The May 2009 "Mystery Issue" of Wired Magazine won a National Magazine Award in the category Single-Topic Issue. A New York Times story about the issue singled out the buried puzzles that threads through the issue as an example of what a print publication is still uniquely well-suited to do in the digital age.
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I worked as editor with the brilliant team at Lone Shark Games on this package of metapuzzles, as well as a series of straightforward puzzles designed by some of the geekiest and most prominent puzzle designers in the world, including Times crossword editor Will Shortz and the prolific Martin Gardner. I also wrote up the solution that explained where the elements of the hidden metapuzzle were buried throught throughout the issue. I suggested some of the cyphers, and used my knowledge of the magazine form to figure how where we could hide them throughout the issue, from the spine to the masthead to the collophon to a phony jump page. I also called upon all of my knowledge of page layout and line editing to make sure that the final stage of the metapuzzle aligned properly—it involved cutting out certain words and folding the page over to reveal a secret message.

Spoiler article reprinted below.

“There are things occurring within these pages that are not apparent at first or second glance,” wrote Hollywood master of illusion (and guest editor) J.J. Abrams in an essay he wrote for the issue. One of the things he’s referring to is a number puzzle that plays out in the magazine and in recent episodes of Lost, the TV show that Abrams created. He’s also referring to a complex puzzle that plays out over the course of Wired’s May issue, which involves decoding multiple ciphers and deriving a secret message that takes sleuths to a hidden page on Wired.com.

We’ll give you a bit more time to solve the Lost number puzzle. But we are now revealing all the secret codes in the metapuzzle. If you don’t want it spoiled for you, stop reading now. If you want it spoiled in exhaustive detail, click the link below, slacker.

Below the surface of the May issue lurk 15 puzzles, all of which combine into a giant metapuzzle, created for Wired by Lone Shark Games: Mark L. Gottlieb, Mike Selinker, Sean Trowbridge and Teeuwynn Woodruff.

The metapuzzle was designed to be completely invisible to the casual reader. But there were a few hints in addition to Abrams’ passing remark. One was an article “How to Solve a Puzzle” on page 30. Step 3 suggests there are 15 hidden clues throughout the issue.

On Wired.com, you’ll also find a video interview with puzzle maker Mike Selinker called “Crack the Code.” Some words appear fleetingly in the background of the video: “two-star, dancer, ring, why, herds, seek, writ, coeds, fine, duff, all, sad.” This can be repronounced as “To start answering Wired’s secret codes, find a false ad.”

The bogus advertisement, on the left column of page 129, purports to debut the magazine Wired Puzzles (sorry, it doesn’t exist).

The phony ad describes the sort of stuff you’ll find in the fake mag. A red scroll lists 15 types of derivation mechanisms, such as Braille and Morse code. Somewhere in the issue, an example of each can be found.

Here’s a list of each of these 15 puzzle types described in the fake ad.

1. Indexed lists: Running on the bottom of pages 38-39 is a list of British hedgerow mazes, numbered 1 to 7. You can find it here on the site, but we gave it the title “British Hedgerow Mazes You Can Count On” in the print magazine version as a subtle hint that this was an indexed list. Taking the first letter of Chatsworth House, the second letter of Longleat and so on gets the answer comfort.

2. ASCII codes: In the Wired Puzzles ad on page 129, the fake “input code” #85786965828472 can be broken into seven two-digit ASCII numbers (.gif). The numbers 85, 78, 69, 65, 82, 84 and 72 are the ASCII characters for the capital letters in the answer unearth.

3. Five-bit binary encryption: The squares that run down the cover spine are in the pattern
*-*–/*–*-/–*-*/-*-**/-*-**/-*–*/–*-*.

In five-digit binary letters (the squares indicating 16-8-4-2-1, with colored as “on” and white as “off”), this spells the answer trekkie.

4. Prison tap code: In the sidebar to Abrams’ essay on page 80, the left edge of the divider shows one set of divots, and the right edge shows another set. Treating the left edge numbers as the left axis of the prison tap code chart and the right numbers as the top axis, you get 3/4, 1/3, 1/5, 1/1, 3/3. This spells the answer ocean.

5. Braille characters: At lower right in the illustration accompanying the Nabokov article on page 59, a string of Braille characters spells the answer unstuff.

6. Twisted-pair wire code: In the Wired logo on page 8, each letter is composed of a foreground and background color. These color combinations make numbers in 25-pair wire code, an electrician’s numbering system. (As a hint, this logo is credited to artist Cabell P. Ayers at the bottom of the page.) The pairs yellow/gray, lavender/blue, yellow/green, white/orange, and black/gray match the numbers 20-21-18-2-15, which correspond alphabetically to the letters in the answer turbo.

