The Case of the Stolen iPhone

🚨 Emergency, Detective!

This morning, Mr. Lehmkuhl's iPhone disappeared from his desk. A little later, Principal Garcia got a text from his phone saying he QUIT and was moving to Texas! But Mr. Lehmkuhl didn't send it. He loves his job and his students!

Principal Garcia says: "If we can't figure out who really sent that message, I'll have to believe it's real." Mr. Lehmkuhl's job is in YOUR hands.

🔐 The thief left clues all over school, but they're written in secret codes. Crack all 6 codes to earn all 6 badges and unlock the final case page. Then you must figure out WHO took the phone, WHY they did it, and WHERE they were when they sent the text. A wrong guess locks the case for 5 minutes, so don't guess. Solve it!

🕵️ The Suspects

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In this code, the alphabet is flipped: A becomes Z, B becomes Y, C becomes X, and so on. To decode, find each letter on the top row and read the letter under it.

Practice: What does XLWV mean?

Old phones had only number keys. Each key had 3 or 4 letters. To type a letter, you pressed the key once, twice, three, or four times. So 2 = A, 22 = B, 222 = C, and 7777 = S. A slash / means a space between words.

Try it! Tap a key several times to see which letter you get. (Wait a moment between letters.)

Practice: What does 44 444 mean?

In a substitution cipher, every letter is swapped for a symbol. Use the key below to decode. Codebreakers crack these by noticing patterns: the most common letter in English is E!

Practice: What does mean?

To encode, write the message in a zigzag on two rows: 1st letter on top, 2nd on the bottom, 3rd on top, and so on. Then write the top row followed by the bottom row. (Spaces are removed.)

Try the zigzag maker:

🔓 To DECODE: split the code in half. The first half is the top row and the second half is the bottom row. (If there's an odd number of letters, the top row gets the extra one.) Then read in a zigzag: top, bottom, top, bottom...

Practice: Decode CTA (top row: C T, bottom row: A)

Each letter is made of short beeps (· dots) and long beeps (— dashes). A slash / separates words. Tap a letter in the chart to hear it!

Practice: What does ··· −−− ··· mean?

The famous artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci filled notebooks with mirror writing: backwards letters that read right-to-left. Hold a real mirror up to the screen, or read it carefully from right to left!

Practice: What does this say?