Each audio file is a straightforward Morse code message. After decoding each line, you get the following 8 messages:
These “words” don’t look familiar, but with some research solvers may discover that these are in fact chess moves encoded via the Gringmuth notation (sometimes mistakenly called the Uedemann code). The flavor and title hint at radio, chess, and a mention of the year 1945. Each set of moves belongs to a specific game played in the 1945 USA vs. USSR radio match, which was relayed using Gringmuth notation. The entirety of those matches can be found online, for example here.
By finding which matches each set corresponds to, solvers can label the moves with which turn in the match they occured. For example CADATAPO represents the 20th turn (both white’s move and black’s response) of the first game between Botvinnik and Denker. To make things slightly easier on the solvers, moves always come from the first game between two players, and the matches are actually presented in order of the table numbers from the 1945 match.
Moves always come from the first 26 turns of a game—solvers take the turn number and turn them into letters. The full list of moves and the corresponding turns from the appropriate matches is here:
Match | Turns | Alphanumeric translation |
---|---|---|
Botvinnik vs. Denker | 13, 1, 20, 3, 8, 15, 6, 20, 8, 5, 3, 5, 14, 20, 21, 18, 25 | MATCH OF THE CENTURY |
Smyslov vs. Reshevskyr | 7, 1, 13, 5, 20, 8, 18, 5, 5, 2, 12, 1, 3, 11, 5, 9, 7, 8, 20 | GAME THREE BLACK EIGHT |
Boleslavsky vs. Fine | 7, 1, 13, 5, 20, 23, 5, 12, 22, 5, 2, 12, 1, 3, 11, 6, 9, 6, 20, 25, 6, 9, 22, 5 | GAME TWELVE BLACK FIFTY FIVE |
Flohr vs. Horowitz | 7, 1, 13, 5, 6, 9, 22, 5, 23, 8, 9, 20, 5, 20, 23, 5, 14, 20, 25, 6, 15, 21, 18 | GAME FIVE WHITE TWENTY FOUR |
Kotov vs. Kashdan | 7, 1, 13, 5, 19, 9, 24, 2, 12, 1, 3, 11, 5, 9, 7, 8, 20, 5, 5, 14 | GAME SIX BLACK EIGHTEEN |
Bondarevsky vs. Steiner | 7, 1, 13, 5, 15, 14, 5, 2, 12, 1, 3, 11, 20, 8, 9, 18, 20, 25, 19, 5, 22, 5, 14 | GAME ONE BLACK THIRTY SEVEN |
Lilienthal vs. Pinkus | 7, 1, 13, 5, 19, 9, 24, 20, 5, 5, 14, 2, 12, 1, 3, 11, 6, 9, 6, 20, 25, 5, 9, 7, 8, 20 | GAME SIXTEEN BLACK FIFTY EIGHT |
Ragozin vs. Seidman | 3, 15, 14, 19, 15, 14, 1, 14, 20, 3, 25, 20, 15, 1, 14, 15, 20, 8, 5, 18, 7, 1, 13, 5 | CONSONANTCY TO ANOTHER GAME |
Six of the alphanumeric translations reference games, one mentions the “MATCH OF THE CENTURY,” and the last is an instruction: CONSONANTCY TO ANOTHER GAME. The “Match of the Century” is the 1972 chess match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, which was a coup for American chess. The messages are telling solvers to find specific moves from various games of that match. Naturally, solvers should find those moves and encode them using the Gringmuth notation. The moves, in order are:
TAWE LOGA HETA SETA ROGO GALA
Now discard the vowels to solve this as a consonantcy:
TW LG HT ST RG GL
This consonantcy resolves to TWILIGHT STRUGGLE, a board game about the Cold War and a fitting answer for this puzzle.