Tuesday, March 14, 2017

cipher - I went on a world tour and came back home



After you enter the right password, once again the door opens before you. You are not surprised to see another door blocking your path; looks like they want a three letter password this time. However, the part beneath the input sports a poster, with the following written on it:


                      "I went on a world tour and came back home"

TOEVAQCNXFLEFJRCUYAYQBZAOGAZATVFYHXEYVR???GUNNST

Can you outsmart the door once again?



Answer



Answer is



UEI




Because
TOEVAQCNXFLEFJRCUYAYQBZAOGAZATVFYHXEYVR???GUNNST



rot13 and split into trigrams is:
GBR IND PAK SYR SWE PHL NLD OMN BTN MNG ISL UKR LIE ??? THA AFG

Which are all NATO country code trigrams:
United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Syria, Sweden, Philippines, Netherlands, Oman, Bhutan, Mongolia, Iceland, Ukraine, Liechtenstein, ?, Thailand, Afghanistan

Their capitals are:
London, New Delhi, Islamabad, Damascus, Stockholm, Manila, Amsterdam, Muscat, Thimphu, Ulaanbaatar, Reykjavik, Kiev, Vaduz, ?, Bangkok, Kabul

The countries are linked by the next one's capital starting with the last letter of the previous one's capital (including "coming back home"), so the capital of the missing entry must start with "Z" and end in "b", well there is only one such capital...

Zagreb, Croatia

...and Croatia has the NATO trigram:
HRV

rot13 to get back to the text we were presented with (thanks hexomino!):
UEI




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