7. Deleted letters: Inside page 46’s excerpt from “The Purloined Letter” on the Kindle 2 screen, several letters have been “purloined.” The words meditation, with, Auguste, No., Germain, least, intently, eddies, chamber, certain and earlier are missing letters which spell the answer theoretical.

8. Moon type: In the moon illustration on page 20, starting at the top left, you will find the following constellation-like shapes in the starry sky:

In the cipher called Moon type, these translate to hearkened.

9. Dvorak conversions: In the article “How to Solve Puzzles” on page 30, a professor named “Dvora K. Klaviatura” is mentioned, along with a website that appears to originate from Belarus (the “.by” suffix). “Dvora K.” and the Russian word Klaviatura (meaning “keyboard”) suggest translating the Dvorak simplified keyboard letters “.by.pyacbm.by” into the corresponding characters on a regular QWERTY keyboard. This spells the answer entertainment.

10. Alphanumeric conversion: Above the bio on page 42, you’ll find a series of hashmarks. Counting the number of hashmarks in each group gets 19, 1, 18, 1, 8. Mapped to their equivalent letters, this spells the answer sarah.

11. Transaddition (and subtraction): In the masthead on page 6, several staffers are fake. Reading down from the top, these are: Night Editor Teri Deighton, Lead Designer Alexis N. Dredge, News Editor Pete Windsor, Lab Director Dario Colbert, Copy Manager Morgan Spacey, Production Lead Rod Paul Endicott, Research Aide Rasheeda Curie, Press Liaison Allison Spires, Senior Intern Nora R. Einstein, Stenciler Clint Ester, Editor at Large Odelia Garrette. Each fake staffer’s name is an anagram of their title plus one extra letter. The extra letters, read down the page, spell the answer expostulate.

(As far as we know, this is the only puzzle that was never solved — which is humbling, as we take that page incrediblyseriously around here. The scores of people who got to the end of the puzzle did so by inferring this answer from surrounding context.)

12. Semaphore: The colophon on page 134 starts with “The extra snoozing we needed to boost our flagging spirits,” with the word “flagging” suggesting the flags of semaphore. Later in the colophon are times when the snooze button was hit: 6:15, 7:52, 1:37, 7:07, 10:37, 4:37, 6:22, 10:07, 12:45. If you imagine each time as a pair of hands on an analog clock face, it resembles one of the semaphore letters. In the order given, these letters spell the answer filling up.

13. Caesar shifting: In the “How We Rate” box on page 47, some letters are bolded. These letters spelltvbrandshiftspaytwosteps. This is a Caesar shift, where letters advance positions in the alphabet. The word pay shifted two steps into a TV brand is the answer: RCA.

14. Phone keypads: In the Rants submission info on page 14 is the fake phone number (67)24-552-8464. On a telephone keypad, the numbers spell only one word, the answer: oscillating.

15. Morse code: Next to Teller’s head on page 47, the line separating columns is broken into Morse code: — – *– — –* –* * — ** — –** *. This spells the answer magnetize.

Final steps: After finding these 15 answers, you need to return to the Wired Puzzles ad on page 129. The ad says: “Order today and you may receive a bonus three-part ultrapuzzle! We’ll award this to the first, middle and last sets of letters we receive, so act now.” The first, middle and last letters of these answers in the order shown above spells these three lines:

OR: CUTOUTTHESEFROMFAKETREKARTICLETHENFOLDTHEPAGE

This process is also confirmed by the smaller fake ads in the left column of page 129. The first is for the law firm Acrawstyck, Mezostich & Tellistyk, which can be pronounced as “acrostic, mesostich and telestich,” the puzzle terms for messages in the first, middle and last letters.

The second ad is for a set of text-cutting knives. The third ad is for MetaGlobalTech, which indicates there’s a metapuzzle here, and that folding is involved.

Payoff: And now for the final step. All of the 15 words can be found in the middle column of page 129, in what appears to be the conclusion of a story about Star Trek’s Kobayashi Maru test (sorry, the rest of that article doesn’t exist). When the answers are cut out, and the right column is folded over on top of the middle column, you can flip the page over to see a series of words:

The complete message revealed after cutting and folding is:

you’re
just
about to finish
your search
to do your
final step
you can
log in
by going to
wired. Com
slash
puzzle
master
password
Don E.

Going to wired.com/puzzlemaster and typing the password “done” gets you to the congratulations screen. You will find a crude image of dancing stick figures there.

This is a cipher that appeared in the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Dancing Men.” Each man corresponds to a letter in the alphabet.

This final coded message reads: thEenD.