The art galleries are not far from 7th and H NW........


Puzzle reference pages » A=1, B=2 ... Z=26assembled by Quincunx
In most cases, when someone creates a puzzle for a contest or competition like MIT's Mystery Hunt, the solution to that puzzle is a piece of text, either a word or a phrase, perhaps an instruction. (Some other solutions are numbers, and I suppose some could be pictures.) But when a puzzle is number-based, how does one get from a number or group of numbers to a word or phrase?
The most useful tool is a substitution cipher where each letter of the alphabet is represented by a number which corresponds to that letter's position in the alphabet. In simplest terms, this can be written as A=1, B=2 ... Z=26. Since A is the first letter of the alphabet, it is represented by the number 1. B, the second letter, is represented by 2. Z, the last of the 26 letters in the alphabet, is represented by 26.

A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26

So if, upon solving a puzzle, you find yourself left with a series of numbers as an apparent "solution," try the A=1, B=2 ... Z=26 cipher on it to see if a word or phrase is represented by the numbers.
For example, here's a simple puzzle:

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤

¤¤ ¤¤ ¤

¤¤¤ ¤¤¤ ¤¤¤

¤¤¤ ¤¤ ¤¤

¤¤¤ ¤¤¤ ¤¤

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ ¤¤¤¤¤¤

If you want to solve this puzzle on your own, do so before reading further.
There are several ways to look at this diagram. If you ignore the rows within each box and just count the number of symbols, you'll count 23, 5, 9, 7, 8 and 20. Look up the letter that matches each number and see if it spells a word.