- I received a new puzzle.
This box puzzle.
It's not really a box puzzle.
It's a box with a cryptex lock on it,
is known as the Mystery Box
by J.J. Abrams and theory11.
It's this really cool,
all-wood, sort of box,
with the question mark branding on it.
It has this brass lock
on it with these letters.
Inside this box is a mystery.
I have no idea what's inside of it.
I've never opened one of these.
Feels a bit heavy.
I know there's something inside.
And we're gonna try and
decipher the cryptex
that's on this lock,
and, hopefully, open it,
and show you guys the
content of what's inside.
So, this box comes with a letter,
and that's all I get.
I get this letter, I get this box,
I get this lock,
and I have to try and open it.
So, let's try and figure out
and see what's inside.
And before we begin,
don't forget to like this video
if you do enjoy these types of videos.
And let's get into it.
All right, so before I open this,
I do have a little bit
of an unfair advantage.
I'm friends with Jonathan
Bayme, CEO at theory11,
the person that created this
in cooperation with J.J Abrams.
And I'm gonna give him a
call quick on FaceTime.
He's not expecting it.
And, hopefully, he can give
us a little bit of a clue
to how this works.
And hopefully he doesn't
give us too big of a clue.
But we'll give him a call now.
All right, so, hey, J.B.
I'm gonna face you towards the camera,
just so people can see you.
So, you're gonna be
talking to my camera rig.
But I have a question about
the mystery box, all right?
- Yeah, I may or may not
be able to answer it then.
- [Chris] So, I just received this box
with this letter that you
sent to me in the mail.
And I'm just actually
about to open it on camera.
Actually, just to attempt
to open it on camera.
And I was hoping, since we're friends,
that you might be able to
share some insight on this box.
- Insight or the password?
- [Chris] No, I don't want the password.
But is there anything I should
know before I get into this?
- Everything you need to
know is inside the box
or the letter that you got.
We intend for it to be a mystery.
We get at least two emails a
week from people that write in,
and they're like, "Hey, I
bought this mystery box,
"and I seemed to have misplaced the paper
"that has the password on it."
And we reply to those and say,
"It would not much of a
mystery box, would it,
"if we told you the combination?"
So, I think that's the beauty of it,
is that, that we don't
tell you the combination,
and the choice to open or not is yours.
Some people choose to keep it closed
as a kind of reminder of the
power of mystery and wonder,
and others, like probably you,
will try and dig it up.
- [Chris] Everything I need
to know is in this letter?
- Everything you need to
know is in the letter.
It might not be immediately evident.
- [Chris] Okay, so the
password is not, like,
this isn't just like a paper
with the password on it?
- No.
Like, you can hold it up to the light,
you're not gonna find anything.
But everything you need
to know, information-wise,
to decipher the combination
is within the contents of the letter.
- [Chris] All right, well that sounds,
that sounds interesting.
- Good luck!
- [Chris] Thanks.
I might actually call you in a week
if I don't actually open this,
and we'll have a more detailed discussion.
How 'bout that?
All right, man, thanks so much.
I'll keep you posted.
Later.
- Bye.
- [Chris] All right, so there you have it.
This whole thing revolves around mystery,
and the choice whether or not,
I guess, to open it is yours.
So, let's have a look at
the contents of this letter.
Let's see what type of
clues lie and wait for us.
Such a shame taking off the wax seal.
Kind of really beautiful.
But, you know, this wouldn't
be a puzzle unboxing video
if I didn't.
Okay, so inside we get this nice letter.
Make sure there's nothing inside.
And the letter reads as follows:
"November, 2013.
"When I was a child, my
grandfather, Harry Kelvin,
"would often take me
"to Tannen's Magic in Midtown Manhattan."
Tannen's is a magic shop in New York,
which is very cool.
You should go there if
you're ever in New York.
"It was the best place in the universe.
"Every trick held the
potential for me shock
"and amaze my family.
"It wasn't until many
years later that I realized
"that they were never
particularly shocked or amazed.
"One object, however, was
especially intriguing;
"a magic mystery box,
"which contained, Tannen
said, $50 worth of magic
"for only $15.
