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We should start a thread where trivial questions could be asked with a quizmaster who relinquishes the quiz once his question has been answered...

PhilW wrote:

LGTrotter wrote:Is it; "the taxidermist never loved his daughter more"?

No, but I'm intrigued to hear your explanation as to why that could have been the answer?

The answer, once known, will be clear and unambiguous (aside from the pun!).

I was just shoehorning in the winner of a six word short story competition into this thread. I know it's seven words. It should of course go; "no taxidermist loved his daughter more".

Seems like time for another clue; SACD are the initials of an author, BUT his Christian name does not begin with an S.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?

Links to where I spent a significant amount of term time as a late teenager.

DRT wrote:Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?

Yes, which should give away the rest of the answer being the title of a story he wrote...

Lot No. 249?

The Sign of The Four?

djewesbury wrote:The Sign of The Four?

The correct story; The ideal answer would have been "The sine of the four", since sine(4)=-0.7568024950..... or in short -0.7568.
Daniel's turn.
(oops, no, wrong thread)

Yes. I get that. But really, Phil…
SACD was a neighbour of my grandfather (REOJ) for a while.

I was confused by this:

PhilW wrote:229° would be the relevant one, but I'm really not sure it will help you to know this, unless you realise something else...

Which is just close enough to 221B that I was trying to figure out that (non-existent) pun.

Well I'm glad we got that cleared up. It would have preyed on my mind.

PhilW’s new signature says “SAWPSBGXWWCPCQHBQZWJZTKRKR”. I have no idea, but if it is an acronym then the ‘QZW’ might be worthy of focus.

jdaw1 wrote:PhilW’s new signature says “SAWPSBGXWWCPCQHBQZWJZTKRKR”. I have no idea, but if it is an acronym then the ‘QZW’ might be worthy of focus.

Nobody seems to have picked up the challenge; perhaps it is too obscure. It is a cryptogram; I will say no more for now, since clues would likely make it too easy, but will reveal the answer early in the new year and replace with something else then, if it is not solved before.

PhilW wrote:

jdaw1 wrote:PhilW’s new signature says “SAWPSBGXWWCPCQHBQZWJZTKRKR”. I have no idea, but if it is an acronym then the ‘QZW’ might be worthy of focus.

Nobody seems to have picked up the challenge; perhaps it is too obscure. It is a cryptogram; I will say no more for now, since clues would likely make it too easy, but will reveal the answer early in the new year and replace with something else then, if it is not solved before.

For anyone interested, this was in fact a Vigenere cipher, which when decoded would have revealed the text "PM key to PhilW on TPF for reward", the key being "Dom Luis I Porto" (all case-insensitive). If decoded, the sender of the first correct answer would have received a bottle of VP from me (a G70 to be precise). The cryptogram was carefully constructed to be difficult but not impossible for users of this forum; ask me about it sometime if you are interested in further details.

PhilW wrote: ↑14:22 Mon 16 Jan 2017

PhilW wrote:The cryptogram was carefully constructed to be difficult but not impossible for users of this forum; ask me about it sometime if you are interested in further details.

I did wonder if it was a cipher like that, but couldn't figure out any way of trying to crack it. Seeing the answer, I suppose it would not have been too wild to guess that PORT might appear in the key, and to just move PORT along to different positions in the key and look at what answer that produced.

With PORT in the correct position in the key, the plaintext would have been "hilw" and "ewar". Even then, if I'd spotted that p went before "hilw" and d went after "ewar", I'd then have found these letters from the key *******IPORTO. Would I ever have figured out the DOM LUIS part? Very doubtful!
Edit: and as I think about it, I would not have easily been able to get the "ewar" text, as I could not be sure of the key length...

Not so easy I think!

The key is of length 13; the ciphertext (cyphertext?) of length 26. Assuming a wide range of plain texts, that might not be crackable even in theory. Letters 1 and 14 are same distance (modulo 26) from each other as in ciphertext. With even a little uncertainty about length of key, did we really have enough information?

And ‘Vigenère’ has an accent.

Edit: absence of repetition defeats Kasiski examination: