Observation 1. It could be a simple character substitution code given that at least two “scribbles” are repeated throughout the script – the first “scribble” and last “scribble” on the first line for instance. If this is the case the commonly used English character frequency of letters table starting ETANOISH… could be of use.

———————–

I can see now that an excellent starting point would be simple word substitution – with 5 “the” and 4 “of” in a set of 28 words with the strokes representing an indication of how each word should be pronounced…. I can find “th” in [Ro"th"mile]

Bob

I will say, though, that if the task is “Provide a large, distributed audience with the sound and vision of a football game” — even with the clause “along with competent commentary” added — then it’s relatively easy.

If the task is “Provide an existing large sporting-media collaboration with a new business model that’s at least as profitable as the old, and with a transition path that’ll be acceptable to all the stakeholders” — and by that I probably mean that mid- and upper-level managers won’t have to sack themselves — well, that’s rather different.

That overall is the problem facing the AFL, NRL and their media partners. They all want their respective organisations to continue to exist more or less as they are now. I don’t think that can be done — though that’s all gut feelings rather than science.

I must now confess that I seem to have led everyone down the wrong path. This is not the work of Ursula K Le Guin at all! It’s actually a document of some sort related to the fantasy universe of Danny, the guy who developed the script!

The place names Yocentro (as you’ve styled it, but I think Danny transcribed it differently in the Roman alphabet) and Rothmile trigger memories of a sandy desert planet. The well-wishing of “May the Sands be with you always” fits too.

I haven’t been in touch with Danny for years, but I’ve just emailed him to see if he can provide any missing pieces. But it was more than 30 years ago…

All that said, I do remember seeing and handling a document written in this script that was a LeGuin quote. I just gave you all the wrong document. Apologies!

On more practical matters, dario, “I’ll negotiate a suitable prize for the first person who posts the solution,” I said. I’ll email you privately about that tomorrow Sydney time.

It’s easy to say a ruling means “revolutionary new ways of engaging fans and monetising their eyeballs” must be found. That much is obvious.

It’s a tad harder to generate those “revolutionary” ideas.

People have been mentioning for a decade that “old” media organisations need to find ways to monetise, etc, and everyone says, yes yes, they need to think up something … without coming up with too many viable suggestions.

… and in retrospect, it was “real beginner-grade material”, as Stil posted in October 2008. In fact, after a couple of hours before my own first comment in August, I needed only last Sunday and some more hours yesterday night to break it. I didn’t work on it in the meantime. However, it was clear that Stil was growing impatient (after 66 months!) and he was giving away too many clues. So finally I decided to test my initial hypothesis and it proved right at the first try.

Well, something is still missing from the picture. I could not identify the source work. Googling the last sentence, which is a motto, I found video games and other universes apparently not related to Ursula K. Le Guin. Since the script is a phonetic representation of English, I know how to pronounce but I cannot retrieve the original spelling of three words: two are fictional place names and the third is a generic classifier for one of them (as if they were “Australia”, “New South Wales” and “Commonwealth”). In my solution text I have used plausible spellings for them, in brackets. The challenge text is very short (110 characters) and it doesn’t cover all sounds of English. The internal structure of the script enables me to figure out how some of the missing sounds would be represented, but unfortunately not all (I was too optimistic in August.) There are also other minor doubts.

I am confident, however, that what I’m posting here is a correct solution, and I claim the prize.

Thank you!

In fact, for me, the RP clue is bigger that L1W4 = L1W8. Thank you very much for it, but please, please, please no more clues. It’s Friday morning now up above here (as opposed to Down Under). Please give me a weekend before further spoilers.

HERE IS THE BIGGEST CLUE OF ALL: Note that in line 1 the word at word 8 also occurs at word 4. And it’s one of the most common words in the English language. And I’m almost entirely sure that it doesn’t begin with either ‘s’ or ‘ʃ’. There is nothing in this script that could be seen as a visual echo of IPA glyphs.

http://www.abr.business.gov.au/SearchByAbnHistory.aspx?abn=25231641421

UKL doesn’t provide a ‘standard’ pronunciation guide, specifically because she believes that the names should sound like whatever the reader reads them as (or something to that effect, I found it buried in some comments on her website).

The other half the fun seems to be that there were major changes to IPA in 1989, so even if it *is* based on the IPA, it wouldn’t necessarily be written out with the same symbols today. Or it may not be at all and I’m just barking up the wrong tree…

Line 1 word 8 continues to give me fits, because assuming that the first grapheme maps to either ‘s’ or ‘ʃ’, I cannot come up with any phoneme that both forms a real word *and* has an IPA glyph even remotely close to the one in the image.

However, (A) I don’t have access to an online copy of the books that would allow that level of detailed search, and (B) for me it is more fun to ponder the script, anyway.