- I received a new puzzle.
This box puzzle.
It's not really a box puzzle.
It's a box with a cryptex lock on it,
is known as the Mystery Box by J.J. Abrams and theory11.
It's this really cool, all-wood, sort of box,
with the question mark branding on it.
It has this brass lock on it with these letters.
Inside this box is a mystery.
I have no idea what's inside of it.
I've never opened one of these.
Feels a bit heavy.
I know there's something inside.
And we're gonna try and decipher the cryptex
that's on this lock,
and, hopefully, open it,
and show you guys the content of what's inside.
So, this box comes with a letter,
and that's all I get.
I get this letter, I get this box,
I get this lock,
and I have to try and open it.
So, let's try and figure out
and see what's inside.
And before we begin,
don't forget to like this video
if you do enjoy these types of videos.
And let's get into it.
All right, so before I open this,
I do have a little bit of an unfair advantage.
I'm friends with Jonathan Bayme, CEO at theory11,
the person that created this in cooperation with J.J Abrams.
And I'm gonna give him a call quick on FaceTime.
He's not expecting it.
And, hopefully, he can give us a little bit of a clue
to how this works.
And hopefully he doesn't give us too big of a clue.
But we'll give him a call now.
All right, so, hey, J.B.
I'm gonna face you towards the camera,
just so people can see you.
So, you're gonna be talking to my camera rig.
But I have a question about the mystery box, all right?
- Yeah, I may or may not be able to answer it then.
- [Chris] So, I just received this box
with this letter that you sent to me in the mail.
And I'm just actually about to open it on camera.
Actually, just to attempt to open it on camera.
And I was hoping, since we're friends,
that you might be able to share some insight on this box.
- Insight or the password?
- [Chris] No, I don't want the password.
But is there anything I should know before I get into this?
- Everything you need to know is inside the box
or the letter that you got.
We intend for it to be a mystery.
We get at least two emails a week from people that write in,
and they're like, "Hey, I bought this mystery box,
"and I seemed to have misplaced the paper
"that has the password on it."
And we reply to those and say,
"It would not much of a mystery box, would it,
"if we told you the combination?"
So, I think that's the beauty of it,
is that, that we don't tell you the combination,
and the choice to open or not is yours.
Some people choose to keep it closed
as a kind of reminder of the power of mystery and wonder,
and others, like probably you,
will try and dig it up.
- [Chris] Everything I need to know is in this letter?
- Everything you need to know is in the letter.
It might not be immediately evident.
- [Chris] Okay, so the password is not, like,
this isn't just like a paper with the password on it?
- No.
Like, you can hold it up to the light,
you're not gonna find anything.
But everything you need to know, information-wise,
to decipher the combination
is within the contents of the letter.
- [Chris] All right, well that sounds,
that sounds interesting. - Good luck!
- [Chris] Thanks.
I might actually call you in a week
if I don't actually open this,
and we'll have a more detailed discussion.
How 'bout that?
All right, man, thanks so much.
I'll keep you posted.
Later. - Bye.
- [Chris] All right, so there you have it.
This whole thing revolves around mystery,
and the choice whether or not, I guess, to open it is yours.
So, let's have a look at the contents of this letter.
Let's see what type of clues lie and wait for us.
Such a shame taking off the wax seal.
Kind of really beautiful.
But, you know, this wouldn't be a puzzle unboxing video
if I didn't.
Okay, so inside we get this nice letter.
Make sure there's nothing inside.
And the letter reads as follows:
"November, 2013.
"When I was a child, my grandfather, Harry Kelvin,
"would often take me
"to Tannen's Magic in Midtown Manhattan."
Tannen's is a magic shop in New York,
which is very cool.
You should go there if you're ever in New York.
"It was the best place in the universe.
"Every trick held the potential for me shock
"and amaze my family.
"It wasn't until many years later that I realized
"that they were never particularly shocked or amazed.
"One object, however, was especially intriguing;
"a magic mystery box,
"which contained, Tannen said, $50 worth of magic
"for only $15.
