Gecko Locator's Christmas Quiz 2019 · Solution

Dear Fellow Elves

Fantastic news! Santa has been located and happily we have rescued him from the Antisanta, putting quite a dent in his Evil Lair in the process.

In case you were curious, here is the solution to Santa's little puzzle.

Regards,

Shimmer S. Colquhoun

Head of Operations

Clue 1

///state.contact.cliff

It turns out this is a What3Words location. The street it points to is called the Rue Vigenère, which reveals that the password has been encrypted with a Vigenère cipher.

Clue 2

Dear Elves,
    I am having a lovely time doing the rounds and asking all the children what they want for Christmas. However, it has been very tiring, as I
hear badly nowadays, so I've taken a break from talking to kids and spent the last couple of days reading a detective novel. I read
it backwards, in three directions at once, and left it overnight to see if I could work out who did it. But no matter how much I thought, I was
still confused. I thought I was going to have to give up and peek at the ending, which would have been very annoying, until thinking
back over part of Twinkle's nitrous incident gave me the vital clue. After finishing the book, I tried to do a dot-to-dot puzzle, but after a few
beers the Spanish folks next door started singing very loudly. In the end, I just couldn't concentrate on the puzzle at all, and the dots would only
join up in the wrong order. I've been having a lovely time all the Christmas markets, but I need to stop overindulging or I won't fit in my suit! My
initial thought is never stop eating lettuce, so I'll be too full to eat all the mince pies and sausages. But you know how long my diets normally last!

See you soon! Santa

The key to the cipher has been hidden in this message using a series of cryptic clues, starting at the beginning of each line from the second line of the body onwards. If you want to know the key click here, but you might want to try and figure it out yourself now you know the secret.

Clue 3

MPRHEDLEBJHTLUNKXZWWA

Using the key on this ciphertext reveals "the password is MASTODON". Or was. We've changed it again, so don't try to get at any of the goodies or you'll be joining Twinkle on poo duty until next Christmas.