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Re: Astronaut IQ is an anagram for Quarante Trois, which is french for 43.
Jacques and Jean are there to indicate it's a French word. "Prime suspect" says it's a prime number. And the "he was mixed up" and "could not be an astronaut" says it's an anagram.

Pretty good summary Obo!

You missed a couple of minor points, so here's the summary I put together.

Clue 1: Re: Astronaut IQ

As I said, you could solve the riddle on just this clue alone. So how? We know the answer is a number. If you made the jump, as hinted at in Clue #3 “mixed up” that the clue is actually an anagram, then you still have some work to do. Based on the letters it is unlikely to be English, since no reasonable numbers have a “Q” in them. If you made the next jump, as hinted at in Clue #2 and #3 and tried French, then you may have figured out that the clue is in fact an anagram of Quarante Trois, or 43.

Clue 2: My good friend Jacques said there is a prime suspect

Apart from supporting the number 43 since it is a Prime number, the clue has exactly 43 letters in it.

Clue 3: Jean said he was mixed up, he could not be an astronaut

This clue also has 43 letters in it, and was meant to sway the thought that the number actually referred to a number that would be a reasonable astronaut’s IQ.


I hope you all had fun with this. What did you think?

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Dr. Golga Bolg
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Section 2 - (Former) Director
What am I playing now?: The waiting game

Unfortunately, some of us don't think in French and I for one certainly can't spell in French. One would normally expect that with everything else being in English, so would the answer be. Having said that, it is clever. I would suggest though, that if you were to do something similar, you should make a suggestion in the first clue as to the language of the answer (after all some languages can have very funny spellings and so the possibility of any language with an anagram question is rather unfair!!)

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Wow, nice one Obo !

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Flyoc,
Farm with attitude.

Further proof that speakers of English as a primary language (especially us Yanks) do not consider other languages relevant to much of anything.

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"Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides." - Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Actually, if you dom't buck up soon, I'll request that this thread get locked or purged...talk about draggin things out.

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Dalaran: Arindel - Frost Mage (Mining/Alchemy)
Dalaran: Roran - Paladin (Weaponsmith/Blacksmith)
Dalaran: Baine - Rogue

Urrgh!

_________________
--The Hermit

I explained it 4 posts up from your post. Did I misunderstand you?

_________________
Dr. Golga Bolg
SWTOR - Golga
Rift - Gnarlwood: Golgar Golgantua Golgate - Retired
WoW - Dalaran: Bolg Golga Virrok All Retired
SWG - Golga Bolg - Doctor (Resident) Retired
Eve - Edge Finn - Limbo
Section 2 - (Former) Director
What am I playing now?: The waiting game

Golga,
No, I think both posts just were typed at the same time.

_________________
--The Hermit

There wasn't nothing there when I wrote this and several replies have been inserted prior to mine (system slowdown).

After reviewing the logic for the first clue, there is no way this side of time I would have gotten that. Not to mention there are plenty of other languages other than english (Yak can provide you with an exact count).

Not to mention, what happend to the colon in your original clue?

Probably has more to do with this type of riddle where there are intrinsic rationale's people are expected to know.

That being said, it was a very clever riddle and you should post that out to some others to see if they can get the answer.

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Dalaran: Arindel - Frost Mage (Mining/Alchemy)
Dalaran: Roran - Paladin (Weaponsmith/Blacksmith)
Dalaran: Baine - Rogue

Yep, good job. I totally should have seen the French connection thing, though I got hung up on the Astronaut part...

A big part of my Masters Degree is in Cryptanalysis (Code Breaking) and Cryptology (Code Making), so I love these types of riddles. This was definately a Da Vinci Code type of one... I only solved 1 of them that was in the orignal book.

We had a really cool class (slides here: http://ece.gmu.edu/courses/ECE543/viewgraphs.htm, check out Lecture 6 and 7) on code-breaking. One of the bonus homework assignments was to crack 5 codes (each about 100 characters long)... some were anagrams, some were substitution ciphers, one was a really funky mix (didn't get that one), and one used the German Enigma cipher (with the first two letters being "ZU" meaning "TO:"). I wrote programs to solve them all, and used some cool dictionary-based lookups... fun stuff (though I needed a few million years to crack the hardest one.. so didn't get that).

Anywho, I like this kinda stuff, but not in French. Tricky, though more context in the initial clue would have helped a bit. Got any more?

There are between 3k and 8k languages in the world (depending on if you count dialects). 6000 languages (and registered dialects) are listed as spoken currently by living people. 3000 of them are spoken by less that 10k people, and only 1000 langs+dialects are spoken in more than one country.

10 languages are spoken by half of the world's population:

1. Mandarin 885 million speakers
2. Spanish 332 million speakers
3. English 322 million speakers
4. Bengali 189 million speakers
5. Hindi 182 million speakers
6. Portuguese 170 million speakers
6. Russian 170 million speakers
8. Japanese 125 million speakers
9. German 98 million speakers
10. Wu 77 million speakers

There are an additional 687 registered programming languages: http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/ , though most of these are (hopefully) not spoken by humans.

