$750 If anyone can help me solve this puzzle

[PokerPatNEU]

Some background:

A local pharmacist in my town writes up these puzzles and offers a cash prize to the first person who solves it. They started doing this about 3 years ago. As soon as one puzzle is solved, another comes out. To give you an idea of how complicated they are, this is only the third one and it just came out this week...

The Puzzle:

SFHLHL STJZ
JFJP UE ZFSFDOU


Thats all the information it gives. It's probably some kind of complex cipher where each letter corresponds to another letter and it forms a sentence, but I am completely stumped at how to go about starting to figure out which letters mean which. I have no idea what the significance of the bold letters are. One thing i do know is that the previous two puzzles solutions both involved something to do with pharmacy...prescription drugs or something like that. They didn't publish the solutions to the last ones, thats all they told us about them.

If anyone figures this out you can PM me here or e-mail me at [email protected] and if it turns out to be correct, I can PayPal you or transfer the 750$ to PokerStars or PartyPoker accounts. Hopefully one of you smart FTR'ers is better at this than me . Good luck[/b]

[a500lbgorilla]

I got it.

I'll send it tomorrow. Let some other people catch up.

-'rilla

[PokerPatNEU]

Sounds good to me. It took my town an average of 18 months to solve each one last time so i doubt anyone will be solving this one by tomorrow :P

[Ovation]

I got it, too, but I would rather someone that really needs the $750 solve it.

[vqc]

Hm i could really use 750 for my BR. I should relaly solve this.

[Armstrong]

:Needs the 750:
:Is stupid:

DAMN THIS

[Muxy]

I got it, too, but I would rather someone that really needs the $750 solve it.

Ok e-thug.

[Miffed22001]

I got it.

I'll send it tomorrow. Let some other people catch up.

This is clearly a lie.
do you see why?

(meh it even rhymes beeyatch!)

[Andy Holt]

I GOT IT!!!

PUZZLE HARD
ANDY IS ANNOYED

[gabe]

can you post the previous puzzles as to provide insight into the mind of this mad pharmacist?

[a500lbgorilla]

I GOT IT!!!

PUZZLE HARD
ANDY IS ANNOYED

Damn you're good.

-'rilla

[a500lbgorilla]

I got it.

I'll send it tomorrow. Let some other people catch up.

This is clearly a lie.
do you see why?

(meh it even rhymes beeyatch!)

Results in white below:


I can not tell a lie.


-'rilla

[PokerPatNEU]

Assuming that every letter corresponds to another (That might not even be it but if it's not i have absolutely no clue where to start on this)

How many words are in this format SFHLHL where the last four letters alternate like that? Which is the vowel, H or L?

How many words are in this format JFJP?

Which letters in the whole puzzle are most likely to be vowels? F appears a lot in spots that are likely to be vowels. H or L has to be a vowel to make that first word pronounceable. If F is a vowel, J probably is not because of the JFJP word. If J is not a vowel, T probably is because of the STJZ word...


Thats about the extent of how far i've gotten with it I was toying with writing a C++ program that goes through every single combination...but its going to be like 26 to the 12 power different combinations, and i have no way to make C++ check if they are actually words or not and it would take a lifetime to read through it. Anyone know of a way to filter a text file (C++ can output all the combinations in .txt) to check for things that are actually sentences or even just contain actual words?

[Armstrong]

I asked one of my very intelligent friends and he came up with this..


If you write out how you would pronounce the bold letters, and leave the regular letters as is, you get some nearly coherent word-like things.

SeffHellHell SteeJzee
JeffJpee Uee ZeffSeffDohU

The realistic distribution of vowels to consonants leads me to believe there may be anagrams afoot. The first word yields the following results:

FLESH ELF HELL
SHELF ELF HELL

"SteeJzee" doesn't yield anything.

JeffJpee can be turned into

JEEP JEFF

"Uee" also gives nothing.

ZeffSeffDohU has a bunch of anagrams, too many to list. Unfortunately most of them don't make sense. The only two words that somewhat belong together that can be pulled out of that string are DOFF and FEZ.

