When Kyle comes home on Tuesday, a sensor in his front door will relay the signal to turn on the water in his bathtub. If the sound of running water doesn't alert him, he'll notice that his bedroom door is locked with a combination lock. The bathroom door is locked as well, but with an electronic number pad lock. Taped to the door of his bathroom is a typewritten document with a sharpened pencil taped to the door beside it. It reads:
Kyle:
I’m sure that by now, you can hear your bathtub filling with water. Given the tub’s dimensions and the flow rate of the faucet, you have approximately six minutes of continuous water flow before the bathtub overflows. Therefore, it is in your best interest to find the nine-digit passcode to this electronic lock expediently. The highlighted row of the following Sudoku puzzle corresponds to the correct code necessary to open this door.
Once you enter the bathroom, you will need to retrieve from the bathtub a plastic bag containing instructions for the lock on your bedroom door. Good luck.
Sure enough, the completed highlighted row of the Sudoku puzzle spells out the code necessary to unlock the bathroom door. Inside the bathroom, the tub is filling with water, agitating the copious amounts of bubble bath and Kool-Aid mix left inside. The mixture is a frothy, murky mess that makes seeing the bottom of the tub nearly impossible. Stained hands are inevitable in the search for the tiny plastic bag skittering about along the bottom of the tub.
The bag contains a folded-up sheet of paper, typewritten like the first, and a second pencil. The paper reads:
Congratulations on solving the electronic lock. In the event that the bathtub overflowed, inform me so that I may arrange for the mess to be taken care of.
The lock on your bedroom door is a standard combination lock, and thus requires three numbers to open like so: XX - XX - XX, in which the “X”s represent any possible number, including zero. The three numbers - which, if you are following, amount to six digits - can be found by solving the puzzle below (the letters correspond to the numbers 1-26) and using the code you discover to “spell” KYLEW. Simply order the six digits by the letters they correspond to. The combination can be found by breaking those six digits into three two-digit pairs.
Good luck.
Symbol Key: (+) Plus (-) Minus (/) Divided by (x) Multiplied by (>) Greater than (<) Less than
The bedroom looks the same as it always has, with one exception. A small table has been placed in the center of it, several paces from the door. On the table is a bottle of water and a paper cup filled with an assortment of vitamins, with a folded note between them. The top of the note reads Congratulations in the familiar typewritten text. Inside, the note reads: