A Monday Puzzler: "Beloved Aunt"

[trampledamage]

okay, I think I could solve it now, but I don't have the right tool
and now I think I realize how blatantly obvious Zion has been this whole time

It is possible to do it manually. I did. Which also explains why it took me four tries to actually get the right answer

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Spoiler: Some tools are better than others

You have to have the correct gadget installed and enabled on your tool. Also French or other language gadgets won't help in solving this -- only English ones. Otherwise, you need to do it the hard way.

 

[RoJoHen]

I can't believe how lost I still am.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

And with Laren giving us the latest correct submission, I think it's time to close this contest and put you all out of your misery.

[loads shotgun]


No, only joking. I meant to say, of course, it's time to reveal the answer.


The key is to take the strings of numbers:

94280360968043804309680685847590749029064631

73630630968702679370270206862370290774828306377243 066591

and map them with the numbers on a standard modern telephone keypad, such as the ones you may see on a typical mobile telephone - where each key corresponds to certain letters of the alphabet - 2=abc, 3=def, 4=ghi, 5=jkl, 6=mno, 7=pqrs, 8=tuv, 9=wxyz; and on many phones, 0=space/carriage return and 1=general punctuation. A good way to see this in effect is to type them out on your text message facility on your cellphone if you have one - or just work things out yourself, really.

If you do that, you would get this message:

What do you get if you multiply six by nine?

Send me your answer as a number by private message only.

To which the answer, and the answer to this puzzle, is 54.

Simples.


Oh, and the "Beloved Aunt" reference? Well, "aunt" corresponds to the keystroke sequence 2868, as does another certain word which famously got Larry David in trouble... (Interestingly, the word "bunt" isn't offered on my phone... )


Thanks everyone for your participation and your interest in this thread.

 

[Jadzia]

I look forward to your next puzzler

 

[Laren]

The key is to take the strings of numbers:

94280360968043804309680685847590749029064631

73630630968702679370270206862370290774828306377243 066591

and map them with the numbers on a standard modern telephone keypad, such as the ones you may see on a typical mobile telephone - where each key corresponds to certain letters of the alphabet - 2=abc, 3=def, 4=ghi, 5=jkl, 6=mno, 7=pqrs, 8=tuv, 9=wxyz; and on many phones, 0=space/carriage return and 1=general punctuation. A good way to see this in effect is to type them out on your text message facility on your cellphone if you have one - or just work things out yourself, really.

If you do that, you would get this message:

What do you get if you multiply six by nine?

Send me your answer as a number by private message only.

To which the answer, and the answer to this puzzle, is 54.

Simples.

Except on my phone it reads: Zib dm you heu id you multipl phy aw ohne.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I look forward to your next puzzler

It will be similar but different.

Actually, I've been running through it in my mind and I'm thinking of going for a simpler (i.e. less involving) puzzle along similar lines but which still requires some thinking. Not sure if it might be too simple, though (but one can never really evaluate one's own labours of love in an objective light).

 

[Jadzia]

Except on my phone it reads: Zib dm you heu id you multipl phy aw ohne.

Is that Welsh?

 

[CorporalClegg]

And with Laren giving us the latest correct submission, I think it's time to close this contest and put you all out of your misery.

[loads shotgun]


No, only joking. I meant to say, of course, it's time to reveal the answer.


The key is to take the strings of numbers:

94280360968043804309680685847590749029064631

73630630968702679370270206862370290774828306377243 066591

and map them with the numbers on a standard modern telephone keypad, such as the ones you may see on a typical mobile telephone - where each key corresponds to certain letters of the alphabet - 2=abc, 3=def, 4=ghi, 5=jkl, 6=mno, 7=pqrs, 8=tuv, 9=wxyz; and on many phones, 0=space/carriage return and 1=general punctuation. A good way to see this in effect is to type them out on your text message facility on your cellphone if you have one - or just work things out yourself, really.

If you do that, you would get this message:

What do you get if you multiply six by nine?

Send me your answer as a number by private message only.

To which the answer, and the answer to this puzzle, is 54.

Simples.


Oh, and the "Beloved Aunt" reference? Well, "aunt" corresponds to the keystroke sequence 2868, as does another certain word which famously got Larry David in trouble... (Interestingly, the word "bunt" isn't offered on my phone... )


Thanks everyone for your participation and your interest in this thread.

So it's my utter abhorrence to cell phones (And the fact I don't own one.) that obstructed my ability to solve the puzzle?

Yeah. That's it.

 

[Laren]

Except on my phone it reads: Zib dm you heu id you multipl phy aw ohne.

Is that Welsh?

No, gibberish. My phone just doesn't speak English.

But figuring it out on my own was almost fun. Almost.

 

[backstept]

your recent choice of avatar is brilliant, Z

I was headed down the right path but didn't take it far enough . . . I went as far as mapping out the 3 or 4 letters per key below all the numbers, but didn't take the time to eliminate the combinations that weren't words
also my phone has a qwerty keypad so that was no help

 

[RevdKathy]

And as I said, it doesn't work on Sony Ericsson phones, where the 0 key just gives you 0. To get the space you have to hit the # key.

 

[Trekker4747]

My contempt and hate for "texting" did me in. Also the fact that my phone doesn't "guess" words for you. It's all "Fuck you, man. You're on your own!"