"When I got home with the
box, poised to rip it open.
"I realized that the very idea
of what might be inside it
"was more powerful,
"more valuable, and more crazy compelling,
"than whatever it actually did contain.
"Opening the box would somehow
diminish its potential.
"Well, I decided to keep it closed.
"To this day, the box remains unopened.
"In honor of my grandfather,
"and anyone who has ever appreciated
"the power of a simple illusion,
"it is my pleasure to present
"the first Bad Robot partnership
"with the extraordinary theory11:
"Mystery Box Playing Cards.
"The choice to open the
box or not is yours."
So, I guess we won't open the box today.
I guess that's, no,
you know what?
As much as I like the
idea of the potential
of what's stored in this box,
and never opening it,
which I find super compelling,
I don't think it would be as compelling
for a video unboxing this,
if I didn't unbox it.
So, we're gonna try and open it.
The clues are somewhere hidden
in plain sight apparently.
We've got some serial numbers up here.
I don't know if you can see that.
They're kind of embossed serial numbers.
They read: 20-2.41-72947, November, 2013.
So, I don't particularly
know if these numbers
have anything to do with opening the box,
or if the date may be.
Or, you know, my first instinct is,
as a cryptologist,
I don't even know if that's a word.
But as someone who opens puzzles,
I would think that the,
maybe like the first,
all the capital letters or something,
maybe they open it.
So, let's see here.
We have M, S, F, R.
M, S, F, R.
So, we have four letters per toggle.
Is there anywhere in
here that would give us
either the M, the S, the F, or the R,
as a clue,
wether that's a capital letter,
or whether that's in the numbers,
translating to the number
of letters in the alphabet?
Let's have a look.
M, S, F, R.
M, S, F, R.
So, maybe the word magic.
Maybe we'll start with M, maybe.
And then we have X, Y, J, A.
So, this could also spell out a word.
However, I don't think it would be a word.
M, S, F, R.
A, X, V, J.
A, X, V, J.
A, X, V, J.
Doesn't really seem to be
anything with those letters
standing out to me.
Maybe this here,
this number, translates
to the number of words.
Let's try that.
Number 20.
So, let's count 20.
15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
Which is an I.
(laughs) That doesn't work.
How 'bout the 20th letter of the alphabet?
P, Q, R, S, T.
T. T?
No? No.
Maybe, two.
No, two is not there.
What could the letters possibly spell out?
Maybe there is a word
here that we're missing
that the letters could spell out somehow.
Okay, so it doesn't end with a vowel.
Doesn't look like there's a
word that can be spelt out here.
Saped, is that a word?
Saz.
Oh, M-A-Z.
This is really intriguing.
I love cryptex puzzles.
I feel like I'm in the Da
Vinci Code or something.
You know what?
This, for some reason,
Harry Kelvin,
like, "When I was a child, my
grandfather, Harry Kelvin."
I don't know why,
but that seems a little fishy to me,
that he would put his
grandfather's name in there.
And, obviously, his grandfather's
last name isn't Abrams.
So, that might be a clue.
And H, K, you can find that on the cryptex
as the last two letters.
So, I'm gonna take a stab
in the dark and said H, K,
is definitely two of these letters here.
I don't know why, but
that stands out to me.
So, H, K.
Is there a J, J, here somewhere?
There is a J.
There's no J, J.
Okay, so, H, K, will be the last two.
We'll stick with that.
I feel like the first one
would be an M for some reason,
because, like, none of the letters here,
none of the capitalized letters fit here
until you get to the M.
So, I don't know if that makes sense,
but I'll start with an M.
M.
Now we're missing two here.
What could these be?
"My grandfather, Harry Kelvin,
"would take me to Tannen's
Magic in Midtown Manhattan.
"It was the best place in the universe.
"I never really shocked or amazed."
What if I, here hold on.
Flashlight. Maybe shine it behind.
Maybe I'll uncover some secret about this.
- You can hold it up to the light,
you're not gonna find anything.
You can hold it up to the light,
you're not gonna find anything.
