Enigma Puzzle #15

[enigma]

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

[rkmsuf]

Cleveland 116
San Antonio 114

[QuikSand]

That's as good as I've got.

[Coffee Warlord]

Cleveland 116
San Antonio 114

Oh dear lord. I'm in tears over here laughing.

[WSUCougar]

I thought maybe they were all Dutch words for "jerking until your head comes off."

[Maple Leafs]

Given the spelling skills around here, it took me a second to realize this wasn't just someone making a political argument.

[QuikSand]

The blocks don't seem to correspond to words -- too many of them are too long for that.

[Maple Leafs]

Doesn't seem like a random distribution of letters. There are plenty of E's, but no X's and only one Q (which is followed by a U).

Perhaps it's one of those "slide each line up or down a few notches" puzzles?

[rkmsuf]

Oh dear lord. I'm in tears over here laughing.

I'm holistic. You see, you are in disharmony. The throat is the gateway to the lung. Tonsillitis, adenoiditis, is, in Chinese medical terms, an invasion of heat and wind.

[QuikSand]

So, if the "blocks" aren't words... what are they? Totally arbitrary?

[WSUCougar]

Well, as a starting point, there's 27 lines.

Also, if it is one of those "slide each line up or down a few notches" puzzles, there is only one other "u" in the second letter position (for the "q" in the first position).

[digamma]

The blocks don't seem to correspond to words -- too many of them are too long for that.
My initial thought was that they were words spelling out some sort of phrase using a substitution pattern.

There is one item with 16 letters. There are 2 with 12 letters and 2 with 11 letters. As you point out, the selection of 11-16 letter words becomes pretty slim.

My next thought was that each line refers to a phrase in itself, with each letter, perhaps, representing the first word of a phrase. That doesn't seem quite right either, though.

I'm back to the Cavs-Spurs game.

[Maple Leafs]

It's unlikely that they're single words, but they could be a group of short words and/or phrases. Maybe names? Nicknames? Actually, that third one looks kind of like "QuikSand", doesn't it?

[rkmsuf]

It's unlikely that they're single words, but they could be a group of short words and/or phrases. Maybe names? Nicknames? Actually, that third one looks kind of like "QuikSand", doesn't it?


For some reason I see "Quiknads"

[TredWel]

Is it possible that these could be words encoded in the "enigma" style? I've been waiting for someone to do that.

[QuikSand]

Again -- with the length of a few of them, it just doesn't seem likely that the segments are actual words. I'm leaning toward the theory that this is just one long string of (however many) letters, and that the divisions are a red herring.

[Subby]

If you look at it with your head tilted to the left, it looks like a cityscape...but what city?

[QuikSand]

I'm leaning toward the theory that this is just one long string of (however many) letters...

169 total characters, it turns out, if you just string them all together.

[henry296]

Not sure it means anything but the square root of 169 is 13

[enigma]

One more enigma solved.

When all of the letters are arranged in a 13x13 grid, a word search puzzle appears. By circling the names of posters, you receive a hidden message asking for the poster who has the most posts and is not in the grid.

The odd one out was sterlingice. He was the password.

[henry296]

The square root of 169 did mean something :)

[QuikSand]

Here is the 13x13 grid, for those too lazy to reconstruct it...


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

[WSUCougar]

Ingenious. Kudos to both the inventor and the solver.