Now, reading through the thread many of the clues make sense now -in hindsight- and it's amazing to me that I didn't think to use a phone's keypad to "solve" the puzzle. But, as I said, without spaces a substitution cypher is hard -if not impossible- to do without spaces.

And the "official" hints. Anything familiar about the numbers? Anything unusual/stand out in the them in the end? "Lateral thinking" Yeah. I got no idea how many of those "clues" make any sense, even in hindsight.

Holdfasts and I's exchange? Ok, yeah that's funny.

As I said earlier, sod this.

 

[trampledamage]

I did it manually which lead me to think the puzzle was asking you to mulitply 749 by 6463 because I couldn't see that 749 was six! It was only when Holdfast subsituted the "nine" for "seven" that I realised my mistake

Now, reading through the thread many of the clues make sense now -in hindsight- and it's amazing to me that I didn't think to use a phone's keypad to "solve" the puzzle. But, as I said, without spaces a substitution cypher is hard -if not impossible- to do without spaces.

Well the key to this substitution cipher was to spot that zeroes were the spaces.

And the "official" hints. Anything familiar about the numbers? Anything unusual/stand out in the them in the end? "Lateral thinking" Yeah. I got no idea how many of those "clues" make any sense, even in hindsight.

I agree in that there's nothing particular to see in the numbers themselves, except that each line ends with a one. That could cause you to think "hmm, maybe the one is punctuation". For me, it was Zion's amusement at Jadzia's comment about putting the numbers into her remote control that made me think of a telephone's keypad.


Nice puzzle, Zion - it's certainly generated the most interest of any of the puzzles we've had, even if that was mostly people cursing your name

 

[Trekker4747]

I did it manually which lead me to think the puzzle was asking you to mulitply 749 by 6463 because I couldn't see that 749 was six! It was only when Holdfast subsituted the "nine" for "seven" that I realised my mistake

Now, reading through the thread many of the clues make sense now -in hindsight- and it's amazing to me that I didn't think to use a phone's keypad to "solve" the puzzle. But, as I said, without spaces a substitution cypher is hard -if not impossible- to do without spaces.

Well the key to this substitution cipher was to spot that zeroes were the spaces.

And the "official" hints. Anything familiar about the numbers? Anything unusual/stand out in the them in the end? "Lateral thinking" Yeah. I got no idea how many of those "clues" make any sense, even in hindsight.

I agree in that there's nothing particular to see in the numbers themselves, except that each line ends with a one. That could cause you to think "hmm, maybe the one is punctuation". For me, it was Zion's amusement at Jadzia's comment about putting the numbers into her remote control that made me think of a telephone's keypad.


Nice puzzle, Zion - it's certainly generated the most interest of any of the puzzles we've had, even if that was mostly people cursing your name

Well, as I said, I don't text. I hate it. Mostly because, yeah, my phone doesn't "guess the words" for you and typing on it is tedious because you have like an instant to land on the letter you want when you're typing the letters because if you pause for anything more than a nanosecond the cursor moves to the next letter-space.

 

[trampledamage]

Well ordinary land-line telephones have the letters corresponding to the numbers too. So businesses can have those numbers that say 1-800-FIXIT or whatever. It was my landline phone that I copied the letter-number key from.

 

[Trekker4747]

Well ordinary land-line telephones have the letters corresponding to the numbers too. So businesses can have those numbers that say 1-800-FIXIT or whatever. It was my landline phone that I copied the letter-number key from.

See, it never occured to me to do this as doing an aplhabetic substitution is a heck of a lot easier to do with spaces. And, well, there's no reason I can think of to see "0" as being a "space."

I guess I just wasn't thinking "laterally" enough.

 

[Holdfast]

My contempt and hate for "texting" did me in. Also the fact that my phone doesn't "guess" words for you. It's all "Fuck you, man. You're on your own!"

I actually translated it manually using my landline handset as a key (which just happened to be sitting next to my laptop, which is what inspired me). My own cellphone is a PDA phone, so I type texts out on an on-screen keyboard - no help there!

You know, weirdly enough, an earlier attempt of mine tried to use area codes, thinking there might be a message in the initials of the states. So I guess my mind was already thinking "phone" before I saw the telephone next to me which led everything to fall into place.

Holdfasts and I's exchange? Ok, yeah that's funny.

Probably one of the best examples of unintentional humour I've read.

I did it manually which lead me to think the puzzle was asking you to mulitply 749 by 6463 because I couldn't see that 749 was six! It was only when Holdfast subsituted the "nine" for "seven" that I realised my mistake

I'm just one big spoiler.

 

[trampledamage]

Well ordinary land-line telephones have the letters corresponding to the numbers too. So businesses can have those numbers that say 1-800-FIXIT or whatever. It was my landline phone that I copied the letter-number key from.

See, it never occured to me to do this as doing an aplhabetic substitution is a heck of a lot easier to do with spaces. And, well, there's no reason I can think of to see "0" as being a "space."

I guess I just wasn't thinking "laterally" enough.

That's the trouble with lateral puzzles. It requires a "click" in your thinking where you suddenly get it. If you don't get the click then it's just a string of meaningless numbers. And it is really difficult to offer hints that mean anything without completely giving the game away.

You'll see - next puzzle you'll read it and know straight away what the trick is and the rest of us will be stuck at "Wuh?"

 

[Trekker4747]

I'm just one big spoiler.

Yeah. We'll go with that.