HANDS OFF CUBA flier

[Tom Hume]

Below is a link to the "Hands off Cuba" flier. It will have to do until I can successfully upload the photo:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/oswald/timeline/enlarged-t_1963_summer.html

This post includes a simple and "EXCITING CONTEST". There are three easy anagram puzzles at the end (puzzles penned by Richard Nagell, I believe) and the first forum member to get two of them correct will win an all-expense-paid trip to Timbuktu. If you get all three of them right, you will get to come back.

And the best part is, if you do get all three correct you will very possibly be second person in the world (excluding those on the "Dark Side") to understand why Lee Oswald appeared to be so sloppy with the bogus addresses he stamped on his "Hands off Cuba" fliers.

I am putting the "EXCITING CONTEST" at the end in the hope that you will read the rest of the post.

"ICO" stands for "Igor", "Case", and, "Oswald".

There are two sets of ICO puzzles in the "Hands off Cuba!" flier. The first is a set of 7 17-letter puzzles, and the set is titled "A 7/17 RANT". The second is a set of 9 13-letter puzzles, and it is titled, "The Story. R" ("R" stands for "Richard"). These are not my names for the puzzle sets, they are named by the puzzle sets themselves. First I'll show you the two sets of puzzles, and then I'll tell you where they came from on the flier.

"A 7/17 RANT":

(1) HANDSOFFCUBAIJOIN

(2) THEFAIRPLAYFORCUB

(3) ACOMMITTEENEWORLE

(4) ANSCHARTERMEMBERB

(5) RANCHFREELITERATU

(6) RELECTURESLOCATIO

(7) NEVERYONEWELCOMEI

"THE STORY. R":

(1) HANDSOFFCUBAJ

(2) OINTHEFAIRPLA

(3) YFORCUBACOMMI

(4) TTEENEWORLEAN

(5) SCHARTERMEMBE

(6) RBRANCHFREELI

(7) TERATURELECTU

(8) RESLOCATIONEV

(9) ERYONEWELCOME

The first letters in each puzzle of the "A 7/17 RANT" set are:

"HTAARRN"

Using the simple Number/Letter key in Footnote #1, I will translate an "H R", to "7 17", and make the following anagram from the letters above:

"A 7/17 RANT"

And this, of course, is a set of 7 17-letter puzzles.

The first letters of the second set titled "THE STORY. R", are:

"HOYTSRTRE"

And these letters anagram to:

"THE STORY. R"

There are 117 proper letters on the flyer, and 9 x 13 = 117. The second puzzle set ("THE STORY. R") came right off the flier in the order that the letters occurred.

There are, however, two more letters on the flier, and these are the two "exclamation points". One "exclamation point" is at the end of "Hands off Cuba!", and the second one is at the end of "EVERYONE WELCOME!"

In the ICO puzzles, the "exclamation point" is to be regarded as an upside-down letter "i", and they are optional. By "optional", I mean that "Hands off Cuba", for example, could be a stand alone 12-letter puzzle, but it is also a 13-letter puzzle when the "exclamation point" is included.

I have made my "Exclamation Point" argument in post #24 on "The Oswald Code thread". I will not make it again here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=20276&page=2

So with the addition of two exclamation points (two letter "i"s), I for one, feel completely comfortable stretching the 117-letter flier to 119 letters. These 119 letters, in the order they come from the flier, are the "A 7/17 RANT" set. 7 x 17 = 119.

I'm not going to attempt a solution for any of the above puzzles now, this will come later, but I'm hoping some of you will take an interest.

And now for the "EXCITING CONTEST" (This will be cool and you might be amazed. Start thinking about packing your bags for Timbuktu):

There were a variety of addresses hand-stamped on some of the "Hands off Cuba" fliers, and most of them were bogus in one way or another.

"EXCITING CONTEST" Puzzle #1:

L. H. OSWALD

4907 MAGAZINE

NEW ORLEANS, L.A.

Lee Oswald actually rented the apartment at "4905 MAGAZINE", and reportedly, his neighbor could never figure out why Oswald was using the neighbors address.

Your puzzle, then, is the house number, "4907 MAGAZINE", and while there is more than one correct answer, the best answer will tell us who is associated with the bogus address, "4907 MAGAZINE".

There is one answer, a ridiculously simple anagram, that is also an appropriate title for this flier (if you get this easy one, I will throw in a double vodka martini at your hotel in Timbuktu).

