- Hidden messages are all around us, but we never see them.
(dramatic beat)
The job of a cryptographer is to uncover secret messages
by breaking complicated codes.
Today I'm going to try hiding my deepest secret
right under a cryptographer's nose.
(dramatic beat)
I hope my secret smells pleasant.
(dramatic music)
What does a cryptographer do?
- So a cryptographer looks at data
and that data is encrypted with mathematical algorithms.
So we look at that data to see if it's safe or if it's not.
So we employ different analytical techniques to try
to break the message or to show that hey
this cryptography's actually doing it's job, it's secure.
So it's not just breaking the math, it's finding flaws
and how they actually wrote the code to implement the math.
- I hate math.
I think I got a C in math.
Pretty much every year of my life.
- I doubt that happened to me.
- What was the most dangerous job you've ever had?
- Where I'm at now, at Freedom of the Press Foundation,
we build a tool called SecureDrop, which is a platform
that news organizations set up so that whistle blowers
and others who want to share tips and things with really
high stakes that other nations, states or governments
or crime syndicates might want to access.
This is a platform for them to submit
these stories to news organizations.
Just the general danger of building a system
with those types of audiences in mind,
where they could face prison time or, you know, exile
or even death if something goes wrong.
- Are you good at solving puzzles?
- Absolutely, fantastic.
- Now I'm going to challenge you.
I've hidden my deepest secret in a code
and if you are able to solve my puzzle,
you will be revealing my deepest secret to the entire world.
- I will do my best to expose it.
- I'm going to give you thirty minutes,
everything you need is in the room upstairs.
- Okay.
- Good luck.
What the cryptographer didn't know was that I spent
the last two weeks planning the perfect strategy
to keep my secret safe forever.
(dramatic music)
First I developed a series of brutally difficult puzzles
to test his skills,
drawing inspiration from ancient history,
and my extreme addiction to escape rooms.
I wanted to make the room with my puzzles in it as scary as
possible, so I decorated it like a birthday party.
A birthday party where the windows are blacked out, the
pinata is empty and a clown costume is stapled to the wall.
Next, I created a devious distraction.
Every two minutes that passed with my secret remaining
undiscovered, the cryptographer will be hit in the face
with a mayonnaise pie.
This should annoy the bejesus out of him.
The more time he spends pissed off, the less time he has
to expose my strange past.
Finally, I hired a professional mime to stand in the corner
of the room during this challenge.
To make matters more interesting,
I told the mime my deepest secret.
In college, (bleep)
(bleep)
(bleep) track.
The cryptographer will be allowed to skip
my marathon of odd challenges,
if he can make the mime spill my secret beans.
- What are the rules of engagement with this mime?
- You can do whatever you want to this mime.
I will say he may or may not be very ticklish,
but if you cannot get the mime to talk,
you have to focus on solving all of my puzzles.
- Fair.
- If the mime talks and breaks their code of silence,
they may never work again.
I really hope this mime is ready to retire today.
What percentage positive are you going to succeed?
- I will say 85%.
- Good, I'm already in your head, baby.
(laughing)
- That's the best way I function.
- With me in your head?
- Well, with the adversary in my head.
- Now that I've made the cryptographer uncomfortable,
it's time to start my impossible puzzles.
- [Mike voiceover] The challenge begins in 3, 2, 1.
Mayonnaise pie.
First, the mime will hand the cryptographer a note,
which reads, "Mike shifted his lunch three minutes
"so he could have a caesar salad. Yixzh ifdeq lk tfkalt."
What does that mean?
- [Justin Voiceover] Alright, so right now I'm just trying
to figure out what this code might mean.
Okay, I'm gonna keep looking around
to see if there's anything of use.
- When the timer begins, I'll be outside preemptively
celebrating my victory by calmly shucking corn.
(dramatic music)
- [Mike Voiceover] Mayonnaise pie.
- Alright, currently just turning over,
looking over for some clues.
Puzzle as it is, alright here's an alphabet, shift code,
(mumbles) three minutes, let's try to solve it.
- [Mike voiceover] Mayonnaise pie.
The three underlying words were shifted, three and caesar.
The cryptographer should realize that in the strange
final sentence, I shifted the letters three places over
in the alphabet using a caesar cipher,
said to be an ancient method of hiding secret messages.
Moving those letters three places down the alphabet
will spell black light on window.
- Black light looking for a black light.
(upbeat chime)
Alright cool, found the black light, solved the puzzle.
Got pie all over me.
