“What’s this? There’s a poem after all? <insert profanity of choice>”
We thought it would be immensely funny to drop a poem into the hunt after promising “no poetry,” but we didn’t want it to be an ambiguous, “Maybe the treasure is on the eastern seaboard” kind of poem.
To that end, we gave a major hint right in the page info, “Perhaps we didn’t Play Fair?” Many solvers went straight to thinking (correctly) there was a Playfair Cipher involved.
The doggerel verse poem has five lines that end with rhyming words. The sixth line doesn’t rhyme, but it’s a pretty easy leap to realize that if you replace “slope” with “climb,” the six line CAN rhyme.
And that’s important, because the final word of each line is the Playfair Cipher key for each of the six encrypted rows of text at the bottom of the page. Supposedly fun facts about one of the SkipWorkPlayGames team, the first four lines are really references to the Big Picture puzzles.
The fifth decryption, though, is “Always looks up while on a search.” That’s the clue that when you get BOTG, look up, not down.
Finally, “Find the secret page at skipworkplaygames for the next step.” So…on to the secret page!
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