The best answer, however, is far more interesting, but a little tougher (It's not hard)..

Hint: It requires a very limited use of ICO's "Double Talk" cipher ("DT" cipher) in footnote #4. For this answer, you will also need to know that the letter "Z" means to "DECODE" something (The anagram I'm looking for may end something like this, and this is only an example: "BLAH-BLAH-BLA. Z: 'X'. This means to use the "DT" cipher on the letter "X"; to "Z" it. You will gain the letter "H" in this process, and you can throw away the "Z: X". You can then use the new "H" to improve your anagram: "BLAH-BLAH-BLAH").

And from a puzzle-solver's point of view, when one is "tuned in" to an "ICO" puzzle, one knows that the asked-for letter-decoding will yield exactly the letter or letters that is/are needed to complete or improve the puzzle answer. It works every time (except when one is off on a wild goose chase and making stuff up. And that's where practice and necessary discipline come in).

CONTEST PUZZLES #2 and #3:

FPCC A J HIDELL

P.O. BOX 30016

NEW ORLEANS, L.A.

Lee Oswald was actually authorized for "P.O. Box 30061", not "P.O. BOX 30016". One could regard this as a simple mistake, but I submit that there were no mistakes in the ICO puzzles. The apparent mistakes were put there for you to notice, and when you solve the puzzle, you will discover that the puzzle itself points out and explains its intentional mistake. You will also know that you are working on a puzzle created by another intelligent human, and not just having an anagam fantasy.

The two addresses, "P.O. BOX 30016", and "P.O. BOX 30061" both contain the same letters and numbers. For anagramming purposes, they are identical and this, of course, means that simply anagramming the two addresses will yield the same answers. This is not what we are looking for, and one needs to use ICO's 6-bit binary code to get two separate answers, one for each address.

DON'T FREAK! I will do the dreaded binary code work for you.

But anagramming "P.O. BOX 30016" (or "P.O. BOS 30061") in fact can tell us that we need to use binary code. I will put this explanation in footnote #5.

Here we go:

"P.O. BOX 30061" decodes to (#3):

"SENTDAAGBLOBOP"

And,

"P.O. BOX 30016" decodes to (#4)

"SENTDAABGCOBOP"

Your task is to anagram the two puzzles above. The two answers will be RELATED, and they will tell us WHICH ADDRESS IS CORRECT for Oswald.

Hint: "The Hands off Cuba" flier appears to have been made by Richard Case Nagell. It is common for ICO puzzles answers to have one or more letters at the end that indicate the puzzle-maker. You might keep an eye out for one of these two puzzles to be signed by one or more of this set of initials: "RCN".

TOM

Footnote #1 Letter/Number translation device:

(A=0)(B=1)(C=2)(D=3)(E=4)(F=5)(G=6)(H=7)(I=8)(J=9)(K=10)(L=11)(M=12)(N=13)(O=14)(P=15)(Q=16)(R=17)(S=18)(T=19)(U=20)(V=21)(W=22)(X=23)(Y=24)(Z=25)

Footnote #2 DT cipher (Double Talk Cipher). It works from the top down:

A..B..C..D..E..F..G..H..I..J..K..L..M..N..O..P..Q..R..S..T..U..V..W..X..Y..Z

K..L..M..N..O.P..Q..R..S.T.U..V..W..X..Y...Z..A..B..C..D..E..F..G...H..I...J

Footnote #3 - PO BOX 30061 = PO BOX DAAGB

POBOXD = 101011, and, 010100, plus tags AAGB

Yield: SENTDAAGB

BGAADX = 100011, and, 011100, plus tags OBOP

Yield: LOBOP. Total yield: SENTDAAGBLOBOP

Footnote #4 - PO BOX 30016 = PO BOX DAABG

POBOXD = 101011, and, 010100, plus tags AABG

Yield: SENTDAABG

GBAADX = 010011, and, 101100, plus tags OBOP

Yield: COBOP. Total yield: SENTDAABGCOBOP

Footnote #5:

When we translate the numbers in "P.O. BOX 30016" (or "61") to letters, we get:

"POBOXDAABG"

And this anagrams to:

"BOX GAP. DO '01'"

"01" is shorthand for binary code, the computer system of "zeros" and "ones".

Edited July 2, 2015 by Tom Hume