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Who Said That? (Posted on 2004-07-03) Difficulty: 4 of 5
Below is a not so famous quote, your job is to decode the message, and give the name of the author.

"O TFTFFT'N TENFENFS NN OF EFTOE NF TTFEFN."

See The Solution Submitted by Juggler    
Rating: 2.7143 (7 votes)

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Some Thoughts Almost solution | Comment 1 of 5

The single letter at the beginning is likely an A, and the letter after the apostrophe is likely an S.  There are a lot of duplicated letters (not many different letters), so more either more than one letter is being transformed into the same letter or the code is advancing per each letter and just happening to arrive at the same letters many times.

But the letter A is the first letter of the alphabet (number 1), and "one" begins with the letter O.  Some thought shows that S is the nineteenth letter of the alphabet and nineteen begins with N.

The beginning letters of the numbers 1 - 26 (labeled with the corresponding letter of the alphabet) are:

A             O
B             T
C             T
D             F
E             F
F             S
G             S
H             E
I             N
J             T
K             E
L             T
M             T
N             F
O             F
P             S
Q             S
R             E
S             N
T             T
U             T
V             T
W             T
X             T
Y             T
Z             T

On this basis, the following table of possible letters can be constructed:


O TFTFFT'N TENFENFS NN OF EFTOE NF TTFEFN
A BDBDDB'I BHIDHIDF II AD HDBAH ID BBDHDI
  CECEEC S CKSEKSEG SS  E KEC K SE CCEKES
  JNJNNJ   JR NR NP     N RNJ R  N JJNRN
  LOLOOL   L  O  OQ     O  OL    O LLO O
  M M  M   M                M      MM
  T T  T   T                T      TT
  U U  U   U                U      UU
  V V  V   V                V      VV
  W W  W   W                W      WW
  X X  X   X                X      XX
  Y Y  Y   Y                Y      YY
  Z Z  Z   Z                Z      ZZ

A computer search for the word TFTFFT based on the above possibilities for its letters turns up

betony
cement
colony
comedy
lemony
loment
melody
moment
teledu
telnet
unbent
uncool
unmeet

The two most likely are "comedy" and "moment". 

NN OF must stand for IS AN, while NF is either IN or SO.

The possibilities for EFTOE do not include a vowel for the first position, but do allow for beginning HO..., which is a possibility following AN.

TENFENFS can be THINKING.


  Posted by Charlie on 2004-07-03 13:20:01
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