- Once the cryptographer picks up the black light on
the window sill, he must find invisible ink somewhere
in the room, or he can waste time hosting
a black light dance party by himself,
which is something that I've never done.
- Looking for something that will appear and having no luck.
- Written on the far corner of the ceiling, an invisible
chalk message reads, "My favorite book is 666
"and my favorite number is dictionary."
- Not sure what this is for yet.
(mumbles)
Nothing there.
[Mike voiceover] Mayonnaise pie.
- The first part of the puzzle was pretty easy,
I'm gonna say that I'm over-analyzing the black light part.
Oh there we go, my favorite book, 666.
My favorite number is dictionary.
There we go, so I found the black light clue, so
so my favorite number is 666, so page 666,
which I found by shining the black light.
- One of the many books on the floor is a dictionary,
on page 666 is a note which reads:
- It says, "Please write a haiku about pizza,
"call my favorite pizzeria and sing them your haiku,
"you can convince them,
"to the cashier to sing your haiku back to you."
- [Mike voiceover] Mayonnaise pie.
- Only then will you get your next clue.
- Now the cryptographer will have to serenade
a total stranger with his feelings about pizza.
- I would look up the definition of haiku to make sure
I have the formatting correct.
So it's form of 5-7-5 as far as syllables.
But now I'm gonna call Mike's favorite pizzeria.
- [Mike voiceover] Mayonnaise pie.
- So I'm on a mission, I need your help.
- If the cryptographer convinces the pizzeria cashier
to sing his haiku back to him,
he may continue his quest for my deepest secret.
- So I need you to sing a haiku back to me that I'm going
to tell you for me to proceed to my next challenge.
If you do that he says he'll come in, buy everybody pizza.
- Yeah we're gonna place an order for pizza, but that's
what I have to convince you to do is sing this haiku back.
- Yeah, as strange as it sounds.
I'm getting mayonnaise pies in the face,
I've had like a dozen so I could really use your help.
So the only way I-
- [Mike voiceover] Mayonnaise pie.
- There's another one, the only way I can get to the next
challenge is for you to sing the haiku and there's no
other pizza place he likes except for yours.
Alright, say the first line with me.
I like cheese pizza.
- Pizza is the greatest food.
- Ham pizza is great.
- [Mike voiceover] Mayonnaise pie.
(upbeat chime)
- The cashier will provide this instruction:
on the floor is a blueish-green vase,
which contains a ping pong ball,
when the cryptographer gets the ping pong ball,
he will read the small clue I've written on it.
- Okay, looks like we have
next piece, pop the red balloon.
(upbeat chime)
- [Mike voiceover] Mayonnaise pie.
(balloon pops)
- Cool, alright, next clue:
(upbeat chime)
- [Mike voiceover] Inside that red balloon,
I've hidden a small paper with this text:
- Zodiac symbols.
Also a bomb.
And we gotta figure out what this code is.
- The cryptographer should realize that this is
a font everyone knows, but no one has ever used.
I'm speaking of course about Wingdings.
- [Mike voiceover] Mayonnaise pie.
- In the room there is a laptop he may use to convert
the symbols into English.
The sentence translates to:
Mike's secret is on the tip of the mime's tongue.
- Looking here for other clues.
- [Mike voiceover] Mayonnaise pie.
- I saw the mailbox icon, so I'm just gonna
see if by chance...
- As you know, many words have double meanings.
Do you know that some words have double meanings?
- Sure.
- Great.
A tongue can also be found on a shoe,
therefore my deepest secret has been hidden on
the mime's shoe tongue this whole time.
If the cryptographer reaches into the mime's shoe tongue,
pulls out my embarrassing secret and reads it for
the entire internet to hear,
I will lose and be humiliated forever.
(dramatic music)
- Okay.
(dramatic music)
Alright.
It's time. - It's time.
- The cryptographer failed, which is awesome for me
and pretty stinky for him.
- Well I lost,
but I was making more ground as I went along?
- So how much of this was cryptography
and how much of this was just plain weird?
- I would say the majority of it was plain weird.
- The only person who knows that secret is behind us.
- Yes.
And I have an idea it had something to do with
shucking corn of a different kind.
One final question.
- [Mike] Yeah. - Do you guys have shampoo?
- [Mike] We've got shampoo. (laughing)
Yeah, it's mayonnaise flavored.
- It's raw.
- While you were trying to discover my deepest secret,
I was going to investigate your deepest secret,
but I decided shucking corn was more fun.
(laughing)
- [Justin] That's the rumor.
- [Mike] What do you do for fun?
(mellow music)