June 3, 2006: Ton came to visit NYC on May 29th, 2006. He spent the night at Ben and Arin's apartment before returning to San Diego on May 31st at 3pm.

Ben arrived home that evening expecting to find a thank you note, or possibly a dozen bagels or a surprise Wegman's sub that Ton might have left as a token of his appreciation for the hospitality.

Instead, he returned to find the lights off with this horrific scene in his living room:

It was the pet monkey that Arin won for Ben at Coney Island, brutally murdered with his body left in the shape of Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. Complete wih blood and everything! Oh no! Who would do such a thing? And why???

Ben and Arin immediately set off to solve the mystery. We turned on the lights and inspected the monkey closely.

An even closer examination revealed a small fish drawn by the edge of the circle.

"Oh look! A clue!" Ben exclaimed. The two of them proceeded to examine every fish in the apartment:

Finding nothing unusual with the fish (other than the fact that Arin lets Ben keep a 5 foot halibut in their bedroom), they returned to the monkey for more examination.

The monkey was very deliberately positioned on the floor, so they began to study his placement. In particular, his tail pointed directy at the cable modem in the living room. Turning over the modem revealed another clue! A sealed slip of paper with a matching fish on it!

In fact, opening the paper revealed not one, but two more clues. First there was a message written in some sort of code. Second, was a small piece of paper with the letter "E" printed on it.

Ben immediately recognized the message as a simple monoalphabetic substitution cipher, known colloquially as a Cryptoquip. Despite the apparent intelligence in the previous sentence, Ben actually kinda sucks at Cryptoquips, so he handed the puzzle over to Arin who is somewhat of an expert in the field.

WGQ KLYYLIW FGKK MXDL YHL EGMXK ILWYGMU OKXCL.
X WOPYKGUHY CXM WPDLYGDLW ILALXK X HGNNLM GYLD.

After performing a little frequency analysis on the letter distribution and overcoming Ton's tricky and highly unexpected H-for-H substitution, Arin was able to solve the puzzle!

Click here to see the answer

June 4, 2006: This page will be updated as more clues are discovered and puzzles are solved. Check back often!

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