Inquisitor 1664: Codenames by Phi

22 comments on “Inquisitor 1664: Codenames by Phi”

1. Thanks to HG and Phi. I always enjoy Phi’s puzzles. This looked as though it might be horribly tricky since the preamble seemed to allow the possibility that a different pair of names might have been used to encode each shaded answer. But in due course it became clear (although I remember GOSS gave me some trouble) that the encodings were consistent and that the names had eight letters just like the ROSALIND/GANYMEDE example. ESTRAGON and VLADIMIR soon emerged from a little staring, and I didn’t need to consult the play for the rest. Except for not remembering whether it was POZZO or POZZI, which made no difference to the grid, but one likes to be sure …

2. Eh?

3. Typo in the above: the encoded version of 29ac should be “VIAL”.

   A very neat puzzle which I’m pleased I managed to solve without any hints at all!  Much nicer than last week.

   My solution

4. This was an excellent puzzle, with an original design and with an endgame that exceeded the expectations I had of it after reading the preamble.

   I solved only four of the eight special clues withut further help and got going on the endgame by working on the samples of plain text and encoded text that I had. I could then deduce a couple of the missing letters and thereby solved RATS and GOSS, leaving two to get (GONE and ETON).

   I managed to collect 6 letters of plain text and 7 of encoded text, and, knowing also that both A nd O were encoded as I, that was enough for me to ‘see’ VLADIMIR first and ESTRAGON almost immediately afterwards. GONE and ETON followed.

   The last bit of fun was to find the three other names, and I liked in particular the way that LUCKY was encoded as LUCKY. POZZO appearing as PIZZI was neat too, explaining why PIZZICATO was in the grid.

   Thanks to Phi and HolyGhost.

5. Yes, fantastic puzzle, one of the best. I thought for a while one of the words in the key was sure to be Rosetta, but that was my only false step throughout.

6. GB @3: Thanks for alerting me to the typo – now fixed.

7. Yes, an enjoyable solve, with only a couple of problems.  The first was the unindicated use of an acronym (MIRV) for one of the coded versions of the thematic clues; the other was the fact that the letter i could code either as a or as o, as Vladimir has two i’s.   Once that was resolved, the rest of the endgame was straightforward.

8. #7:I agree that MIRV was a bit of a cheat!  Probably the best that could be done under the circumstances, though.

   “The other was the fact that the letter i could code either as a or as o, as Vladimir has two i’s”.

   That would have only been the case if the code was VLADIMIR to ESTRAGON, rather than ESTRAGON to VLADIMIR.  I agree that having two letters coding as the same letter is non-standard in substitution ciphers (because they normally have to be decoded); but in this case, the setter neatly indicated that something like this was happening by giving ROSALIND to GANYMEDE as the example, where I and D both encode as E.  So I think it was fair to solvers.

9. You got slightly ahead of me: there’s a setter’s blog at:

   http://phionline.net.nz/setters-blogs/codenames/

10. I shared David Langford’s initial fears that a different pair of names would be needed to code each thematic entry. In retrospect I imagine that would make solving the thematic entries (almost) impossible. The dawning of enlightenment, when I thought “Hang on, this could be Vladimir and Estragon…Yes! It is!” was a wonderful moment, because it made me feel awfully clever. That’s not something which happens very often.

    Great puzzle from an ever-reliable setter.

11. HolyGhost in his blog states:  “a bit of staring and I could see ESTRAGON emerge, with his companion VLADIMIR”

     

    On a serious note, is anyone able to explain how one can logically deduce ESTRAGON as the code word from the 4-letter solutions other than divine inspiration and or general guesswork? I don’t mean that to sound flippant, I’m genuinely interested

12. I don’t know how anyone else did it, but having solved them all I simply took the letters that made up the answers (A, E, G, N, O, R, S and T) and put them into Anagram Solver!  It was the only name there.

13. Bingybing @11: I had a list of the uncoded answers GONE–STET–RO… & another of the coded versions MIRV–LAVA–DI…; then, as I said, I stared for a short while. I guess I got lucky with the GON–STE–R & the MIR–LAV–D and the two names emerged.

14. @GuyBarry – thanks. It wasn’t that obvious to me that it was an 8-letter word (despite what I assume was a hint from ROSALIND), so realistically we were looking for any word that contained the letters forming RATSEATSGONESTETROSSETONGOSSSTAR. Am I being dense in suggesting there are a huge number of words that can be made form that collection of letters?! I guess I am… I tend to think HG’s admirable honesty in stating he got lucky is closer to the mark but I’m not sure I’m a fan of puzzles that depend on getting lucky. Happy to be corrected of course.

15. I knew from the start that I would have to rely on luck if I didn’t solve all the special clues, and that’s exactly what happened.  I guessed there would be 8 letters – just possibly 9.  I had 7 letters of VLADIMIR (including the two I’s), and they were enough for me to spot that name.  I had 6 letters of ESTRAGON, but that became easier anyway after getting VLADIMIR – both by the association of their names and by the placement of some corresponding letters.

    As with many of these puzzles, it is pleasantly rewarding to resolve a theme without all the data and then to back-solve the few remaining clues.

16. @14: “It wasn’t that obvious to me that it was an 8-letter word (despite what I assume was a hint from ROSALIND), so realistically we were looking for any word that contained the letters forming RATSEATSGONESTETROSSETONGOSSSTAR.”

    It seemed clear to me that it had to contain each letter once and only once (like ROSALIND).  If it had contained repeated letters, then you’d have had the possibility of the same letter encoding as two different letters – which would have made the puzzle insoluble, or at least ambiguous.  So by my reasoning it had to be an 8-letter word.

17. Could someone explain the definition of GOSS to me, and for that matter why go = sold?

18. It’s not ‘sold’ = GO, it’s ‘are sold’ = GO. As in, Van Gogh painting goes for 2.5m etc

19. @17: I wasn’t sure about the legitimacy of GOSS either.  It appears to be a trade name:

    Goss crested china

     

     

20. @14
    I really don’t think this was a puzzle that depended on getting lucky, and I don’t think HG was really implying that either. I thought Phi gave us enough clues to get us to a point where we could crack the code with a satisfying intuitive leap. Unlike some others here I found it helpful to look at the 4-letter solutions together with the probable corresponding entries right from the start, on the lookout for any “associated names of the same length”, all the while wondering what exactly that preamble might mean (always a plus, so long as the bewilderment doesn’t go on for ever…). It was great fun.

21. Bingybing @18: sorry for not being explicit about “are sold” – now done;
    & @14: as a well-known golfer is reported to have said, “The more I practice [sic], the luckier I get.”

22. Ah, got it! – thanks To Bingybing & Guy Barry.

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