork and long texts written in Old Doge. Seniors eyes searched the cave for danger, Shrimp on the other hand gazed at the walls in awe.

“I wonder if we’re the first here” He said, his voice echoing slightly.

“We’re not” Senior replied, nodding his head at a skeleton, a spear sticking out from between its ribs, beside a large circular door, “Poor sod, Shrimp, watch your step. See the tiles with engravings, avoid them.

Shrimp gazed up at the door, it almost glowed in the torchlight. It was made up of seven rings, each had Old Doge symbols carved into it. Senior carefully stepped up to the great door, and one by one began turning the rings.

“Wait, stop. Look it says something!” Shrimp said excitedly.

Senior smiled, it seemed Shrimp was more fluent in Old Doge than he let on. A few more turns, a couple more words and the door hissed before creaking open revealing another darkened passageway. This one was narrower than the first. They walked single file in silence, until the path opened into another room. This one had white marble floors and columns, what had once been a majestic dining hall now buried and hidden. A great long stone table stretched the length of the room, still laid with plates and glasses. It looked untouched, except for the 13 skeletons all face down on their long emptied plates. All dressed in fine ancient robes it didn’t take much thought to work out what had happened.

“It’s real” breathed Shrimp in amazement.

Wordlessly Senior carefully walked around the room, lighting each torch he passed till the room was fully lit and he deemed to be safe.

He looked at Shrimp, “The entrance is hidden somewhere in here, look around but be careful. This is Chanors house, his temple, so be respectful”

Shrimp looked around. Where would he hide a secret entrance if it were up to him? He circled the table, staying clear of the skeletons and only stopping when he reached the head of the table. Words had been carved into it.

“Senior look!”, He read aloud “Names are the key to identity, family belongings make history, twelve words will open the treasure, what twelve will stop your poverty?”

Senior pulled back a banner, revealing a door. Twelve holes in the door lay empty, twelve long white poles of varying lengths stood next to the door in a pot. Bone, ivory if he were not mistaken. He experimentally pushed a pole into the door.

“We have to engrave a word on each pole and put it in the right hole. They’re keys I think” Senior looked up from the door at Shrimp, “That is very specific. Chanor is trying to point us towards his treasure. I guess the only way for us to know if its meant for us is if our answers open his treasury. Think about the clues, we’ll make a list. Names, belongings… Theres only twelve poles here, I don’t want to mess up any keys”

The two set about finding working out the clues and carving the poles before trying them in the door. After hours of work, there was a low hiss and Senior pulled the door open. They had done it, the code had been cracked and the treasure theirs.

The prize wallet address: DFU9gJ53YiZixrPzGfQDGJAxisNvDXyrLB