Ms. Tran's Missing Cow

Description: We learned how to code Caesar Cipher in order to encrypt and decrypt messages. In this project, we were given clues that we had to decrypt. Each time we correcetly decrypted a message, we would receive the next clue to eventually find the answer to where Ms. Tran's missing cow went.

Procedure: 

Clue's 1-4 were all pretty easy to decrypt with the code we already had.

Clue 1 answer: Ms. Tran saw hoof prints by the back of the science classroom. She is panicking because her cow has gone missing!

Clue 2 answer: Max said that when he was dropped off this morning, he saw the cow with some JH kids eating mint candy near the Cue Quad.

Clue 3 answer: Someone mentioned seeing Ms. King fill the bowl with mint candies this morning.

Clue 4 answer: A student found a mint wrapper near the snack shack with a scribbled note: call me at 650806.

Clue 5 answer: No one stole the cow. It walked to Ms. Sanchez’s office to get candy, then hung out with the JH kids.

Clue 5 was harder to solve than the others. We figured out that the phone number was part of the key, but the key was 10-digits long. So, we had to figure out what the last four digits were. When I put the message and key into my code (I added some random numbers to the end of the key for the last four digits), I was able to figure out that the first sentence was "No one stole the cow." I then used that sentence to decrypt the rest. I took each letter from the encrypted sentence and counted the spaces to get to the correct letter. I kept going with this until I eventually got to the correct answer. 

SOUL:

S: I think my work was very strong and clearly shows my thought process because it is shown on my code.

O: I think that I overthought the process to figure out the answer to clue 5 a lot, it ended up being easier to figure out than I had originally thought.

U: I learned a lot from this project, including what Caesar Cipher is. I think that it is really cool how we can decode messages.

L: For me, the hardest part of this project was figuring out the answer to Clue 5 because I'm not super strong at Python, but eventually, with some help, I was able to figure it out.

WISCR: I think I showed the I and C in WISCR because I was an insightful and critical thinker and a clear communicator. I thought hard about ways to decode the fifth clue, even when they weren't correct, I used what I have learned and attempted everything I could. I also communicated with Ms. Tran and my classmates/group partner when I needed help.