How It All Goes Down
- The mirror-image poem actually says: "An ancient word of wisdom frees this scroll…and helps us keep her scatter'd family whole…a headstone praised by Templars is the key…and Atbash will reveal the truth to thee."
- Langdon, ever the nerd, loves that the poem was written in iambic pentameter.
- It's also symbolically important that it was written in English, the "pura lingua".
- Atbash refers to the Atbash Cipher, which is a well-known "basic rotational substitution scheme."
- The scholars are stumped. They obviously need to find this headstone, but they don't even know where to begin.
- Sophie is exhausted, and worried. She's finally catching on that her grandfather never made anything simple—this puzzle would have more to it than what they already see.