"When I got home with the box, poised to rip it open.
"I realized that the very idea of what might be inside it
"was more powerful,
"more valuable, and more crazy compelling,
"than whatever it actually did contain.
"Opening the box would somehow diminish its potential.
"Well, I decided to keep it closed.
"To this day, the box remains unopened.
"In honor of my grandfather,
"and anyone who has ever appreciated
"the power of a simple illusion,
"it is my pleasure to present
"the first Bad Robot partnership
"with the extraordinary theory11:
"Mystery Box Playing Cards.
"The choice to open the box or not is yours."
So, I guess we won't open the box today.
I guess that's, no,
you know what?
As much as I like the idea of the potential
of what's stored in this box,
and never opening it,
which I find super compelling,
I don't think it would be as compelling
for a video unboxing this,
if I didn't unbox it.
So, we're gonna try and open it.
The clues are somewhere hidden in plain sight apparently.
We've got some serial numbers up here.
I don't know if you can see that.
They're kind of embossed serial numbers.
They read: 20-2.41-72947, November, 2013.
So, I don't particularly know if these numbers
have anything to do with opening the box,
or if the date may be.
Or, you know, my first instinct is,
as a cryptologist,
I don't even know if that's a word.
But as someone who opens puzzles,
I would think that the,
maybe like the first,
all the capital letters or something,
maybe they open it.
So, let's see here.
We have M, S, F, R.
M, S, F, R.
So, we have four letters per toggle.
Is there anywhere in here that would give us
either the M, the S, the F, or the R,
as a clue,
wether that's a capital letter,
or whether that's in the numbers,
translating to the number of letters in the alphabet?
Let's have a look.
M, S, F, R.
So, maybe the word magic.
Maybe we'll start with M, maybe.
And then we have X, Y, J, A.
So, this could also spell out a word.
However, I don't think it would be a word.
M, S, F, R.
A, X, V, J.
Doesn't really seem to be anything with those letters
standing out to me.
Maybe this here,
this number, translates to the number of words.
Let's try that.
Number 20.
So, let's count 20.
15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
Which is an I.
(laughs) That doesn't work.
How 'bout the 20th letter of the alphabet?
P, Q, R, S, T.
T. T?
No? No.
Maybe, two.
No, two is not there.
What could the letters possibly spell out?
Maybe there is a word here that we're missing
that the letters could spell out somehow.
Okay, so it doesn't end with a vowel.
Doesn't look like there's a word that can be spelt out here.
Saped, is that a word?
Saz.
Oh, M-A-Z.
This is really intriguing.
I love cryptex puzzles.
I feel like I'm in the Da Vinci Code or something.
You know what?
This, for some reason,
Harry Kelvin,
like, "When I was a child, my grandfather, Harry Kelvin."
I don't know why,
but that seems a little fishy to me,
that he would put his grandfather's name in there.
And, obviously, his grandfather's last name isn't Abrams.
So, that might be a clue.
And H, K, you can find that on the cryptex
as the last two letters.
So, I'm gonna take a stab in the dark and said H, K,
is definitely two of these letters here.
I don't know why, but that stands out to me.
So, H, K.
Is there a J, J, here somewhere?
There is a J.
There's no J, J.
Okay, so, H, K, will be the last two.
We'll stick with that.
I feel like the first one would be an M for some reason,
because, like, none of the letters here,
none of the capitalized letters fit here
until you get to the M.
So, I don't know if that makes sense,
but I'll start with an M.
M.
Now we're missing two here.
What could these be?
"My grandfather, Harry Kelvin,
"would take me to Tannen's Magic in Midtown Manhattan.
"It was the best place in the universe.
"I never really shocked or amazed."
What if I, here hold on.
Flashlight. Maybe shine it behind.
Maybe I'll uncover some secret about this.
- You can hold it up to the light,
you're not gonna find anything.
You can hold it up to the light,
you're not gonna find anything.
- I would've been really clever had that worked.
