CiSRA Puzzle Competition 2013 - Solutions

4E. Flags

The puzzle reconstructed from the pieces scattered across Group 4 looks like this:

solution image

The presence of punctuation and the speech bubble indicate that each set of flags probably corresponds to a letter or word. The first step is to identify the flags. The associated countries are listed here with the number of copies of each flag:

2 United Kingdom

1 South Korea

3 France

1 Malaysia

4 Sweden

4 Hungary

4 Greece

3 Thailand

3 The Netherlands

3 Nepal

4 Albania

4 Indonesia

4 Italy

4 Spain

5 Malta

1 Laos

3 Germany

3 Finland

3 Somalia

4 Albania

The intuitive leap here is to realise that the numbers of flags should be said in the language of each country. Looking up lists of numbers in the various languages gives the following correspondences:

2 United Kingdom TWO

1 South Korea HANA

3 France TROIS

1 Malaysia SATU

4 Sweden FYRA

4 Hungary NEGY

4 Greece TESSERA

3 Thailand SAM

3 The Netherlands DRIE

3 Nepal TIN

4 Albania KATËR

4 Indonesia EMPAT

4 Italy QUATTRO

4 Spain CUATRO

5 Malta HAMSA

1 Laos NEUNG

3 Germany DREI

3 Finland KOLME

3 Somalia SADDEX

4 Albania KATËR

The above intuitive leap is hinted at by the speech bubble and the sketch of linguist Noam Chomsky (also made to somewhat resemble author J. R. R. Tolkien, also a linguist).

A common step in puzzles when presented with a word and a number is to index the number into the word to get a letter. In this case, the word and the number are the same. Doing that here, we get a message:

2 United Kingdom TWO W

1 South Korea HANA H

3 France TROIS O

1 Malaysia SATU S

4 Sweden FYRA A

4 Hungary NEGY Y

4 Greece TESSERA S

3 Thailand SAM M

3 The Netherlands DRIE I

3 Nepal TIN N

4 Albania KATËR Ë

4 Indonesia EMPAT A

4 Italy QUATTRO T

4 Spain CUATRO T

5 Malta HAMSA A

1 Laos NEUNG N

3 Germany DREI E

3 Finland KOLME L

3 Somalia SADDEX D

4 Albania KATËR Ë

Putting back the punctuation, we have:

WHO SAYS: "MINË ATTA NELDË"?

These three words are the numbers one, two, and three in the language Quenya, created by J. R. R. Tolkien for the race of Elves. The answer is ELVES. We also accepted ELF, HIGHELVES, and QUENYA.

Unfortunately, my Lord of the Rings fan club card is very likely in jeopardy, as I quite forgot (and didn't find with a Google search) several equally valid answers, such as ELDAR, NOLDOR, or QUENYANS (which is certainly a more grammatically correct answer than QUENYA). Our apologies to any teams who were frustrated by these answers not being accepted.

Puzzle design notes:

This puzzle was created as a hard "intuitive leap" style puzzle.

I was pondering the common puzzle step of getting a letter by using a number to index into a word. I thought it would be cool to do a puzzle where the number is also the word. It proved quite tricky, as an index N into the word for N in most languages gives a valid letter only for the numbers 1 to 4 or 5 in most cases (the Albanian number fourteen katërmbëdhjetë actually works and provides a useful ë, but I thought showing fourteen Albanian flags would be unlikely to assist solvers in reaching the correct intuitive leap).

There was some painstaking cross-checking and test solver feedback to ensure all the number words I used had canonical spellings or English transliterations. I hope I didn't miss anything.

The punctuation, speech bubble, and sketch of Chomsky/Tolkien were added after feedback from test solvers that the leap from flags to languages was too tenuous. The sketch was originally intended to be more obviously Chomsky as I didn't want to hint at Tolkien too strongly, but I must have had Tolkien on my mind as it ended up roughly half-way between the two.