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--The Hermit

PS, haven't slept in two days, so sorry if I'm babbling. I love Starbucks.

_________________
--The Hermit

::carefully pads all sharp objects within Yak's reach, studiously putting a cork on all his forks::

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Liro
"The english language is not a wedding gown, it doesn't get better the more lace you add. It is instead a thong. Less is more." From /.
I need to remind myself of this regularly.

I took at look at those slides. I understood it for a bit, but after a while I started losing the context. I'm sure it's a bunch easier when someone is explaining it to you. I have no real experience in Cryptology.



Not yet. I'll think on it a bit, I have something brewing, but naturally I don't want it to work the same way as this riddle did.



Hehe, thanks for the chuckle.



Good question.....I guess I mistyped it when I copied the clues for the summary. My bad.

There was one final clue I neglected to mention, although it only really would have applied if you read the Da Vinci Code. In the book the character who creates the anagram codes is a Frenchman, but the codes are in English.

_________________
Dr. Golga Bolg
SWTOR - Golga
Rift - Gnarlwood: Golgar Golgantua Golgate - Retired
WoW - Dalaran: Bolg Golga Virrok All Retired
SWG - Golga Bolg - Doctor (Resident) Retired
Eve - Edge Finn - Limbo
Section 2 - (Former) Director
What am I playing now?: The waiting game

Enlish is spoken in the US UK Canada and Australia and has only 322 million speakers? Sounds fishy to me. Not to mention that so many people can speak it as second language.

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"Chatfield, I think there's something wrong with our bloody ships." Admiral David Beatty, upon watching the battlecruiser Queen Mary explode at the battle of Jutland.

My name is Tobias Smith and I approved this post.

They speak English in the UK? I never understand half of that gobbly-gook. And what about Southerners?

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--The Hermit

We speak american [that's what the brits say ]

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Dalaran: Arindel - Frost Mage (Mining/Alchemy)
Dalaran: Roran - Paladin (Weaponsmith/Blacksmith)
Dalaran: Baine - Rogue

Oddly I din't see french in the top ten list of languages.

I could write something in Greenlandic and see how long time it would take you to translate it.

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1st Feb 2008

Who'd have thought it?!

I have a suspition that this data is only primary languages (bear in mind that half of Canada speak french as a primary language). If you redefine a language as one that is singularly understandable by every speaker of that language (this defines dialect, if sufficiently different, as a different language but exculdes accents as a cause of not understanding) and allow for second and third etc languages, I think you'll find that English is the most commonly used language in the world. Despite one fifth of the worlds population speaking chinese there are so many different dialects and one is indistinguishable from the next.

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
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Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

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Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
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Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

Watch it, bub.



Nothing odd about that. It's a dying language.

_________________
"Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides." - Thomas Paine, Common Sense

There many french speaking and non french speaking people who would object with you there.

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

I find french an interesting language, and not for any linguistic reason. (I am pretty bad at languages)

However I find it interesting, that probably more than any other language, french has a national institute whose purpose is to "protect" the its' purity.

Article

Another example is the word e-mail, but I can't find the article right now.

Oddly, French Canadians are even more obstinate about maintaining the purity of the French Language. Presumably this is due to their concern of losing their "distinct society" within a primarily english canada. Quebeckers don't use a lot of Anglo words common to the French spoken in france. Rather they have laws banning advertising primarily in english. Another Economist Article.

_________________
Dr. Golga Bolg
SWTOR - Golga
Rift - Gnarlwood: Golgar Golgantua Golgate - Retired
WoW - Dalaran: Bolg Golga Virrok All Retired
SWG - Golga Bolg - Doctor (Resident) Retired
Eve - Edge Finn - Limbo
Section 2 - (Former) Director
What am I playing now?: The waiting game

Man, ya'll ought to know me enough by now to know that was a tongue in cheek jab at the Frenchies.

_________________
"Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides." - Thomas Paine, Common Sense

That's because french is #11 with 70 million people who speak french as their mother tongue. Count the people living in countries which have french as an official language and you're up to 220 million.

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"It's sort of a philosophical question...if a tissue fails to modify a skill that doesn't exist, and no one is around, will any devs hear you screaming?"

One more interesting fact: English is not the official language in USA, because USA has no official language. However, 27 of the state governments use english as their official language.

Most of you probably know this already, being americans and all, but I found it interesting in the view of a european.

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"It's sort of a philosophical question...if a tissue fails to modify a skill that doesn't exist, and no one is around, will any devs hear you screaming?"

http://darthno.ytmnd.com/

I got it immediately.

_________________
"Chatfield, I think there's something wrong with our bloody ships." Admiral David Beatty, upon watching the battlecruiser Queen Mary explode at the battle of Jutland.

My name is Tobias Smith and I approved this post.