If you do that, FSEHU are left over. Combining that with the two other resultless strings and plugging that in, all these anagrams are possible:

FEE HEE SEE SUEZ JUT
FEE HEE SEE ZEUS JUT
FEE HEE JET USE SUEZ
FEE HEE JET USE ZEUS
FEE HEE JET SUE SUEZ
FEE HEE JET SUE ZEUS
FEE SEE EH JUTE SUEZ
FEE SEE EH JUTE ZEUS
FEE SEE HE JUTE SUEZ
FEE SEE HE JUTE ZEUS
FEE SEE HUE JET SUEZ
FEE SEE HUE JET ZEUS
FUZEE HEE JESSE TUE
FUZEE HEE SEE JUSTE
FUZEE HEE SEE JUTES
FUZEE HEE SEE JET US
FUZEE HEE SEES JUTE
FUZEE HEE TEE JESUS
FUZEE JESSE TEE HUE
FUZEE SEE EH JET USE
FUZEE SEE EH JET SUE
FUZEE SEE HE JET USE
FUZEE SEE HE JET SUE
HEE SEE FE JUTE SUEZ
HEE SEE FE JUTE ZEUS
HEE SEE FUZE JET USE
HEE SEE FUZE JET SUE
HEE SEE FEZ JUTE USE
HEE SEE FEZ JUTE SUE

Maybe, just maybe, a sensical sentence can be crafted from this mess. Frankly I think that's doubtful but for difficult puzzles you gotta explore them from abstract angles.


[b] So yea, good luck lol

[Hawklet]

SFHLHL STJZ
JFJP UE ZFSFDOU
[/b]

All of the even letters are bold faced.

(Just in case anyone didn't realize )

EDIT: Also the first line doesn't have any vowels in it.

Can you post the past puzzles too?

[Lukie]

I asked one of my very intelligent friends and he came up with this..


If you write out how you would pronounce the bold letters, and leave the regular letters as is, you get some nearly coherent word-like things.

SeffHellHell SteeJzee
JeffJpee Uee ZeffSeffDohU

The realistic distribution of vowels to consonants leads me to believe there may be anagrams afoot. The first word yields the following results:

FLESH ELF HELL
SHELF ELF HELL

"SteeJzee" doesn't yield anything.

JeffJpee can be turned into

JEEP JEFF

"Uee" also gives nothing.

ZeffSeffDohU has a bunch of anagrams, too many to list. Unfortunately most of them don't make sense. The only two words that somewhat belong together that can be pulled out of that string are DOFF and FEZ.

If you do that, FSEHU are left over. Combining that with the two other resultless strings and plugging that in, all these anagrams are possible:

FEE HEE SEE SUEZ JUT
FEE HEE SEE ZEUS JUT
FEE HEE JET USE SUEZ
FEE HEE JET USE ZEUS
FEE HEE JET SUE SUEZ
FEE HEE JET SUE ZEUS
FEE SEE EH JUTE SUEZ
FEE SEE EH JUTE ZEUS
FEE SEE HE JUTE SUEZ
FEE SEE HE JUTE ZEUS
FEE SEE HUE JET SUEZ
FEE SEE HUE JET ZEUS
FUZEE HEE JESSE TUE
FUZEE HEE SEE JUSTE
FUZEE HEE SEE JUTES
FUZEE HEE SEE JET US
FUZEE HEE SEES JUTE
FUZEE HEE TEE JESUS
FUZEE JESSE TEE HUE
FUZEE SEE EH JET USE
FUZEE SEE EH JET SUE
FUZEE SEE HE JET USE
FUZEE SEE HE JET SUE
HEE SEE FE JUTE SUEZ
HEE SEE FE JUTE ZEUS
HEE SEE FUZE JET USE
HEE SEE FUZE JET SUE
HEE SEE FEZ JUTE USE
HEE SEE FEZ JUTE SUE

Maybe, just maybe, a sensical sentence can be crafted from this mess. Frankly I think that's doubtful but for difficult puzzles you gotta explore them from abstract angles.


[b] So yea, good luck lol

Maybe there's a translation to another language.

there's actually no solution.. here's Marilyn Vos Savant's Website, btw she's the smartest woman alive.. she said and I quote:

"There's no discernable pattern to this series of letters. I would assume someone has placed this puzzle to get people to attempt so solve it. I could make up an answer, but the puzzle is clearly designed to make someone believe there is an answer, but be unable to find it. This reminds me of someone I once knew who played 21 Questions with no particular answer in mind whenever it was his turn.. we finally caught on to his scheme when the talk around the table became centered on how an animal could be bigger than a Ford Escort, weigh less than 200 pounds, have 28 legs, amphibious, and living in the greater Boston area. Suffice to say, he no longer is allowed to play 21 questions anymore at our parties.

