[Guest]

Can you solve this following puzzle?

Back = 211

Fade = 188

Gage = ???

e = i

...and you should be ashamed for looking!

[Guest]

I have more hints prepared of thery are needed.

[moonthirsty]

Is it...

666?

Cuz if not, I have no idea.

[superprismatic]

It's 1277. Actually easy once you notice that if d=g then e=i and p=c.

[Guest]

still dont understand yr answer, super, even if letters equal something, how is that tranlated into numbers?

[MissKitten]

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..........................

[Guest]

This will take 3-steps...and the correct answer has not been found. I will add Hint/Step #1 if no one is on the right track...later today...I almost added it now but I think it can be solved and I don't want to spoil it for some poor sole who has a warped mind like I do. Thanks for guessing.

[Guest]

the first thing i thought of was roman numerals. is thst on the right track?

[Guest]

the first thing i thought of was roman numerals. is thst on the right track?

Nope

[Guest]

Just one quick question that I hope you will answer. are the letters put together to indicate multiplication. Such as Gage being G*a*g*e = ???

[Guest]

Just one quick question that I hope you will answer. are the letters put together to indicate multiplication. Such as Gage being G*a*g*e = ???

Of coarse I will answer…

It involves no multiplication what-so-ever.

[Guest]

is this correct: d = h, c = g, b = f

[Guest]

377 or is the first part of the number 3...by knowing then I know I am on the right track...this one is tricky and i like it

[Guest]

This will take 3-steps...and the correct answer has not been found. I will add Hint/Step #1 if no one is on the right track...later today...I almost added it now but I think it can be solved and I don't want to spoil it for some poor sole who has a warped mind like I do. Thanks for guessing.

Is the puzzle an alphametic?

Are the three lines of text an equation, with the "words" needing cyphered?

Is it necessary that Back, Fade and Gage all begin with majascules (capitals, uppercase letters) and are followed in miniscules (lowercase letters)?

I had already considered the possibilty the three lines of text were a cryptarithm with the characters transcribed in Leet. But, that would be equivalent to giving a cryptogram where the text was in a foreign language, especially if it were needing cyphered in 3 steps, so that had to be ruled out. (I hope your mind isn't so warped that you did something like that).

[MissKitten]

Still uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh........................

[Guest]

181

[Guest]

181

The answer is incorrect.

At least numerically the digits you supplied for your answer are only a few off.

[Guest]

Is the puzzle an alphametic?

Yes

Are the three lines of text an equation, with the "words" needing cyphered?

Yes but that answer may answer is slightly misleading - focus on the letters more than the words - I chose letters that formed words but that was not necessary.

Is it necessary that Back, Fade and Gage all begin with majascules (capitals, uppercase letters) and are followed in miniscules (lowercase letters)?

No

I had already considered the possibilty the three lines of text were a cryptarithm with the characters transcribed in Leet. But, that would be equivalent to giving a cryptogram where the text was in a foreign language, especially if it were needing cyphered in 3 steps, so that had to be ruled out. (I hope your mind isn't so warped that you did something like that).

Not THAT warped - that would not be fair - that would be bad form.

Edited August 2, 2010 by ninja-krook

[Guest]

First things first.

Since there was a very close answer I rechecked all of my math and I am happy to say I made no errors in presenting the puzzle. This took me quite a while…and I knew exactly what needed to be done. I had at one point written the answer down incorrectly…so for a moment I thought that I had sent you all on a wild goose chase. This led me to reading every post in this thread to make sure I had not made any incorrect statements about the puzzle. In the end I had not, which is a very good thing. I would have felt horrible if I had made an error which wasted any of your time. But I repeat “there were no errors made”. The only thing that happened is that I responded to an answer from gerald.fird saying it was close…and it was not. I only bring all of this up to shed some light on the great responsibility we have when presenting a problem to make sure that we have tripled checked our work - but in this instance no harm no foul.

Since it seems that nobody is on the right track I will offer a hint.

Letters must become words, which must become numbers, which you must add together.

[Guest]

does it start with 1

[Guest]

does it start with 1

It does not.

[Guest]

One way I could make sense of the hint,

e = i ...and you should be ashamed for looking!

is to examine the IPA phonetic representation of the the letter e. In Unicode it is /U+0069 U+02D0/. But unless the modifer letter triangular colon (U+02D0) is omitted, e ≠ i. If the phonetic characters not in the Latin alphabet are ignored and the other characters are converted to their hexadecimal or ASCII values, the sum of these values in either conversion is much greater than 211 for "Back". As several of these Latin characters are not in the English alphabet, we can not convert them to a positional value (a=1, b=2, c=3, ...). If these non-English alphabetic characters are ignored, and only the positional value is taken for the English letters, the value is too small for Back = 211; and this is the case even if the letters are first converted into their English spellings: a=a; b=bee; c=cee; d=dee; e=e (or rare, ee); f=ef; g=gee; k=kay].

Another way I could see that e = i is that the English word "of" in Albanian is e or i and the English word "yes" in Hausa is e or i, but, as was indicated by your response to my musing as to Leet, it would be ludicrous to have us translate the letters as non-English words, this diversion is to be bypassed.

With e = i virtually eliminated as a phonetic equivalency, perhaps you can provide another hint as how e = i.

[plainglazed]

both equal 42. making Gage = 206

EDIT: fixed answer

Edited August 2, 2010 by plainglazed

[Guest]

both equal 42. making Gage = 206

EDIT: fixed answer

Correct!!!!

[Guest]

Since the correct answer has been found....here is how it was done....

Step 1

Convert the letters to the corresponding spelled number (A = One, B = Two, C = Three, etc)

Step 2

Convert the letters in the “spelled numbers” to numbers (One = 15 14 5, Two = 20 23 15, Three = 20 8 18 5 5)

Step 3

Add those numbers together (One = 15+14+5 = 34, Two = 20+23+15 = 58, Three = 20+8+18+5+5 = 56)

[Guest]

Very clever, and congrats to plainglazed.

But two comments:

It is not an alphametic and the process is 4 steps.

(1) Convert each letter to its positional term (LETTERS TO NUMBERS)

(2) Convert each number <positional term> to its cardinal equivalent (NUMBERS TO WORDS)

(3) Convert each new letter to its positional term (LETTERS TO NUMBERS)

(4) Sum the numbers

An alphametic is an equation whose digits are represented by letters. Here, the letters do not represent digits, but numbers. So it is indeed a cypher, but not an alphametic.

In order for one to see e = i, we need to add an extra step. To sum the numbers of each converted letter. So, in a way, it is a 5-step process.

Edited August 2, 2010 by Dej Mar