Leonie's Letter to Ella

The "Beginner Ballet Routine" is crucial to decrypting this letter.

Also, pay close attention to this part of the letter: "Tell her to follow it to the letter without skipping any steps. Also, remind her to add up the total moves (times the position for each move) for every line in the routine."

This is a skip cipher with skipped letters. In a skip cipher, you read certain letters and skip the others. A skip cipher can have one key (e.g. if the key is 3, you would read every 3rd letter), or multiple keys (if the keys are 3, 10, 12, you'd read the 3rd letter, then the 10th letter after that, then the 12th letter after that etc.)

Each line in the "Beginner Ballet Routine" can be translated into a number. These numbers are the keys for the skip cipher.

To get the key (number) for each line of the "Beginner Ballet Routine", for each move (e.g. a tendu), multiply the number of moves times the position the move is done in. For example, "5 tendus * second position" translates to 10 (because 5*2=10).

If there are two moves on a line, do this for both moves, then add them together. For example, if the line says "5 tendus * second position + 1 port de bras * 3rd position" you would get 13 (because (5*2=10)+(1*3=3)= 10+3=13)

You should have 14 numbers (one for each line in the "Beginner Ballet Routine").

Decrypt Leonie's message to Ella using the 14 numbers as keys.

Start at "Hey Ella" ("H" would be the 1st letter, then "e" is the second etc.) Don't count spaces or punctuation.

The first number (corresponding to the first line in the "Beginner Ballet Routine") is 1 (1*1=1). So, read the first letter in Leonie's message (it's "H"). The second number (corresponding to the second line in the beginner ballet routine) is 8 (4*2=8), so read the 8th letter after "H" (the 8th letter after "H" is "o".) Continue doing this until for all 14 numbers until you have decrypted the message.

Decrypted, the letter reads:

"How about valium"

The numbers corresponding to each line of the beginner ballet routine are (starting with Line 1 at the top):

1 = "H"

8 = "o"

1 = "w"

12 = "a"

2 = "b"

10 = "o"

3 = "u"

6 = "t"

13 = "v"

5 = "a"

1 = "l"

6 = "i"

11 = "u"

6 = "m"