All right, so here's what we're gonna do.
I can't seem to find any clues on here
that would make sense with this,
other than just randomly putting it in.
So, what I'm gonna do,
I'm gonna do this the old fashioned way.
I'm gonna write down all of the different combinations here,
and see if any of them can make sense to be a word
in any way.
So, we have M, S, F, R, J, A, X, V, E, Z,
we say Z, 'cause we're Canadian,
Y, W, H, C, U, P, K, D, B, R.
Those are all the letters that are found on this cryptex.
Now to figure out if any of them make sense.
I mean, I'm really good at word games, by the way.
Like, word games is my passion,
whether it's Scrabble or Word Bomb,
or whatever it is.
What I noticed here,
is that none of the endings would make sense,
unless it was like C, K.
The only logical attachment to that would be the E,
even though I don't know of anything that has E, C, K.
Like, peck, maybe.
Or Shrek.
E, C, K.
No. And then we're lost.
So, just by looking at this,
this actually gives us a really good clue.
This tells us that the word that we're looking for,
if at all it is a word,
is not in order.
Other option, is that this is just random letters
that are found on this letter here.
Or, option B, that this does spell a word,
but that the letters are all jumbled up.
So, how many letters do we have here?
Five letters.
Instead of looking for all individual letters in here,
what I'm gonna do
is I'm gonna look for five letter words in here.
And we'll start there.
So, Harry is the first five letter word here.
So, let's see if we can spell Harry.
Right. Okay, so we have an R.
We have an A.
We have a Y.
We have an H and we have another R.
Did I just solve the puzzle?
I think that would be a little too good on my first try.
Just to make sure,
are there any other five letter words here?
There's every.
Is there every there? No.
There's only one E, so that doesn't work.
Shock, S.
That might work actually.
M, A. No, that doesn't work.
All right, let's try Harry out first.
And then R.
Let's try that.
Gotta make sure they're all lined up.
(laughs)
I can't believe that worked.
My half-ass attempt to solve this cryptex
actually bear fruit.
That is wonderful.
Look at that.
How beautiful is that little piece of brass here
with cryptex?
Oh my God, that is amazing.
That is so cool.
Let's have a look at what is inside this mystery box.
Wouldn't it be great if I had an ad pop up right now?
All right, so here we go.
Oh my God.
Oh wow.
It's a brick of mystery cards.
That's amazing.
Maybe another clue to the next treasure.
Kind of really happy that we got a brick of cards,
to be honest.
And then just a piece of felt on the bottom.
Make sure this piece of felt doesn't come off.
There's no ticking things here.
There's no switches anywhere.
A beautiful casing of mystery box cards.
For your enjoyment today,
we'll actually open one of these and actually show you
what these cards look like.
So, these are in collaboration with Bad Robot and theory11.
Nice packaging on this.
There we have the Bad Robot logo.
Open up these cards.
Nice little artwork on the inside of that.
And here are the cards.
Oh, this is cool.
All right, I'll get to this in a second.
This is really cool.
Here are the cards.
They feel really nice.
They're actually,
actually a really nice stock of cards here.
Cool. Here are the faces.
So you got the jokers.
Almost identical jokers.
Really cool ace with that question mark there.
Oh, cool.
So here are the core cards.
They're all little robots and stuff.
I always appreciate little custom core cards like that.
And that is it.
Now let's get to the ad cards.
These ad cards are really cool.
So, these are actually anamorphic cards.
And what that means,
is you can set these up,
and it looks like its 3D,
but it's actually 2D.
But we'll do that for you now,
just to give you guys a look.
Let me go get some scissors.
All right.
So, ah, there you go.
So, it's not this way,
but it's actually this way.
So, if I hold it like this,
just at the right angle,
it'll look like I'm holding a little 3D object,
when actually it looks like this.
So, cool little illusion that you get with this.
Oh, yeah, look at that.
You gotta find the right angle.
Kind of looks like a little robot's just standing there.
That's a cool little perspective illusion.
