unforum

[Lilian]

just had a couple of whims and tried

[Hunting4Treasure]

Might this be another one of those connect-the-dot things? I wouldn't know where to begin... but it might spell something out... ?

*edit*
Another thought... This has been bothering me... The whole Earth (except for the west, on this 'map') wouldn't be covered in a huge cloud, would it? Do I see a big patch of 'green', to the west and south-east? It seems like all these countries were super-imposed on (maybe) a country or island hidden beneath that cloud... ? It kind of looks like the view we would see from an airplane... ? I don't know what connection all these countries have, but now I'm more curious about what's under that cloud!

I don't even have this card, and it's driving me nuts!

[kdgms]

I thought the local name for each country might help

[Fuseunderground]

I'm afraid we have had this list already,
so consider yourself trouted.

although I still think it's the key to the solution.
But there are too many choices of names to pin down a definitive list.

[jssiegel]

what about the word "tongue" in each language?

[domroberts]

Hi,

New to the forums, havent got this card either. No spoiler on this as Im merely conjecturing here on the discussions of others.

Looking at Von's hint... "To really understand a country you have to go native" - could this mean an idiomatic solve is called for?

Idioms are the part of language generally understood to natives only.
Worth a try for those of you working on this one.

Cheers,

Dom

EDIT - link added to this interesting transcript about ancient proto-languages -

[chimera245]

On a whim I got to thinking of two areas.

1) The Brits are famous for contributing the Mother of all Parliaments (the Westminster system) to a lot of places - some of which (but alas not others) were in the list.

You can scratch:

[doublecross]

Surely this card is the most solvable (soluble?) of the remaining ones. It is the only non-silver, after all.

We have:

28 'country' (one not technically a country) outlines on a swirly cloud-like background
A clue saying that to really understand a country you have to go native

Er, that's it.

This suggests:

The choice of countries used is important.
The native language of the countries is important.
Therefore, (the initials of) something in the native language of each country in some order will probably give the answer.

But what?

The most likely candidate is the country's name in its own language. Likely because it is the most obvious choice and gives a good distribution of letters (e.g. all the vowels). Difficult because there is more than one version for a few of them. No options appear to include C D F J P Q V W X or Z, though.
There could also be each language in that language - less likely because there are so many repeats.
What else could it be?

What order?

Alphabetical order of the country in English?
Geographical order (e.g. north to south)?
Order by size, population, capital in alphabetical order, international dialling code, national day, year of independence (all tried by me!), other feature of countries?

Other ways to solve

Choose a word as a 'crib' to see what order that might put the countries in. E.g. if it is countries in their own languages, there are words such as LANGUAGE(S), NUMBER(S) and TONGUE(S) that can be extracted.

/end of brain dump

[doublecross]

For the record, independence dates gives:

[ramsfan]

don't expect this to help, but when I was writing out the letters the other day I noticed you can get glosso which with linguo is one of the medical prefixes for tongue. However you can't get glossopharyngeal and I couldn't find a word with glossolaryngeal or get all the letters.

[BBuck]

I realise that this could become a very long thread full of anagrams, but I'm working on the basis that there must either be a question or an instruction in the anagram.

A question is tricky as there is no "w". But for an instruction, there is "You must seek...". This uses up half of the "u"s and the "k", which are less common. I can get "German bull's tongue" from the rest, but I'm sure there are other options.

For the record, it's not "Stierzunge".

[kniteli]

just to let you guys know,

United States is almost invariably referred to by us natives as America (as incorrect as it may be).

[Hunting4Treasure]

kniteli,
I mentioned anagramming the first letters of the 'countries' and getting the word LANGUAGE, on the 4th page of this thread.

[kie_yeo]

if we're going down the line of rearranging 28 letters to make a set of words that make sense then this might help -
http://www.oneacross.com/anagrams/

also how about international car codes? -
http://users.pandora.be/worldstandards/carcodes.htm#a

[chimera245]

I just had to share:

UMTEEN GURU GLOSSAL TUBE MONKEYS

with you.