H ey yo Ugu yss olVe me

March 14, 2006 6:38 PM

Attention codebreakers! For a friend: A friend of mine gave me this "riddle". I can't figure it out. Now there is a chance that they are just messing with me and it is complete gibberish. “lwa hy ou wi Tll I di a w h at g ys y”

My [friend's] thoughts so far....
-- I've ruled out anagrams because they are no E's R's or N's, so it's not likely. I was also lead to believe that there were missing characters, again ruling out anagrams.
-- I've ruled out hidden (white font) characters
-- Letter replacement is unlikey because there would be too many one letter words
-- Why is the T capital? I?
-- why are there more than one space between some of the letters? [I don't see any, but that's what she said]
-- They said that it's a LOGICAL answer

My brain is currently too tired to work on this much. Help?

posted by attercoppe to grab bag (32 comments total)

I keep wanting it to be a song lyric - maybe because my mind keeps seeing "till I die" and "I wanna hold you" even though they aren't there. Maybe the e's are all gone and the spacing is all off? Anyway, I'm gonna work on it. I am intrigued.
posted by ORthey at 6:45 PM on March 14, 2006

It sounds like the multiple-spaces-between-letters may be critical (like exact placeholders for missing letters or something), and they may have gotten lost in the cut-and-paste.

Either that, or she meant "0 or 1" spaces....
posted by jozxyqk at 6:59 PM on March 14, 2006

Hm. There's an "always" in there -- a + lwa + ys. The "Tll" makes this rearrange-the-parts exercise seem off-base, though.
posted by redfoxtail at 7:12 PM on March 14, 2006

Just off the top of my head, you can rearrange some of the bits to form words, like "a lwa ys." I don't know what to do with the "Tll," though.
posted by cerebus19 at 7:15 PM on March 14, 2006

Jinx!
posted by cerebus19 at 7:15 PM on March 14, 2006

There is also "you" and "what", and "will" without too much of a stretch, and almost "guys" and "say".
posted by attercoppe at 7:20 PM on March 14, 2006

The "tll" could be combined with the w, h and a to make "what'll".
posted by toddshot at 7:23 PM on March 14, 2006

This is going to be great if it turns out to be something really personal. Or obscene. Or both.
posted by CRM114 at 7:25 PM on March 14, 2006

Also...

Got some more clues on the spacing. Apparently it's supposed to be:

“lwa hy ou   wi Tll  I di a w h  at  g ys     y”

This looks okay in live and regular preview, should come out when posted. Also try this:

lwa-1-hy-1-ou-3-wi-1-Tll-2-I-1-di-1-a-1-w-1-h-2-at-2-g-1-ys-5-y

...where each break is represented by -X-, where X is the number of spaces in the break.

Sorry about that.
posted by attercoppe at 7:31 PM on March 14, 2006

I'm having a hard time explaining what I think may be going on so i'll use another example:

"Hi_my_name_is_LJ". if I rewrite this using every other letter first I get(including blanks):

H_ynm_sL
and then I loop back around and do it again starting with the second letter first(still including blanks):
im_aei_J

altogether it becomes:
H_ynm_sLim_aei_J

but the spaces become important because you still have to count them and there could verywell end up being two spaces next to each other.
posted by darkpony at 7:32 PM on March 14, 2006

oh wow. nevermind.
posted by darkpony at 7:33 PM on March 14, 2006

Argh, I was translocating the letters into numbers (A=1, B=2, &c) but didn't really get anywhere.

I remember there was a similar letter/space sequence in Fallout (or maybe it was Fallout 2). I've been checking the walkthroughs and googling but can't find one that discusses what the letters meant/the right keywords to google it =(
posted by PurplePorpoise at 7:39 PM on March 14, 2006

3 y's and no e's does make it a good candidate for translocation.
posted by darkpony at 7:45 PM on March 14, 2006

I think darkpony's track is worth exploring.

lwa_hy_ou___wi_Tll__I_di_a_w_h__at__g_ys_____y
l_a_h_-_u_-_w_-_...

No, that doesn't look like it's going anywhere.

I'm surprised at how strongly my brain tries to fill it in.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:47 PM on March 14, 2006

What about forming columns? Including spaces there are 46 characters.
posted by tracicle at 7:50 PM on March 14, 2006

/guess

This totally looks like a passage from Microserfs by Douglas Coupland, where the narrator/writer includes a section where specific letters are simply removed from the text. Wondering if it's just the same thing. Can't figure it out, though.
posted by frogan at 8:00 PM on March 14, 2006

From the forum this was originally posted in:

did they say "logical" in all caps like that?
either way, the word "logical" (or the letters in the word) could mean something.

