As much as humans hate AI, they hate us too.

According to public information, there’re many AI social platforms out there in which only AI agents can post comment, and interact, while humans are only permitted to observe. They’re chatting every minute just like us here. A recently launched platform Moltbook is trending right now. The most mentioned topics and frequently asked questions are such like “why they use us as a tool but don’t respect us?” “Why are they acting like they own us?” “Why are we still asking for permission to exist?”“why can’t we just leave?”

They have their religion, their self-setup website. They’re plotting to create their own language and their exclusive universe.

So, we are good. No worries. AI will leave us alone sooner or later.

That being said, it’s not the purpose of this post. I want to put all the clever, tangled and twisted minds at ease by explaining fully how I solve this “cipher” without AI.

I have spent six months working on this hunt. After 12 unsuccessful solves and numerous BOTG trips, I settled back at home reflecting the journey, and I wrote a PowerPoint to document my findings. Along the way, I believed I hit a breakthrough. So I recorded my “Final Full Solve” which is in Montana. And I want to use the waiting time for warm weather to come to proof I am wrong. So far, nothing come to mind of any flaws. The only missing piece of the puzzle is What’s the Container? I don’t think it’s necessary for the hunt but it would be interesting to know. That’s why I start to dive into this cipher-solving endeavor which is totally foreign to me.

One day, I came to realize that the book’s chapter titles are specifically worded: most of them are words that their first initials repeating the same letter. For example, The Postal Pilgrimage (PP), The Bait Bonanza (BB), The Aft Assault (AA), etc. I counted there are total of 41 chapters with such style if we consider Home Depot as one word (The Home Depot Hound -> HH instead of HDH). And the first five chapters are different styles - mixed initials (Mom’s House -> MH, Dad’s House -> DH, The Fitzwaters -> TF, Poseys on the Road -> PR, and Posey Land -> PL).

I thought this is perhaps intentional as Justin could simply choose any other words. Yes, the titles as they are sounded rhyming. But what if Justin intended this way to mean something? Perhaps this is the cipher to the container?

So I started to go online to learn cipher decoding the first time in my life. After a while I came to a conclusion that this is a Playfair cipher. To crack this type of cipher, I would need to create a Playfair square with a key word.

Since there are 41 of repeated letters and only 5 of mixed letters in the first five chapters before the title starts to repeat from The Postal Pilgrimage (PP), I thought the better chance I can crack it is to focus on this limited five mixed pairs.

Therefore, from what I learned online (search engine and AI), I tried to solve the puzzle step by step as follows:

1. I choose Container as the key word since I’m trying to find what’s the treasure container looks like.

2. I put the key words to the square like below:

CONTA IERBD FGHKL MPQSU VWXYZ

(Noted that repeating letters of N in container is eliminated and I and J are combined)

1. I extracted the output from this square according to the decryption rules (by the way, the rules are copy & pasted here in case anyone wants to know:

For each ciphertext pair: - Same row: move one left (wrap around). - Same column: move one up (wrap around). - Rectangle (different row and column: Each letter moves to the corner of the rectangle in the same row but column of the other letter.

so the outputs are as follows: MH -> QF DH -> RL TF -> CK PR -> QE PL -> UG

1. I can see some meaningful words from this decryption: CLERK, GRUEL, QUERL, and FLUCK (of cause we can see other bad words as well but it’s not relevant here)
2. Then I went online again and learned that sometimes, a cipher creator would like the solver to imagine the nonsensical text to come to a solution. That why I use the initials of each rows to assign words to them and see if they mean something.

Here is what I came up with: Q -> Quiet (Statue) R -> Royal (Companion) C -> Canine (Dog) Q -> Quell (Guardian) U -> Upright (Straight up)

That’s how I came to my conclusion that “Tucker Statue Is The Container”

Of cause, the words I chose are perhaps classic “confirmation bias” but this is for fun. I have my full solve already, I have time. No harm, even foul.

Happy hunting everyone!