- I would've been really
clever had that worked.
All right, so here's what we're gonna do.
I can't seem to find any clues on here
that would make sense with this,
other than just randomly putting it in.
So, what I'm gonna do,
I'm gonna do this the old fashioned way.
I'm gonna write down all of the
different combinations here,
and see if any of them can
make sense to be a word
in any way.
So, we have M, S, F, R, J, A, X, V, E, Z,
we say Z, 'cause we're Canadian,
Y, W, H, C, U, P, K, D, B, R.
Those are all the letters that
are found on this cryptex.
Now to figure out if
any of them make sense.
I mean, I'm really good
at word games, by the way.
Like, word games is my passion,
whether it's Scrabble or Word Bomb,
or whatever it is.
What I noticed here,
is that none of the
endings would make sense,
unless it was like C, K.
The only logical attachment
to that would be the E,
even though I don't know of
anything that has E, C, K.
Like, peck, maybe.
Or Shrek.
E, C, K.
No. And then we're lost.
So, just by looking at this,
this actually gives us a really good clue.
This tells us that the word
that we're looking for,
if at all it is a word,
is not in order.
Other option, is that this
is just random letters
that are found on this letter here.
Or, option B, that this does spell a word,
but that the letters are all jumbled up.
So, how many letters do we have here?
Five letters.
Instead of looking for all
individual letters in here,
what I'm gonna do
is I'm gonna look for
five letter words in here.
And we'll start there.
So, Harry is the first
five letter word here.
So, let's see if we can spell Harry.
Right. Okay, so we have an R.
We have an A.
We have a Y.
We have an H and we have another R.
Did I just solve the puzzle?
I think that would be a little
too good on my first try.
Just to make sure,
are there any other
five letter words here?
There's every.
Is there every there? No.
There's only one E, so that doesn't work.
Shock, S.
That might work actually.
M, A. No, that doesn't work.
All right, let's try Harry out first.
And then R.
Let's try that.
Gotta make sure they're all lined up.
(laughs)
I can't believe that worked.
My half-ass attempt to solve this cryptex
actually bear fruit.
That is wonderful.
Look at that.
How beautiful is that
little piece of brass here
with cryptex?
Oh my God, that is amazing.
That is so cool.
Let's have a look at what
is inside this mystery box.
Wouldn't it be great if I
had an ad pop up right now?
All right, so here we go.
Oh my God.
Oh wow.
It's a brick of mystery cards.
That's amazing.
Maybe another clue to the next treasure.
Kind of really happy that
we got a brick of cards,
to be honest.
And then just a piece
of felt on the bottom.
Make sure this piece of
felt doesn't come off.
There's no ticking things here.
There's no switches anywhere.
A beautiful casing of mystery box cards.
For your enjoyment today,
we'll actually open one of
these and actually show you
what these cards look like.
So, these are in collaboration
with Bad Robot and theory11.
Nice packaging on this.
There we have the Bad Robot logo.
Open up these cards.
Nice little artwork on the inside of that.
And here are the cards.
Oh, this is cool.
All right, I'll get to this in a second.
This is really cool.
Here are the cards.
They feel really nice.
They're actually,
actually a really nice
stock of cards here.
Cool. Here are the faces.
So you got the jokers.
Almost identical jokers.
Really cool ace with
that question mark there.
Oh, cool.
So here are the core cards.
They're all little robots and stuff.
I always appreciate little
custom core cards like that.
And that is it.
Now let's get to the ad cards.
These ad cards are really cool.
So, these are actually anamorphic cards.
And what that means,
is you can set these up,
and it looks like its 3D,
but it's actually 2D.
But we'll do that for you now,
just to give you guys a look.
Let me go get some scissors.
All right.
So, ah, there you go.
So, it's not this way,
but it's actually this way.
So, if I hold it like this,
just at the right angle,
it'll look like I'm
holding a little 3D object,
when actually it looks like this.
So, cool little illusion
that you get with this.
Oh, yeah, look at that.
You gotta find the right angle.
Kind of looks like a little
robot's just standing there.
That's a cool little perspective illusion.
