THE CACHE IS NOT AT THE LISTED COORDINATES.
Introduction
Imagine you are an archaeologist unearthing a newly-discovered inscription in an unknown script, or an anthropologist meeting a group of people who speak an unknown language. The Internet knows nothing about these languages, so how can you work out what they are telling you? Now is your chance to find out!
The puzzles in this series are all based on real languages and writing systems, but they can be solved without any knowledge of the language in question, using only logical reasoning and a general sense of how languages work. You do not need to learn the language, nor to research it with Google or Wikipedia. In fact, some spellings have been changed to prevent solution by search engine.
The puzzle
This is a simple cross-number puzzle. The clues are just numbers written as words, and the solutions are the same numbers written in the usual way with digits. None of the solutions starts with 0. However, the clues are not in English, and they are not in order.
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ACROSS:
| Number |
Clue |
| Dimi: |
Efatro ambi enimpola sy telanjata sy sivi alino |
| Fita: |
Dimi ambi fola sy roanjata sy ariva sy fita alino |
| Fola: |
Iraiko ambi fitapola |
| Irai: |
Fita ambi fitapola |
| Sivi: |
Fola |
| Tela: |
Fita ambi fola |
| Vala: |
Vala ambi enimpola sy sivinjata sy dimi ariva sy alino |
DOWN:
| Number |
Clue |
| Efatro: |
Iraiko ambi valapola sy dimanjata sy efatro ariva sy fita alino |
| Enino: |
Sivi ambi roapola sy telanjata |
| Irai: |
Iraiko ambi fola sy fitanjata sy sivi ariva sy fita alino |
| Roa: |
Dimampola sy zata sy fita alino |
| Tela: |
Fita ambi enimpola sy zata sy enino ariva sy alino |
From these clues, you can work out what numbers the clues represent and fill in the grid.
The following hints may help:
- It's a base-10 system:
- There are single words for the digits 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
- There are single words for the decades 10, 100, 1000 and 10000.
- Digits and decades are sometimes run together (as in English: "four" + "ten" gives "forty").
- Some words change when put next to others.
- The commonest words probably mean "and" or "plus".
Then the cache is at:
N (b-n)(m-f) (j-x)(e-q).(d-h)(u-g)(h-p) E (k-y)(c-z)(q-s) (g-r)(t-g).(v-n)(y-a)(v-w)
