Can you decipher the following messages? They don't necessarily use the same coding pattern.

1) irrew frg xprt. mf ucpoy jre.
2) uodakw tsf ioaivdh mt skjdo ishd

Once you’ve deciphered them, can you figure out the complete coding patterns? What is going on here? Can you now encode the following words using the corresponding coding patterns?

1) wax
2) zip

Nikki, I think your puzzle title is correct.  The coding has to do with a standard qwerty keyboard and a Dvorak keyboard.  The first word in the title are the Dvorak keys that correspond to the first letters on the qwerty keyboard and the second word is the other way around.
Why do I then say that I have an handicap?  Well, I don't have a qwerty keyboard.  I have an azerty keyboard, see: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/globalization/topics/keyboards/physical.jsp#France
If you follow the same rule for makin up the title, the first word is of course the same, but the second word is a little bit different: it is h:soqc
So, for someone with an azerty keyboard (me), the title should be different.

And, as in my posting: even if I did not have the handicap, it wouldn't have made any difference.  It took me a day.  On second thought, maybe it even was an advantage instead of an handicap:I am kind of used to type on different keyboards, so the idea of a keyboard encoding should arise much faster to me.  Instead of a day later, I should have had the solution a day earlier, that would be about twenty hours before the puzzle was even posted! Waaw.
Strange thing is that one can learn to type blind on either keyboard, but that it is impossible to do both at the same time.  If you change tyhe keyboard type, it takes you a couple of weeks/months before you can type using all your fingers again.

Edited (several times) to get the link to azerty in

Edited on January 25, 2005, 8:27 am

Edited on January 25, 2005, 8:28 am

Posted by Hugo on 2005-01-25 07:34:20