Re: Short stories
Posted: 20:45 Wed 17 Dec 2014
We should start a thread where trivial questions could be asked with a quizmaster who relinquishes the quiz once his question has been answered...
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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".PhilW wrote:No, but I'm intrigued to hear your explanation as to why that could have been the answer?LGTrotter wrote:Is it; "the taxidermist never loved his daughter more"?
The answer, once known, will be clear and unambiguous (aside from the pun!).
Yes, which should give away the rest of the answer being the title of a story he wrote...DRT wrote:Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?
The correct story; The ideal answer would have been "The sine of the four", since sine(4)=-0.7568024950..... or in short -0.7568.djewesbury wrote:The Sign of The Four?
Which is just close enough to 221B that I was trying to figure out that (non-existent) pun.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...
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.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.
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: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.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.
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.
Code: Select all
SAWPSBGXWWCPC
QHBQZWJZTKRKR