Script Challenge: can you figure this out?

It’s been 14 months, Stil. No takers.

That tells me that the other 99.96-ish per cent of the population (like me) who aren’t cryptography geeks, will need the help of our protocol droids if we’re to solve this without shelving all our commitments for a month or whatever.

I’ve had a brief look at this following your tweet about nobody solving it.

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.

Observation 2. Although you state it has absolutely nothing to do with “Tolkien” clearly this is a clue in itself and research into Tolkien is clearly in order. I note the the “Tolkien logo” bears a resemblance to the strokes (scribbles) in the script.

Observation 3. If this is a character substitution code and if each line is a word then the second line could only be the “word” a or i.

Observation 4. If the second character is an a or an i and if each line is a word then the penultimate line would be a two character word that could only start with an a e i o or u. If the second letter is an a or an i this reduces the number of permutations to words such as it or of etc.

Observation 5. I had never heard of Ursula LeGuin but Google research into “quotes Ursula LeGuin” results in quite a few interesting observations about life the universe and everything but none quite match my deliberations although “if you light a candle you also cast a shadow” has an appropriate place given that it has an “a” where I might expect to find an “a”.

Right the greek alpahbet has 24 letters alpha beta though to omega

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet

The Phoenician alphabet (linked to above) offers some promise but there is no clear relation between the symbols in either the Greek or Phoenician alphabets to the script above.

Wikipedia informs me in their article on Egyptian hieroglyphs that there are logographic and alphabetic representations. The Japanese I seem to recall tend to mix their logographic symbols with English and/or European characters which makes travelling in Tokyo quite interesting as the English bits give an idea of what’s going on.

(working on it.. working on it… It’ll take longer than two days !)

Stilgherrian’s comment that “grapheme” is indeed a wond’rous word…

reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapheme

“A grapheme (from the Greek: γράφω, gráphō, “write”) is the fundamental unit in written language. Examples of graphemes include alphabetic letters, Chinese characters, numerical digits, punctuation marks, and all the individual symbols of any of the world’s writing systems.”

noting that “Alphabet” is an interesting word too, and ONE WHICH DESERVES FURTHER CONSIDERATION” appears to indicate that we can ignore Chinese characters, numerical digits, punctuation marks, and the odd assortment of individual symbols of any of the word’s writing sytems.

This rules out such things as Ideograms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideogram

“An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek ἰδέα idea “idea” + γράφω grafo “to write”) is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by familiarity with prior convention; others convey their meaning through pictorial resemblance to a physical object, and thus may also be referred to as pictograms”

Over the coming weeks I’m concentrating on fonts !

Ok, I think I understand the principle, but then I should.

I wonder whether you had to go to the library to sort this out back when it was first set?

I’m up for the challenge.

Interesting: the Tolkien script uses those accent-like dots and squiggles for vowels, so for example the first word, transliterated as Ennyn, is really [n][n] with an [underlined acute] meaning [e], and a [pair of dots] meaning [y]. I speculated there was something similar in your example: the first symbol (top left), looking like an F with two dots, recurs in a bunch of places, and there are also similar ones with different dots and frou-frou, like the second symbol on the fourth row. I’m dividing the larger symbols into what I think are letters — for example, the first one on the bottom line may be one of those F things with one dot and a loop, preceded by a smaller L shape. Two letters? Three, counting the loop+dot as a vowel? Perhaps. I should really be working…

Stilgherrian may not have found it necessary to go to a library to solve this as I get the impression that he is a fan of this type of fiction and so has a head-start over those of us who haven’t quite got the hang of it. I have therefore been delving into the works of Ursula Le Guin and have discovered that in the Wizard of Earthsea Le Guin introduced a “special language”

http://stuffedhead.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/88/

Part I: Magic Controlled by Speech

One of the most well known aspects of the Earthsea series is the magic system. Le Guin created a system where wizards use a special language called the Old Speech to work magic. As a passage from A Wizard of Earthsea explains,

“In the world under the sun, and in the other world that has no sun, there is much that has nothing to do with men and men’s speech, and there are powers beyond our power. But magic, true magic, is worked only by those beings who speak the Hardic tongue of Earthsea, or the Old Speech from which it grew.”

Now if a person has read Le Guin’s works then he or she would have a head start over the rest of us methinks…

I’m making a very different set of assumptions to yours Bob – I think it’s a whole lot simpler than that. I don’t think it’s a numerically based script – I did think about twig runes which work as a counting code, but I don’t think it’s that.

I have now eliminated quite a few possibilities for words, but haven’t found any definite combinations.

I’m proceding on a largely grammatical/linguistic basis.

@Stilgherrian “Is any of that a clue? I have no idea”

You make mention of vowels reminding us that alphabets are comprise vowels and consonants which may be the issue we have been overlooking when it comes to alphabets. As it notes on an Internet page somewhere there are a considerable number of “vowels” in the International Phonetic Alphabet — which as an aside is referred to on Ursula Le Guin’s home page. There are over 40 vowel sounds I believe.

As I write the word “sounds” I am reminded that alphabets attempt to document sounds that can be produced by the human vocal chords — as opposed the symbolism of number found in mathematics.

Perhaps we should be looking at intonation — the rise and fall of the strokes and attempting to reconcile this back to human speech — in English.

An approach I took yesterday was to draw a thin blue line through the middle of each row of graphemes and examine the marks above and below the line.

Quatrefoil appears to be attempting a solution using FORTAN — a computer language which derived it’s name from FORMula Translator. Perhaps we should be using LISP — the language for Artificial Intelligence — “Lots of Irritating Stupid Parentheses”.

After a fruitless search I am keyless. I can even picture in my mind’s eye the old notebook I need – Stats 1H. But of all the old books in a box in the cellar, that one is missing. Found lots of books of notes with my handwriting in them, but no recollection of ever taking the course. Applicable Analysis anyone? Actually looked to be pertinent too.

My very faint recollection of the explanation Danny gave me was indeed that relative position above and below the dominant line is a key part of the encoding. I think I have the main structure of the text sorted, but fitting the minor consonants isn’t so trivial. One clue to the provenance of the quote is that I will bet the text we see was inscribed in 1978. So that seriously limits the books from whence it came.