The Crown of Ed the Undying/Cartouches

When wearing The Crown of Ed the Undying, while adventuring in a randomly selected location, which changes for each character at rollover, a cartouche containing three hieroglyphs will appear after every combat. All three-hieroglyph combinations represent a 1x3 column from the following grid.

This grid may be cryptanalyzed as a substitution cipher, reading left to right, then top to bottom, with the string "TUQCXUBTVQ DMQVBVUIRV DCCVQGGWHA DKCOMCVQGZ OVQQVGIKOH UQKQGIOKBB JHUZDTVGBG WLLGXVBXVO CBXZGTGTKL ZQUDUQBXKO" to yield the phrase "hand wash only no soap cold dont tumble dry dont iron not permanent press kmail hot stuff two swords with the final answer".

Players old enough to remember clothing labels may recall that many appeared with iconic symbols resembling hieroglyphs, intended to pictographically represent "hand wash", "cold water", "tumble dry", and "do not iron", but usually they utterly failed to convey the intended meaning. A visual guide is available at http://thelaundrycenter.com/blog/laundry-care-symbols-demystified-wash-day-hieroglyphics-easy/ .

Clopedion (#1540217) was the first to correctly arrange the ten vertical strips of ten hieroglyphs in the correct order, solve the substitution cipher, and discover the final answer, reading diagonally from top left to bottom right: HYDROPOWER. The two swords sent with the message were, for the record, a ridiculously huge sword and a tiny ninja sword. This step required construction of a custom cryptanalysis program employing simulated annealing. The reward for completing the puzzle was the addition of the fish ornament to the Crown, which allows the wearer to adventure underwater.

Log from Blammo (#1909188) was the first to correctly assemble the three-hieroglyph cartouches into the ten vertical strips of ten hieroglyphs each.

The 80 cartouches were assembled by a community effort, in Kingdom of Loathing forum thread 214868.