That, my friends, was the Mystery Box puzzle solve.
All right, guys, that is it.
Hope you enjoyed this video.
Cryptex stuff, I feel like,
kind of feel like Nicholas Cage in National Treasure,
or like Tom Hanks in Da Vinci Code.
It was really, really cool to decipher.
I'm really happy that we actually got it.
And I'm actually happy that the clue wasn't like so blatant,
that we had to actually delve in a little bit.
So, let me know what you guys thought of this puzzle.
Is this something that you would open,
or would you leave closed forever?
Interesting question.
Might start a debate in the comments.
But like this video, if you did enjoy it.
Subscribe if you're new here.
And we'll see you on the next video.
Peace.
All right, I just called up J.B.,
because we actually got it open,
which is very, very cool.
The cards are really dope, by the way.
Here's J.B. again.
This was a lot of fun to do, man.
This was like actually surprisingly moderately difficult.
I thought it was gonna be walk in the park.
- So, the box is not the hardest part to open,
but there's more than meets the eye within the box.
- [Chris] What do you mean, like, the anamorphic puzzles
that come with it and stuff?
- No, no.
That's cool. That's cool.
The inspiration for that,
was that we didn't know what to do with the two extra cards,
the little ad cards that you get in the deck,
and we wanted to do something fun with those.
And, so, it was actually Sebastian Claire,
who's an amazing magician out of France,
who I was at dinner with randomly,
that proposed the idea of these anamorphic cards.
If you hold them at the right angle,
it looks like a little robot.
But that's not what I'm talking about at all.
There's actually a secret puzzle within the box,
within the box, within box.
- [Chris] In the wood box, or in the--
- In the wood box, there's lots of things.
I'll say no more.
- [Chris] Okay, hold on a second.
Stay on the line, J.B.
You're not going anywhere.
- Trying to rip it open?
- [Chris] I have to rip this open?
- [Jonathan] Um, maybe.
- [Chris] All right, let's see.
All right, I'm not gonna show this portion on the video.
There's a, on the inside of this.
Can you, without,
I'm gonna try to be,
I want to keep the secret of this,
because this is really cool.
Can you tell us a little bit about
what goes on on this, maybe just a little bit,
so people can get an idea?
- So, well, to be vague,
but to give you the info.
So, it's a mystery box, spoiler alert,
and there are mysteries outside of the box,
and also inside of the box.
And, so, the mysteries inside of the box,
if you were among the first to resolve those mysteries
and solve those mysteries,
there was, and still is,
some prizes for those people.
The first person that got to the finish line,
it was someone in Upstate New York,
again, we've never spoken about this,
besides this video,
I'm telling you right now,
was a box that showed up in his house at midnight,
in Upstate New York.
And inside this box, at midnight,
with no one around to drop it off,
was a 1930s Underwood Typewriter,
that was bright yellow,
looks really cool.
And inside the roll of the typewriter,
was a note from J.J. to this person.
He was the very first person to resolve
all of the mysteries inside this box.
And on the typewriter note,
it just challenged to him,
I'm paraphrasing J.J.'s words terribly,
but it just challenged him to use this typewriter
to create more mystery and wonder in the world.
- [Chris] That is the single coolest thing
I've ever heard in my life.
Like, that's some straight up Da Vinci Code,
National Treasure shit right there.
- (mumbles) eye on as well,
if you solved the,
Illuminati confirmed.
And you won't get that, spoiler alert,
if you solve the mystery,
or whoever's watching this solves the mystery.
That was just the first person.
But there are rewards
if you do correctly solve the challenge hereafter still,
two years later.
- [Chris] All right, cool.
So, I'm glad that we've relieved
some part of the mystery here,
but not all of it.
So, guys, if you guys are definitely interested it in this,
I'll leave a link below.
You guys can check this out,
or check these cards out individually.
- If you solve it,
there may or may not be things
that show up at your door.
I'm just saying.
- [Chris] What?
Okay, challenge accepted.
Thanks, J.B.
- Peace.