Horcrux Hunt Escape Room Part 5: Hogwarts, Tom Riddle's Diary

As noted in the overview post, our horcrux hunt party had (3) locations with (2) horcruxes per location. This allowed for the large number of guests to be broken down into smaller groups and rotate between locations.

Each group was given a clipboard with blank paper to take notes, and a blacklight flashlight.

For the party overview, see THIS post.

The Hogwarts portion of the party was our living room (Gryffindor Common Room) and dining room (Great Hall). It contained the Ravenclaw Diadem & Tom Riddle's Diary horcruxes.

Tom Riddle's Diary: Enigma Challenge

The story of Tom Riddle's diary is primarily told in book 2, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

[Spoiler Alert if you haven't read book 2]

In Chamber of Secrets, Harry learns that the Slytherin founder of Hogwarts, Salazar Slytherin, created a hidden chamber in the school:

"Reliable historical sources tell us this much. But these honest facts have been obscured by the fanciful legend of the Chamber of Secrets. The story goes that Slytherin had built a hidden chamber in the castle, of which the other founders knew nothing. Slytherin, according to the legend, sealed the Chamber of Secrets so that none would be able to open it until his own true heir arrived at the school. The heir alone would be able to unseal the Chamber of Secrets, unleash the horror within, and use it to purge the school of all who were unworthy to study magic."

Harry found the hidden entrance to the Chamber of Secrets in Moaning Myrtle's girl's bathroom. The 'horror within' was a Basilisk, a giant snake. Slytherin had an affinity with snakes, as he was a Parseltongue, a wizard who could communicate with snakes. We later learn that the powerful venom of the basilisk is one of the few magical substances powerful enough to destroy a horcrux. Harry used a fang from the defeated basilisk to destroy the Riddle diary.

The horcrux hunt for Tom Riddle's diary starts with the words on the wall, "The Chamber of Secrets has been opened, enemies of the heir... beware." On the table, there is an empty enigma machine and instructions on how to decode a message using an enigma machine.

The enigma machine needs three gears to operate. This machine is the Enigma 37, so the gears have 37 spokes: all 26 letters of the alphabet, numbers 0-9 and a period. Each of the three gears is organized differently. The gears are labeled gear A, B and C.

I purchased the Enigma 37 Machine HERE. He does a very thorough walkthrough of how to operate the machine in a YouTube video HERE. If you want to skip to 'how to decode,' it starts around the 4 minute mark.

In order for the Enigma to decode a message you need two important pieces of information:

1. Gear Order: As each gear is different, you need to know which gear is placed in which position in order to decode a message.
2. Initial Gear Key: There is an arrow on the base of the machine for each of the gears. The gears need to be positioned in a specific placement in order for the message to be decoded.

Therefore, the groups needed to find a clue for the gear order, a clue for the gear key, AND all three gears to decode the message.

AND they needed to find the message that needed decoding! 

The first clue was blacklight reactive on the enigma instructions. It hints that the gear key can also be numbers, since the gears included both letters and numbers.

When the blacklight was used on the words on the wall, the CAB were underlined in invisible ink in the word Chamber. This was the gear order.

On the Gryffindor Common Room table, there were a couple of books. 

Inside of the "Spells" book, they found the first gear.

Inside of the school desk, there were a couple of school books...

The second gear was found in Hogwarts, A History. I had printed off a couple of pages about the Basilisk and hid the gears in between those pages. 

*The Hogwarts, A History book was an old book that was donated to us to make into a prop book. I found the graphics online, printed onto paper and used Modge Podge to make into a school book.

Next to the books in the desk was a box labeled 'Basilisk Fang.'

Inside of this box was a fang, which had symbols carved into it...

When blacklight was directed at the lid of the box,  a message was revealed, "This will help set your gears in motion..."

When the black light was shined on the fang itself, the etched pattern revealed a number. This number with the message on the lid revealed that the gear order was the number on the fang, 724.

To find the final gear, they turned to the Sorting Hat in the room. Inside the sorting hat was a digital recorder. When they hit 'play' there was an audio file of the Fat Lady from the movies, where she was singing, "Oh, amazing! And just with my voice!"

The group turned to the Fat Lady portrait, where the third gear was hidden behind the canvas.

*Fat Lady painting done by my mother for Little Tomato to put on the door to her Cupboard Under the Stairs. 

The message could be found on the Gryffindor Common Room message board:

The message reads, "A message coded in parseltongue! Find the missing parts of the enigma machine to decode the message."

With all of the elements found, the groups decoded the message...

The decoded message reads:

Diary in 2nd floor girls loo. Key to lock found on page 724.

There was a locked box under the sink in our bathroom... The access to the Chamber of Secrets in the book was through an entrance accessed under the sinks in the girl's bathroom.

They needed to find the 3 number key to unlock the box. The groups looked all over for books with 724 pages... but the page was on the bulletin board!

There was a book page (page #724) from Most Macabre Monstrosities that described the basilisk on the bulletin board. This book had the word 'pipes' sketched on it - it was the page that Hermione found when she figured out that the Chamber of Secrets monster was a basilisk, and how it was getting around the school (pipes).

In the blacklight, the number 394 was written under 'pipes' in invisible ink.

Bonus: We used #394 because of Snape's infamous quote, "Turn to page 394." I had to use the number somewhere. 😜

The number unlocked the box to achieve the diary horcrux.