That, my friends, was the
Mystery Box puzzle solve.
All right, guys, that is it.
Hope you enjoyed this video.
Cryptex stuff, I feel like,
kind of feel like Nicholas
Cage in National Treasure,
or like Tom Hanks in Da Vinci Code.
It was really, really cool to decipher.
I'm really happy that we actually got it.
And I'm actually happy that the
clue wasn't like so blatant,
that we had to actually
delve in a little bit.
So, let me know what you
guys thought of this puzzle.
Is this something that you would open,
or would you leave closed forever?
Interesting question.
Might start a debate in the comments.
But like this video, if you did enjoy it.
Subscribe if you're new here.
And we'll see you on the next video.
Peace.
All right, I just called up J.B.,
because we actually got it open,
which is very, very cool.
The cards are really dope, by the way.
Here's J.B. again.
This was a lot of fun to do, man.
This was like actually
surprisingly moderately difficult.
I thought it was gonna
be walk in the park.
- So, the box is not the
hardest part to open,
but there's more than meets
the eye within the box.
- [Chris] What do you mean,
like, the anamorphic puzzles
that come with it and stuff?
- No, no.
That's cool. That's cool.
The inspiration for that,
was that we didn't know what
to do with the two extra cards,
the little ad cards that
you get in the deck,
and we wanted to do
something fun with those.
And, so, it was actually Sebastian Claire,
who's an amazing magician out of France,
who I was at dinner with randomly,
that proposed the idea of
these anamorphic cards.
If you hold them at the right angle,
it looks like a little robot.
But that's not what I'm
talking about at all.
There's actually a secret
puzzle within the box,
within the box, within box.
- [Chris] In the wood box, or in the--
- In the wood box, there's lots of things.
I'll say no more.
- [Chris] Okay, hold on a second.
Stay on the line, J.B.
You're not going anywhere.
- Trying to rip it open?
- [Chris] I have to rip this open?
- [Jonathan] Um, maybe.
- [Chris] All right, let's see.
All right, I'm not gonna show
this portion on the video.
There's a, on the inside of this.
Can you, without,
I'm gonna try to be,
I want to keep the secret of this,
because this is really cool.
Can you tell us a little bit about
what goes on on this,
maybe just a little bit,
so people can get an idea?
- So, well, to be vague,
but to give you the info.
So, it's a mystery box, spoiler alert,
and there are mysteries
outside of the box,
and also inside of the box.
And, so, the mysteries inside of the box,
if you were among the first
to resolve those mysteries
and solve those mysteries,
there was, and still is,
some prizes for those people.
The first person that
got to the finish line,
it was someone in Upstate New York,
again, we've never spoken about this,
besides this video,
I'm telling you right now,
was a box that showed up
in his house at midnight,
in Upstate New York.
And inside this box, at midnight,
with no one around to drop it off,
was a 1930s Underwood Typewriter,
that was bright yellow,
looks really cool.
And inside the roll of the typewriter,
was a note from J.J. to this person.
He was the very first person to resolve
all of the mysteries inside this box.
And on the typewriter note,
it just challenged to him,
I'm paraphrasing J.J.'s words terribly,
but it just challenged
him to use this typewriter
to create more mystery
and wonder in the world.
- [Chris] That is the single coolest thing
I've ever heard in my life.
Like, that's some
straight up Da Vinci Code,
National Treasure shit right there.
- (mumbles) eye on as well,
if you solved the,
Illuminati confirmed.
And you won't get that, spoiler alert,
if you solve the mystery,
or whoever's watching
this solves the mystery.
That was just the first person.
But there are rewards
if you do correctly solve the
challenge hereafter still,
two years later.
- [Chris] All right, cool.
So, I'm glad that we've relieved
some part of the mystery here,
but not all of it.
So, guys, if you guys are
definitely interested it in this,
I'll leave a link below.
You guys can check this out,
or check these cards out individually.
- If you solve it,
there may or may not be things
that show up at your door.
I'm just saying.
- [Chris] What?
Okay, challenge accepted.
Thanks, J.B.
- Peace.