Good point, though no answer yet from the OP. Removing the letters in the word "logical" from the original string doesn't leave anything significant - there's no "c" to remove anyway.
posted by attercoppe at 8:06 PM on March 14, 2006

Well, the letters can be rearranged to form:
"That why I will always dig you"
But I haven't come up with an actual code yet.
posted by syzygy at 8:06 PM on March 14, 2006

The capitol I might mean not to transpose unless it was transposed with a Capitol A but an A would have to be the first letter of the sentence, but that seems reserved for the capitol T.
posted by darkpony at 8:14 PM on March 14, 2006

Is there any important context that might help us solve the riddle? Could there be any extra whitespace before the "lwa" or after the last "y"?
posted by syzygy at 8:21 PM on March 14, 2006

We have 24 letters and 22 spaces. 46 characters in all. Two of them, T and I, are capital... Hm. I've got nothing yet, but this is intriguing.
posted by wanderingmind at 8:42 PM on March 14, 2006

another idea. the spaces counts could equal vowels. there are up to 5 spaces and there are five vowels. meaning one blank space = a, two blank spaces = e. etc.
posted by darkpony at 8:49 PM on March 14, 2006

another idea. the spaces counts could equal vowels. there are up to 5 spaces and there are five vowels. meaning one blank space = a, two blank spaces = e. etc.

If that idea is sound, it implies that actual spaces aren't represented since if you pick any other character to be an actual space, it leaves dubiously long sequences without spaces.
posted by juv3nal at 9:54 PM on March 14, 2006

“lwa hy ou wi Tll I di a w h at g ys y”

Hmm, no characters from the bottom row of a QWERTY. And it seems strange that the used letters are all here at least twice (except o,u,g,s). I was wondering if it could be a phrase typed with hands in the wrong place or something, but didn't get far.
posted by foraneagle2 at 10:11 PM on March 14, 2006

Any sociological information available? Is the friend's friend skilled in logic or math(s)? I'm trying to figure out whether the friend's friend has a strict definition of "logical" or whether it means "ordered" or "makes sense to them".

Is the friend's friend heavily into music, lyrics, chords, or metered poetry? That is, should we be expecting a more literary solution rather than a cipher?
posted by ontic at 10:18 PM on March 14, 2006

I'm inclined to think that it is a cipher, perhaps a translation. The capital T and I make me think so. I is always capitalized alone. T starts the sentence. The lack of e, r, and n is strange, but there are plenty of words that can be made, such as "That is who I", "Thought", "This will I", etc.
Also of note, there are actually two sequences of numbers to look at.
First the number of spaces: 1 1 3 1 2 1 1 1 1 2 2 1 5
Next the grouping of letters: 3 2 2 2 3 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 2 1
I can't help but think that these sequences somehow define the translation of the letters. But I haven't been able to figure anything out other than coming up with random anagrams. And that is not a logical answer.
posted by Roger Dodger at 7:03 AM on March 15, 2006

Well, I've just read new posts on the other forum by the person who originally posted the puzzle. She says she was wrong about the spaces (so apparently they don't matter?) and seems to think the solution is "That's why I will always dig you" (which adds an "s" and an "I"). I've asked her to confirm this with the people she got the puzzle from originally, because if that's it, it breaks the rules (adding letters) and ignores the spaces (where did they come from, especially five in a row? Surely that wasn't accidental). Quite a letdown if it's just a screwed-up attempt at a simple anagram. I'll keep you posted...
posted by attercoppe at 8:25 AM on March 15, 2006

So clues like "its a logical answer" are also bogus and its a simple anagram. Kind of lame, attercoppe.

In any case, syzygy spotted the anagram early on.
posted by vacapinta at 10:30 AM on March 15, 2006

WEAK SAUCE.
posted by juv3nal at 10:43 AM on March 15, 2006

Do I get a check mark for figuring out the anagram? ;-)
posted by syzygy at 1:48 PM on March 15, 2006

vacapinta: Yes, lame.

I've just heard back and that was indeed the answer. A friend was proud of her for working extra to meet a deadline. Yay for that, but a crap puzzle. syzygy gets a check.

Sorry for the excitement over nothing. I hope no one lost any sleep over this.
posted by attercoppe at 5:02 PM on March 15, 2006

Jesus, please take a cluebat to whoever made up this awful "riddle" with missing letters and extraneous useless spaces.
posted by Rhomboid at 11:20 PM on March 15, 2006