Chao, Marilyn Vos Savant

P.S. - Thanks for the E-Mail!"

[arkana]

here's Marilyn Vos Savant's Website, btw she's the smartest woman alive..

Every woman alive thinks that...

[DoGGz]

there's actually no solution.. here's Marilyn Vos Savant's Website, btw she's the smartest woman alive.. she said and I quote:

"There's no discernable pattern to this series of letters. I would assume someone has placed this puzzle to get people to attempt so solve it. I could make up an answer, but the puzzle is clearly designed to make someone believe there is an answer, but be unable to find it. This reminds me of someone I once knew who played 21 Questions with no particular answer in mind whenever it was his turn.. we finally caught on to his scheme when the talk around the table became centered on how an animal could be bigger than a Ford Escort, weigh less than 200 pounds, have 28 legs, amphibious, and living in the greater Boston area. Suffice to say, he no longer is allowed to play 21 questions anymore at our parties.

Chao, Marilyn Vos Savant

P.S. - Thanks for the E-Mail!"

Did you bold the letters. I'm sure it does not have a pattern if they are not bolded.

[PokerPatNEU]

there's actually no solution.. here's Marilyn Vos Savant's Website, btw she's the smartest woman alive.. she said and I quote:

"There's no discernable pattern to this series of letters. I would assume someone has placed this puzzle to get people to attempt so solve it. I could make up an answer, but the puzzle is clearly designed to make someone believe there is an answer, but be unable to find it. This reminds me of someone I once knew who played 21 Questions with no particular answer in mind whenever it was his turn.. we finally caught on to his scheme when the talk around the table became centered on how an animal could be bigger than a Ford Escort, weigh less than 200 pounds, have 28 legs, amphibious, and living in the greater Boston area. Suffice to say, he no longer is allowed to play 21 questions anymore at our parties.

Chao, Marilyn Vos Savant

P.S. - Thanks for the E-Mail!"

There is definitely a solution. The method for solving it just might be stranger than anyone expects. It's not necessarily that every letter corresponds to another, it might be an anagram or some kind of weird phonetic thing like Armstrong wrote. Saying definitively "There's no discernable pattern to this series of letters" after spending only little time looking at it is impossible. The puzzle has a solution.

[PokerPatNEU]

And also a couple have people have asked about the past puzzles, i can try and see if anyone i know still has them written down somewhere.

[Staresy]

there's actually no solution.. here's Marilyn Vos Savant's Website, btw she's the smartest woman alive.. she said and I quote:

"There's no discernable pattern to this series of letters. I would assume someone has placed this puzzle to get people to attempt so solve it. I could make up an answer, but the puzzle is clearly designed to make someone believe there is an answer, but be unable to find it. This reminds me of someone I once knew who played 21 Questions with no particular answer in mind whenever it was his turn.. we finally caught on to his scheme when the talk around the table became centered on how an animal could be bigger than a Ford Escort, weigh less than 200 pounds, have 28 legs, amphibious, and living in the greater Boston area. Suffice to say, he no longer is allowed to play 21 questions anymore at our parties.

Chao, Marilyn Vos Savant

P.S. - Thanks for the E-Mail!"

she's so smart she spells ciao incorrectly?!?!

[Miffed22001]

Would this be the time to start women/blonde jokes?

[PokerPatNEU]

Yeah so smart it took her 5 clues to realize that animal was fake? So smart she would waste a question in 21 questions on "Does this animal have 28 legs?"....I don't think that one will really narrow it down much.

[Jeebus Kliest]

There isn't much to go on as far as an end result...are we looking to break some sort of code to get the sentence in english?

[PokerPatNEU]

Thats the assumption. There are no instructions, just the puzzle and the reward written on teh flyer.

[DaNutsInYoEye]

The bolded letters might be as simply as a way to make the puzzle easier to read... Who knows. If every letter corresponds to another, then I'd start with "UE." There are not many two letter words "on, at, if, it, in, up, or, as, an, etc..." and pretty much all of them contain a vowel. Unfortunately that only helps you with one other letter in the puzzle.

[Hawklet]

here's Marilyn Vos Savant's Website, btw she's the smartest woman alive.. she said and I quote:

Actually shes just a smart person that takes tests very fast.

She took an IQ test and finished with 1/3rd of the time left and scored like 150. She just multiplied her score by 150% to compensate . . .

[Harks]

I think I have it............but will wait for confirmation.

