Friday, September 22, 2006

Round 4 - The ongoing challenge continues!

Heya folks! It's been quite a while, but now I have a new thinky-pinky task for you.
This time, it's gonna be more or less simple, answering might just take some time.

This time I'm asking for a phrase. This phrase has four words (punctuation not included), and 14 letters, without the spaces. For every letter, there's a hint.
Of course the letters are not going to be mixed up, but anyway, the phrase is in English (no need to use that old greek-schoolbook of yours again) and so it should be quite easy-piecey lemon sqeezy.

1) The First Letter of the main/most famous work of Laurence Sterne (The common name, not the whole title)

2)The Egyptian hieroglyph 'fence' became that letter

3)The second law of thermodynamics treats a nice word which has caused quite some trouble to some scientifics, well the first letter of the laws subject

4)Famous Movie - title includes fish and a girls name...first letter of the girls name

5)The 'law of silence', believed to be particularly respected in Sicily...First letter

6)A kind of hair color (poetic), also the english non-scientific name of a bird...First letter

7)Famous TV-station based in Quatar with a significant logo. Means translated to english 'The Island'...2nd letter of the first word.

8)The stupidest man of the year 2006...First letter of his First name.

9) The Picture on the right shows a detail of a gate-------->
...the First letter of the name of the gate (Happy hunting:-) )

10)The probably most famous epic movie trilogy which now has 6 parts and the biggest merchandise probably ever plus some of the weirdest, nicest, and most fanatic/frantic fans ever seen...First letter.
Nearly done!!!

11)'cDc' is short for a famous group...2 letter of the last word

12)Introversion did a computer game (great, by the way)...first letter of the name of the game

13)The logo of the enterprise Hoyt is an apple. Incidentally, the stuff hoyt makes (at least one model) was used in a movie which is very famous (and believed to be very violent)...The name of the movie is as well one sort of apples...so pick your poison, first letter of the movie(s) or the apples.

14) Finally!!! The name of the site where you can find informations ( I mean: INFORMATION) about UFOs, Rael and the Raelians, Sasquatch, scapulimancy and lots of other weird stuff...also featuring a professor and quite often, the famous Randi...and it's not the wikipedia! First letter of the name of the site (after the www.)

So, you're done! Please post the correct answer sentence as well as your individual solutions:-) Tell me how you liked it. Have fun and cya soon!

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Solutions

Good Morning!
Quizz round three is over! Cool, eh?
So, what was all that about?
First, the question was to decipher. Then, to find the link between the hints, and then, to find the correct answer.

Ok, the patterns used for the question were:
According to some study, it doesn't matter where you put the letters of a word in spelling a word, so I messed up the position of the letters. Example: 'Easy' would have become 'Syea'.
I looked at the result and decided it was too easy. So I used a second pattern: I substituted some letters with numbers and or signs. 'Easy' would have become 'Sy3@'.

But it was still too easy, so I played a bit with duplicating randomly letters, and writing some in uppercase and others in lowercase. So finally 'Easy' might have read something like '5Y3@'.
This was enough pseudo-coding for the question.
Here's the complete translation of my question: (in good english, I made some spelling mistakes as well:-)...on purpose, of course)

Actually, this time I decided to crypt the question.
So, the question asks for a language in way of exxxtinction (read extinction):-):
HINT: Also the name of people, also menaced by extinction.
Easy hints: The first is so distinctive, it's so exclusive, you can't miss it!
Once you got that, it's easy to get the 2nd...think desert.

Still with me? Fine. So lets resume the stuff:
-Language in way of extinction
-Language name = People's name in way of extinction
-Something with a desert. And lot's of funny exclamation marks.
-Something very exclusive.

Ok...to make a long story short: the desert and the exclamation marks were probably the best hints. A short search on google along with a bit of....creative thinking...should have gotten you to a point, where you know that there are a lot of endangered languages and people on this world,
but the right solution(s) are:
The people of the !Kung, !Khoi, !khoikhoi!, San and !Khoisan. And their language...which has basically the same name.
Those people have in common that they were all refered to as 'bushmen' , live in and next to the Kalahari, and that their languages (which differ from !kung, which uses a grammar similar to Bantu, to !Khoisan, which uses an aglutinating grammar) have in common that they include
'Click-sounds'. Those Click-sounds are described in phonetics with the help of exclamation marks, points, and --.
So here are the 'rewards' for the participants:
-Jade +3 for participating
-Stephan +7 for the right solution after the additional hint
-Sami +3 for 'nearly' the right solution before the additional hint, and
-Sami +7 for the right solution after the additional hint and beeing the first to correctly decipher the question. Sami also was not saying that it was too hard, that pays:-)
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I have to go to work now...But this post isn't finished yet. there are some links to come, the red/green scheme for better understanding and much of my knowledge about the San (which was used in a pejorative way, but lacking better descriptions...well..check back tomorrow morning, when the 'News' should be up.
cya:-)

Thursday, September 07, 2006

To keep you bisy: Kwiss #3

Aktua77y, dis mite I cideded 70 KRYPT da kwestion.

50, 7eh noqutie5 5@K s rof a gu7@NaG3 1N awy fo 3XXXtcoitnN:

HINT: olsa 7h3 mena f0 P307pe, sloa M3n@C3D yb nxtoin3C7.

3asY nhits: 'The first is so distinctive, it's so exclusive, you !K a!.N!t !.m--.! it!
Once you got that, it's easy to teg het 2nd...NthIK Desert.

have fun and happy posting:-)