The Trouble Code

Timmy T. Turkey was enjoying a perfectly ordinary afternoon in Featherfield Forest. He was practicing his victory strut, fluffing his tail feathers, and trying to impress exactly zero creatures in particular. That was when his featherphone began to buzz. Hard.

Timmy tapped the screen.  A super gobbled message popped up.  It was from his best friend Gizmo the Gobbler, the smartest turkey in the tri-county area and inventor of the world’s first corn-powered communicator.  Timmy’s wattle drooped.  He recognized that scrambled jumble instantly.

The Trouble Code!

He and Gizmo had invented it years ago during a particularly boring grain-storage inspection.

The rules were simple but sneaky:

1. For the first letter in the phrase, shift it forward 1 place in the alphabet
2. For the second letter in the phrase, shift it forward 2 places
3. For the third letter in the phrase, shift it forward 3 places
4. For the nth letter in the phrase, shift it forward n places
5. Just wrap around any letters that go past Z, meaning moving Z forward one letter would result in A
6. Repeat steps 1-5 in the sequence as many times as necessary until the scrambled message resolves into the real word

Timmy gulped.  If Gizmo had used the Trouble Code, then this wasn’t just a dropped corn kernel or a malfunctioning featherphone.

This was serious!  Timmy pulled out his notes to explain the code to the younger turkeys helping him decode messages.

Suppose you receive the scrambled letters AKLF

First pass:

• A + 1 = B
• K + 2 = M
• L + 3 = O
• F + 4 = J

Result: BMOJ

Second pass (repeating the same shifts):

• B + 1 = C
• M + 2 = O
• O + 3 = R
• J + 4 = N

Result: CORN

See? By repeating the shifts, the scrambled letters eventually reveal the real word.

Timmy’s featherphone is displaying Gizmo’s scrambled message HXBTIMMYAY

How is his name in the jumbled message itself?
What is Gizmo possibly desperately trying to tell you?