[PokerPatNEU]

Harks i got your e-mail. I read over your solution and it looks great, I don't see how it could be anything else. I will bring it in tomorrow to the pharmacy first thing in the morning on my way to work and verify it's right with them and let you know for sure tomorrow early afternoon. Then you can e-mail me your contact info, Stars or Party name, or paypal address.

This is extremely intelligent i would have never come up with this in years...Really well done man. If you're half as good at poker as you are at solving ridiculous puzzles, I hope i'm not sitting at the table with you int he next FTR gauntlet.

[Irisheyes]

Harks i got your e-mail. I read over your solution and it looks great, I don't see how it could be anything else. I will bring it in tomorrow to the pharmacy first thing in the morning on my way to work and verify it's right with them and let you know for sure tomorrow early afternoon. Then you can e-mail me your contact info, Stars or Party name, or paypal address.

This is extremely intelligent i would have never come up with this in years...Really well done man. If you're half as good at poker as you are at solving ridiculous puzzles, I hope i'm not sitting at the table with you int he next FTR gauntlet.

Wow, make sure you post the answer up here if its right, I wanna see. Big it up for Harks.

[PokerPatNEU]

Harks's solution was correct, I went in this morning to hand in the solution he emailed to me last nite, but someone beat us to it. Some tourist solved the puzzle on friday and already claimed the prize. I guess this years puzzle was easier than the last two, bleh. I'm sorry i didn't find out about this sooner. I'm really sorry to anyone who spent time working on this since friday , especially you Harks. I know this must have taken at least a few hours to come up with and I feel terrible.


Edit: If you're dying to see the solution you can PM me and i'll copy/paste it to you from my email, but i'm going to leave it for Harks to post publicaly because hes' the one that solved it he should get to be the one that posts it if he wants.

[Irisheyes]

What was his solution? Just out of interest.

You do realise how this looks now don't you!? :P

[PokerPatNEU]

Sigh, yes i do. If harks wants i am going to email him the pharmacy's phone # so he can verify for himself that i'm not screwing him (which i would not have done if i was the first one to bring it in). Oh well, the new one should be coming out soon.

[Harks]

Ahh, sucks that the tourist beat us to it.....

The answer to the puzzle:

SFHLHL STJZ JFJP UE ZFSFDOU

becomes

Curara Cito Tute Et Jucunde

It is an ancient greek medical formula.

To arrive at the answer you must shift the non bolded and bolded letters by a different amount.

Replace the non-bolded letters as follows;

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A B C D E F G H I J

Replace the bolded letters as follows;

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O

So that gives

S F H L H L _ S T J Z _ J F J P _ U E _ Z F S F D O U
C U R A R A _ C I T O _ T U T E _ E T _ J U C U N D E

[EricE]

Wow, NH

[Galapogos]

Harks you are a mighty genuis and I kneel before your mighty intellect in hopes you do not use it to crush me...

And just out of curiousity, the part that really puzzles me though is how did you know this was an acient greek formula?? I mean, if I did all the letter shifting and came to that answer I think I would have passed it off as another garbage solution and shifted along.

Very cool.

[PokerPatNEU]

Yeah i agree with Galapagos. I was toying with shifting the alphabet but i only went 1 letter in each direction for each kind of text (bold and not bold).

Also i am curious how you got the two shifts to match up...If they were all shifted the same amount, it would be a little easier, only 26 possible combinations...But with two different types of text shifted a different amount each, thats 26^2 combinations. Incredible that you were able to decifer it i'm really impressed. Sorry we didn't get the prize this year but the next puzzle that comes out you'll be the first to know .


And if anyones wonder i e-mailed Hark the pharmacy's info so he can double check that i was beaten to the punch, i know none of you guys doubt me, i'm just an honest gambler

[Harks]

It was the only answer that looked remotely like proper words. So I typed a couple of the words into Google and sure enough it was an Ancient Greek medical saying/formula.

[hydroseeds]

Okay Harks, solve this one:


Cure cancer.

[Les_Worm]

What does the pharmacist give if you get it correct? If you are giving $750 just for help, he must be giving out a pretty nice chunk of change.

[PokerPatNEU]

Heh Les you asked the question i was hoping no one was going to ask. The prize for being the first to solve the puzzle is actually 10 grand...Seriously. When i first posted it i was debating how much to offer for the solution. When i realized that IF anyone is actually able to solve it, it's going to be because they are really really good at this kinda thing and probably not because they spend 50 hours working on it...I thought of a number that would be appealing to someone who is that caliber of intelligence, but make it worth the couple hours it was gonna take them to think about it.

