unforum

[Reason]

[PUZZLE] #184 - Purple - Love Letters

[Leeravitz]

Is the only thing that Tippi girl is interested in love?? Makes me wonder again - could she have been The Advisor?

[Leeravitz]

This sounds like an interesting (and tricky) card - I imagine, with reference to 'lexical game' in the last verse, and the fact that the card is called 'love *letters*' that the solution has something to do with hidden codes, but I can't see the point at the moment...

Again, 'there are no more secrets between us' - does this hint that the code is be found between the lines of the passage - something to do with recurrent letters, or acrostics or...?

[Atrophied]

for line length analysis and vertical reading...

[Seej]

Well, gorged means eaten a lot, boozed means you've drunk a lot of alcohol, but what's kava'd? The only thing I can find to do with it is a Hawiian drug called Kava. Here's an article about the effects that actually mentions the phrase kava'd. Basically, the effects seem to be of the depressant/tranquiliser sort.

[Leeravitz]

I wonder if the presence of the 'X' is meant to supply us with any clues - that's a tough one to call until we see the card, as it could just be a purely decorative element.

[BennyH]

Well, the Tennyson-style apostrophies make me suspect that it is the lengths of words being played with, and not the actual meaning that we should be looking at.

That and the fact that the words themselves make no sense.

Isn't kava a coffee liqeur? Oh no, that's...kahlua.

[DogsHead]

[Enigmaster]

[Reason]

I'm scanning the image now, hold your horses

[Leeravitz]

Bizarre. Clearly, the card is meant to be playing around with a sort of facsimile 16th/17th century European style (there's something Shakespearean in the tone), but actually seeing the scan, it's even more baffling than it sounded at first.

It's worth noting that both the placing of the apostrophes, and the simple fact that the sentences don't really make much sense, imply that the wording has been chosen deliberately in order to code something...

but it seems worthy of purple status to me...

One thought: given the 'historical' feel of the card, perhaps we should be looking at some 'historical' method of code working, such as anagramming, acrostics etc.

[Leeravitz]

One further possibility that I've not been able to make headway with:

The presence of the 'X'. This could be read in several ways:

1. It's decorative, and represents a kiss.

2. It's decorative, and represents the seal for the letter.

3. It's a tacit clue - perhaps, say, a code susbtitution that begins in a modulo which starts from 'X', and then runs 'YZABCD' etc???

[cassandra]

Or X and O are 'love letters.'

[toongoon]

to be gorged, boozed and kava'd all seem to imply being slowed, impeded or lathargic but how this plays into the puzzle I am not so sure. And how these woudl relate to a word game yet be in vain is a stumper :

[StarryNight]

Maybe this message isn't meant for is, but for Sente:

Looking at line 3 "no more secrets between us", "us" could mean the letters "u" and "s".

In the first 2 lines, there is only 1 "s", but there are 3 "u"s. If you take the letters between "s" and the last "u", you get "uitforpiq", which is an anagram for "Prof I quit".

Ummm... OK, maybe not.