Introduction

January 1937

Harry Schultz Vandiver is the name, and number theory is the game. Or
at least it was until the dame dropped by with her journal...

I was working out of an office in the basement of the Alamo Hotel. It wasnt much, but it was home, and Fermat was paying the bills, courtesy of a case other investigators had worked on for two hundred years. I figured it should be good for another fifty at least and had been counting on it to see me into a comfortable retirement.
Journals I was used to, and I figure thats why this dame brought me hers, but this one was different. Full of weird symbols that didnt make a lot of sense. She laughed when I mentioned it, and made some comment about pots and kettles that I didnt get, but something about her and her damn book wouldnt let me go and thats why, fifteen days later I found myself on a boat out of New York, heading for Egypt.
I spent most of the journey working on Fermat, but by the time we docked in Southampton I knew I needed to start work on the Journal. The money wasnt that good, but the lady was paying for the ticket, and if I was going along for the ride I figured I had to give something back. Hell the first page didnt look too hard anyway.
She told me her Aunt, Agatha Highfield, had written it. There was a story about her and some slab, the Babylon Stone she called it, and she reckoned it was cursed. Thing is Aunt Aggie and the stone disappeared back in 12 and they havent been seen since. Either she knew she was in trouble or she had a weird sense of humour, but before she went missing she sent this journal to her sister and now it is sitting on my desk courtesy of her sisters kid a broad with a mission to get rich. Seems like the Babylon Stone might be worth hard currency and she is pretty keen to get it. Problem is the journal is in code, or, to be more accurate, lots of different ciphers, and she needs a mathematician to help out.
The first bit doesnt look too hard, and I reckon by next week we might have it cracked. Ill post the ciphertext here on Thursday at 4pm. Maybe you can crack it before I do.
Just to make it interesting lets say that the first 400 of you to get it right get a copy of the Cipher Challenge poster. And how about I randomly pick five teams out of the first twenty five to submit correct answers and give them 50 each? If you get the message wrong I'll let you know on Tuesday and you can try again but dont hurry too much. Remember we will be scoring the accuracy of your FIRST answer to each challenge. These scores get added up to give you your Cipher Challenge Score for the Hall of Fame and a chance at the overall winners prize.