Clown Game
Chapter 161 - 161 154 Numbers Eight

Chapter 161: Chapter 154 Numbers Eight Chapter 161: Chapter 154 Numbers Eight The numbers on the wooden board were “12▍324▍5667▍72▍4868▍6▍5298?”

Dr. Zhang’s eyes were fixed tightly on the “6,” the one between the fifth and sixth vertical lines!

He knew he had definitely grasped a clue, but he did not know what the clue was.

So, he quickly called over Liu Yi, “Hey, you there… come look at this!”

Liu Yi leaned in… “What’s up?”

Dr. Zhang, without blinking, looked at the number “6,” and pointed at it as if afraid it would sprout legs and run away, said, “…this number… it’s solitary!”

…

…

“Solitary?” Liu Yi repeated with a frown, and almost in the next second, his eyes lit up, “It’s a letter…!” he suddenly exclaimed.

Dr. Zhang was startled… “A letter?”

“Yeah… it’s a letter!”

Dr. Zhang puzzled, “But, hadn’t we already tried that, and there was no pattern at all with the alphabetical order, and no logic in the algorithms either!”

Liu Yi shook his head, “No sequence, no pattern… just a number representing a letter… like this ‘6,’ representing the letters ‘i’ or ‘a’!”

“Eh…” Dr. Zhang looked confused, “What’s this? How does it feel like you’re just guessing blindly! How is the ‘6’ ‘i’ and ‘a’?”

“Indeed, I’m guessing blindly, but for now this must be the most likely guess, give it a try, it won’t hurt,” Liu Yi said, “Just following this theory, the initial ’12’ could be a word formed by two letters, and ‘324’ could be a three-letter word… it’s just that each number represents a letter without any pattern, meaning… we can only deduce them backwards from this sequence of numbers…”

Dr. Zhang thought briefly and immediately understood the other’s idea, then he took over the conversation, “It means… this ‘6’ represents a solitary letter, and in grammar, the letters that can form a word independently are only ‘a’, which is the quantifier ‘one’, and ‘i’, translated as ‘I’… right!”

Liu Yi nodded affirmatively.

But soon after, Dr. Zhang raised an objection, “But according to your theory, the string of numbers ‘5667’ can’t be explained, as there are no words with two ‘a’s or ‘i’s in the middle!”

Upon hearing this, Liu Yi immediately put on a smug face, “Who said a number can only represent one meaning? There are only up to ‘9’ but there are 24 letters!”

“It’s 26…” Dr. Zhang remarked emotionlessly.

“Eh…” Liu Yi was momentarily lost for words, hurriedly changing the topic, “No matter how many there are, 1 to 9 obviously aren’t enough…”

Dr. Zhang certainly didn’t want to elaborate on this point either, “Okay then, what next?”

“So, one number represents two letters then! Like if there’s not enough food, then two people share one bowl, if there are not enough urinals, then two people use one, if there aren’t enough men, then polygamy, isn’t it the same with clocks! There are 24 hours in a day, but the clock face only has 1 to 12!”

Liu Yi rattled on, and Dr. Zhang’s corner of his eye twitched a few times, those metaphors were a bit awkward, but he did understand the other’s point…

Enough talk, now let us follow Liu Yi’s speculation and make the 26 letters into a circle like a clock face, then fold it over… resulting in a new arrangement with “13” letters.

Through the paper, it could be seen… ‘a’ and ‘n’ overlap, ‘b’ and ‘o’ overlap, and so on…

So now, based on the English letters, a new language method using numbers as “words” had been derived.

And you should be able to guess the meaning of this string of numbers now, right…

…

The first set of numbers “12”… which two-letter word could it be?

he, it, me, my, we, is, do, an, or, in, on, go, so, to, no

Since it is already assumed “6” represents “a” “n” or “i” “v”

So all words containing a, n, i, v are all dismissed.

Among these words, only two words are commonly used as the starting words of questions, which can connect with a “?” at the end.

Although it’s tedious to explain, in simple terms, in everyday conversations, we’re accustomed to use the words “is” and “do” to start…

And since “is” with the letter “i” had already been eliminated, so… “12” represents the letters “do.”

Following the folding algorithm, it was deduced that 1=d and q; 2=o and b… 345 couldn’t be worked out just yet, but the solitary “72” showed us that 7 represents “t” and “g,” thus we knew that the string of numbers “5667” represents the word “5ant,” now just a little brainstorming was needed to guess, 5 represents w and j.

do 3o4 want to—3 is y and l, 4 is u and h.

At this moment, this string of numbers had just become a simple filling in the blanks game.

Basically, this was the elementary level of the “deduction cipher”.

During wartime, these kinds of ciphers were heavily used for communication between front lines, usually these ciphers would have a starting cipher called “lead” as mentioned earlier with the “6,” of course, the real cipher would not use such a simple letter as the “lead,” otherwise, it would be easily decrypted by the enemy if intercepted…

Well, now everyone has also figured out the answer to this “question,” right…

Dr. Zhang quickly deciphered its meaning anyway

————————

“Do you want to hear a joke?”

————————

He furrowed his brow… and spoke somewhat perplexedly.

Meanwhile, Liu Yi bent down to pick up a piece of glass from the ground…

“What are you doing?” Dr. Zhang asked.

“Responding to him,” Liu Yi said as if it were obvious.

…

…

Indeed, even though the meaning represented by the numbers was known, it was still a problem, and the true respondents were Liu Yi and Dr. Zhang themselves…

Is it “yes” or “no”?

Of course, this answer also had to be answered numerically.

Dr. Zhang thought for a moment, then suddenly said, “No… if we use our algorithm, this question can only be answered with ‘no,’ it’s impossible to answer ‘yes’! Because in the numbers there are y and e, but there is no number representing s!”

At that moment, Liu Yi had walked in front of the template, absentmindedly responding, “Yeah, because he didn’t write the full number either, there are 1 to 9 here, but no ‘0’!”

Just after saying that, Liu Yi raised his arm and vigorously engraved three numbers behind the “?”.

“380”