[Guest]

In 999BC, something stopped happening that had been happening for the past 999,001 years. This thing did not happen again until 1000 AD, but now it will not stop happening until 1000000AD. (of course, 1,000 years after that, it will occur again for another 999,001 years....)

So what is this thing? Tell me if this is too obvious, please.... I made it up.

[bonanova]

I hope it didn't have anything to do with calendars that had "BC" printed on them ...

[Guest]

In 999BC, something stopped happening that had been happening for the past 999,001 years. This thing did not happen again until 1000 AD, but now it will not stop happening until 1000000AD. (of course, 1,000 years after that, it will occur again for another 999,001 years....)

So what is this thing? Tell me if this is too obvious, please.... I made it up.

Earths precession /axial tilt cycle- another ice age likely .. I think

[Guest]

Does it have something to do with the year having a 1 followed by 3 or more zeros?

[Guest]

A new millenium began.

[Guest]

The letter A appears if you write out the number of the year longhand.

Nine hundred ninety nine has no A, but one thousand does.

[Guest]

The letter A appears if you write out the number of the year longhand.

Nine hundred ninety nine has no A, but one thousand does.

nice job starlinggirl25!

[bonanova]

In 999BC, something stopped happening that had been happening for the past 999,001 years.

The solution doesn't explain this.

[Guest]

If you are not counting AD in every year! there are quite a few in between that have and don't have A in them.

Good try but no cigar - back to the drawingboard I think Kay.

I was off with precession I think it's every 25k years, I'll check it later.

[Guest]

I rather liked that one. I had never stopped to think that the written numbers zero through nineteen as well as twenty, thirty, ... , ninety, and one hundred contained no instances of the letter 'a'. A strange and interesting fact.

By the way, I think the "event" was the appearance of the letter 'a' in the longhand written version of the year number, so yes, I do believe the solution explains that the event stopped happening, because 'a' stopped appearing.

[bonanova]

In 999BC, something stopped happening...

Think about it more carefully.

Hint: There was a riddle once about an archaeologist who

"found" a rare coin with the inscribed date 34 BC.

[Guest]

I see what you are driving at, but I still think it works. 999 BC is still 999 BC, even if the people don't know it. Maybe the solution should mention something about that specific way of tracking time, but that might be akin to having the solutions to all riddles that have to do with calendars mention that it is only valid for the Julian calendar. I don't think I am conveying my exact point very well, but maybe the main idea is coming through?

EDIT: I agree that the people from 999 BC would not have a way to notice this trend, but we can, because we now can definitevely call it 999 BC.

Edited March 11, 2008 by barne012

[Guest]

Or is it - remember tere is no 0 between BC and AD, kinda mucks up ya calculations

[Guest]

I don't quite see how that has anything to do with it. The puzzle doesn't include any implications that X years ago it was Y BC. It only assumes that when it was Y BC, it definitely was Y BC, whether or not the people at that time knew that it was Y BC.

There is a riddle format of using the first letter of important words along with numbers as clues to what the words are, and of such a format is this one:

9 P in our S S (which is obviously 9 PLANETS in our SOLAR SYSTEM).

Until a certain point in time, this would be an unsolvable riddle, as it was not common knowledge, but that does not make it an invalid riddle today. Similarly, people alive in 999 BC could not see the pattern, but we can.

[Guest]

In 999BC, something stopped happening that had been happening for the past 999,001 years. This thing did not happen again until 1000 AD, but now it will not stop happening until 1000000AD. (of course, 1,000 years after that, it will occur again for another 999,001 years....)

So what is this thing? Tell me if this is too obvious, please.... I made it up.

I don't know if it's too obvius,but definitely the whole think is too stupid.