Cryptic Writing, Crack the Case, and Burning the Midnight Oil all fulfill very similar roles: actionlessly turning cards into resources.

Of the three, Crack the Case has the highest resource potential and the ability to support your allies, at the cost of not being always available when you need it. Burning the Midnight Oil is more reliable and only asks that you be able to make a basic investigate action, which any Seeker should be able to do. Where does that leave Cryptic Writings?

Cryptic Writings will far less reliably give resources actionlessly (especially at lower XP), but it does have icons. This means if you don't need the resources, you can simply treat it as a skill card , and it makes for good Crystallizer of Dreams fodder for Ursula and Trish. With a bit of XP, seekers will draw far more cards on their turns than during Upkeep so its reliability in coughing up resources will improve. It also has a slight edge in speed over Crack the Case or Burning the Midnight Oil it'll due to not having to wait for the right timing, again assuming you can reliably draw it on your turn.

If you're running Higher Education, you'll most likely be looking at one or both of the other cards. If you're running a heavy card draw or cycle engine, Cryptic Writings could merit a second glance, although most likely Astounding Revelation would be all the resource you need unless you're hoarding cash for some reason or have really good resource sinks not named Higher Education.

EDIT: I was wrong about that, see the comments below. I leave the review still unaltered.

I wonder, if the first bullet point of the FAQs on this site is still relevant, or if it had been ruled otherwise in the mean time. It reads:

Q: Can skill icons be committed to a resource skill test as triggered by Money Talks? A: It appears that icons can be committed to any skill test, regardless of which skill is being tested, and regardless of whether or not a skill is even being tested whatsoever. From the RR, Skill Test Timing, ST2: "An appropriate skill icon is either one that matches the skill being tested, or a wild icon. The investigator performing this test gets +1 to his or her skill value during this test for each appropriate skill icon that is committed to this test."

This reason seems to make RAW sense and the RR has not been altered, however there is a paragraph in recent versions of the FAQ, added in 'Game Play', point 1.9 and quoted in the online version of the RR on ArkhamDB, which in my opinion absolutely contradicts it:
A Wild (?) skill icon on a player card may be used to match any other skill icon for the purposes of both card abilities and counting how many matching icons are committed to a skill test. When using Wild icons for the purpose of resolving a card ability, a player must state which icon the Wild is matching at the time the card is used.

Wild icons committed to a skill test are considered "matching" icons for the purposes of card abilities. (Bold emphasise mine).

How could you state the wild matching a "resource icon", as there clearly is not such a thing in the game? And if you state it to be any other icon, it ceases to be a matching icon. It sounds to me, this paragraph had been added to address the weird situation of wilds "matching" a resource test. But then, the ST2 definition probably should have been reworded as well?

These new Tatort cards seem to be pretty strong for sure if they are released like currently perceived in the pre-release teaser over on fantasyflightgames.com. Honestly, this card adds a whole new dimension to the Relic Hunter. Relic Hunter does not take up deck space, so adding this card and Relic Hunter will give a Mystic a total of 5 slots usable as arcane- or accessory slot as the mystic needs it. With this the Mystics who want to wield the Enchanted Blade like Diana Stanley or Akachi Onyele can do so, you can have 3 active spells at the same time, 1 fight, one clue, one evade. The possibilities are huge and up to this point you had to give up hand slots for cards like Sign Magick to gain just 1 arcane slot, now you can more than double these slots, if required, by combining a permant and a tarot card. It is a 12 XP expansion to a Mystic though, but XP well spent in the right situation I assume.

This card obviously cries out Tommy Muldoon for sure. It might be so obvious actually that it might not even be worth writing this review in the first place. Sure +1 health and sanity is a nice thing for a couple of allies that do something when placing a damage on it like Agency Backup or the good old improved Beat Cop but with Tommy all those allies net up to +2 Becky bullets or cash, so I would say auto include for Tommy. Improves the quality of every asset with health and sanity though, so this works with Key of Ys or Guardian Angel or also Leather Coat and Cherished Keepsake. Since this is a pre-release review, this might change, but otherwise I see some potential using the tarot slot in a new way.

Here are some combo for this card what I think. Note that this card only works with symbol (, , , , , , , ). If you think combos with /, you may consider Sun/Moon of Favor. Additionally, you always trigger the condition of this card by Sun/Moon of Favor.

• General usage

  • return important skill card at failure test, which is exactly same as Try and Try Again
  • return over-commited skill card, especially at .
  • commit if a skill test would be failed by 1~3, which is similar as play Lucky!. Note that you cannot prepair the highest Numeric token such as -4 in normal difficulty, so that this card is less robust than Lucky.
  • commit a skill card at success test to gain bonus of the skill card.

• Card-specific usage (except signature/investigator)

  • commit Beloved for . (but, covanent or sun favor is more good in general)
  • commit Take Heart, Predestined for failure test
  • commit Seal of the Elder Sign to convert failure test into success test (I'm not sure but may work)
  • commit Defiance(2) to ignore symbol. (I'm not sure, but Defiance(2) works, but Defiance(0) doesn't)
  • return Unrelenting, Signum Crucis; both cards are already affected before return.
  • commit Unrelenting to draw 2 cards, avoiding token sealing effect.

• Investigator-specific usage
  • Stella: commit Neither Rain nor Snow at , to avoid terrible effect of failure. (encounter test, attack to the enemy engaged with another investigator ...)
  • Minh: commit any skill card at ; then, return just commited skill card by effect.
  • Amanda: return skill card beneath her; then, recycle that skill card for next round.
  • Silas: commit skill card; then, return just commited skill card by his ability. Definance(2) may be a good target for this.

I think there are more combo in world, and I'll add if I find more :)