I don't know if it's terrible of me to not offer it up 50/50 but thats what i went with. Greedy? Yep But $750 is nothing to sneeze at if puzzles are your thing and you can figure one out in a nights pondering...thats what i figured anyway. If it wasnt enough everyone had the choice to just say screw it and not even try *shrug*. I wish i had found out about it a week ago rather than on the day before it was solved.

[Les_Worm]

You have no responsibility to give anyone anything. I think offering $750 is enough to make someone try.

there's actually no solution.. here's Marilyn Vos Savant's Website, btw she's the smartest woman alive.. she said and I quote:

"There's no discernable pattern to this series of letters. I would assume someone has placed this puzzle to get people to attempt so solve it. I could make up an answer, but the puzzle is clearly designed to make someone believe there is an answer, but be unable to find it. This reminds me of someone I once knew who played 21 Questions with no particular answer in mind whenever it was his turn.. we finally caught on to his scheme when the talk around the table became centered on how an animal could be bigger than a Ford Escort, weigh less than 200 pounds, have 28 legs, amphibious, and living in the greater Boston area. Suffice to say, he no longer is allowed to play 21 questions anymore at our parties.

Chao, Marilyn Vos Savant

P.S. - Thanks for the E-Mail!"

she's so smart she spells ciao incorrectly?!?!

Chao is how it is spelled in Spanish, it's a Spanish loan word from Italian. You wouldn't fault an Argentinian spelling it Chao, why would you fault an American on spelling it that way? Especially since ciao has a very different pronounciation in English than Italian due to the spelling.

[PokerPatNEU]

Well it only took the smartest woman in the world less than a day to decide that a puzzle has no discernable pattern....When obviously it did. Gg worlds smartest woman.

[hydroseeds]

Ten grand?

Jesus.

[Jeebus Kliest]

Damn..what kind of pharmacy is this

[PokerPatNEU]

It's some kinda promotion i guess heh. All the puzzles are printed up on t-shirts that they hand out in the street. Since no one ever solves it usually, i guess they can afford to have it be a huge prize. I don't really know. It's a lot of money just to solve a puzzle.

[Zangief]

HOLY BALLS!

[lowBoy]

HOLY BALLS!

hahaha

[PokerPatNEU]

HOLY BALLS!

Yeah you can imagine my excitement when i got that email from harks...I had just finished smoking with my room mate and came in and checked it and it looked right...and i was like "Wait a minute, is this really right? Or am i actually just high?" I thought about it for like a half hour and decided It was both. This morning when i found out I was too late i was like heartbroken, i had already figured out how i was going to spend that 9.25k in my head. Thats what i get for getting my hopes up

[kelly_kabob]

I started with the first word with words of the form ABCDCD. I had curara as one of my 20 or so first words, but I couldn't find an English word of the format _ u c u _ _ _ as the last word so I abandoned it.

I sent the challenge to a few buddies and one of them (a computer engineer) came up with this in his email response:

"A Vigenere cipher. (Where you have a multi-letter key -- in this
case, two letters -- which repeats through the message, giving varying
shifting amounts for each message letter. I just happened to be reading about these a couple months ago; that's the only reason I know the name.) I swear, one of my first thoughts was that it might be a Vigenere, except I thought maybe the bolded/regular letters were message/key or vice versa, but that didn't produce anything, so I sort of gave up. I wasn't sure how clever it was trying to be...guess I overshot.

I focused on the fourth (i.e. two-letter) word, figuring that one of
them had to be a vowel, which drastically narrowed down my search space.

After that, I just did a brute force search, using an online Vigenere
cipher encoding/decoding tool to give me the result of each try.

Just a few tries before I got it, I was trying key QX, which gave me:
ciroro cwtc tits eh jicinre

That made me laugh. Then, a few tries later I hit key QL, and I figured that had to be it -- was the first one where every word was at least pronounceable. Couple googles later, and I was sure."

You can try the cipher here
http://sharkysoft.com/misc/vigenere/

Paste the puzzle in the first box and the key is QL. Bingo bango, sugar in the gas tank.

[michael1123]

Yeah so smart it took her 5 clues to realize that animal was fake? So smart she would waste a question in 21 questions on "Does this animal have 28 legs

Hahahahaha.

And Harks ... you are a genius, my friend.