If TOY SLEEP is “pick lock” then there are a bunch of second nouns it could infer (e.g. “with the hairpin”). Although I’m not sure that any of them particularly fit what we know about the TAKE, and it would seem odd that the lock and lockpick would need to have a matching adjective (ALL) in that case (you don’t need to pick a brass lock with a brass lockpick, after all).
Thinking about what LOOK could be, the most interesting possibility I can think of might be “lock”? Maybe there are colour-coded locks on the door, and the TAKE “locks into” the SLEEP? But that’s a stretch and collides somewhat with other ongoing speculation.
Other possibilities I can think of include screw, clip, slot, plug, and maybe pump? None super great. “Plug” might be plausible, and might fit with ALL being “electric” or something.
1 Like
LOOK=“lock” fits very well in that it can be both a noun and a verb, and works with “LOOK into the SLEEP with a TLAC”. But then we need two verbs (READ and SHIP) that can be sensibly applied to the locks, and neither of them can be “(un)lock” or “open” (since we have those already).
3 Likes
So, we’re stalling fairly badly at the moment because the none of the various proposed translations quite feel right in the context of all of the places that they need to fit. I don’t want to just let this thread peter out, mostly because then it’ll keep gnawing at me and I’ll feel bad if I decide to start another Let’s Play type thread in the future without bringing this one to a conclusion.
We knew going in that our translation was extremely unlikely to perfectly match what the author had in mind when writing the original text (assuming that @zarf did actually have an intended translation in mind and wasn’t just trolling the more obsessive parts of the WalkthroughComp audience). So as long as we can come up with something which is internally self-consistent, we can consider it a victory. Of course, if we end up diverging too far from the original intent, we’re likely to end up grasping at further straws to make the remainder of the text make sense, but we’ve come a pretty long way and I’m fairly certain that most of what we have so far is at least broadly correct.
So I think it’s time to take a punt, commit to one of our tentative translations, and then see how well we can force everything to fit around it. I think there are two ways that we can choose to go at this point:
TAKE ALL = “water bottle”
We can almost certainly make sense of the first scene if we do this. Pouring water on a fire seems like a good way to get rid of it and produce smoke. We end up opening the door by clipping a water bottle into some sort of gauge or nozzle, which seems a bit weird, but not totally implausible. The stumbling block with this choice for me is that in this interpretation, the dragon/demon’s final revenge spell seems to flood the cavern with water, and I cannot for the life of me come up with a plausible translation for MEFALO ZAOL VOLT SWITCH ISKOLEB PE ZAOLB BUELY that makes sense in that context.
TAKE ALL = “magic wand”
The first scene should be okay if we go this way as well, because it’s fairly easy to justify a magic wand doing more-or-less anything. We’ll end up with SLEEP ALL=“magic lock” and TOY SLEEP=“pick lock” which I think is the least convincing part if we go this way. For the sentence which follows the dragon/demon’s final revenge spell, we can go with something like what I suggested way back in post 131 with magic flashing around you and causing you to see silhouettes of the inside of your eyeballs.
So, what should we do?
- Commit to TAKE ALL=“water bottle”
- Commit to TAKE ALL=“magic wand”
- Neither of these are right; keep looking for another translation for TAKE ALL
- Neither of these are right; focus on a different part of the text and hope it provides more clues
- We’ve come as far as we can go; it’s time to put this thread to rest
0
voters
1 Like
I did. The work would have been incomparably more difficult if I were winging it without a plan!
However, as you’ve discovered, I did not create an “Obra Dinn” style plan in which every word was built on the evidence that would let you “solve” it. I just wrote a bunch of stuff. I never intended it to be completely translatable, and indeed, looking back, I’m sure it’s not.
I tried to use each important concept at least twice (e.g., a red ruby and a red scenery item) but I wasn’t rigorous about that.
4 Likes
If we’re in grasping-at-straws mode and I’m forced to try to make sense of the ZAOKNEBY spell: it’s quite striking that the ZAOKNEBY have the personal pronoun ZAO as a prefix. If it’s not coincidence, are we… surrounded by clones? Animated from shadow or water or some-such? Their eyes glowering in the darkness?
1 Like
It’s tantalizing, I agree. I think it’s also strange that the Have You Tried section mentions plural ZAOKNEBY but the text itself only ZAOKNEB. On the other hand, as a rough English parallel, we have YOU and YOUTHS.
Although… ALL ZAOKNEB? “Water (thing)” doesn’t make as much sense as “Magic (thing)”,
VOLT/VOLTO - Head/top? Not sure how to reckon that with ERIC and the description of the pit.
The construction “ISKOLEB of your own eyes” only makes sense to me if ISKOLEB = “reflections” or some rough synonym.
2 Likes
I think we’ve long ago passed the point where I have useful suggestions, but I encourage everyone else to basically fill in the blanks with possible suggestions and see if you run into a contradiction, rather than hesitating until something can be confirmed.
Also, don’t give up!
It’s a new year, so I’ll point out another reference which nobody would ever have caught. (But it doesn’t help with any of your current stuck-on sentences.)
When I wrote this, I had recently visited the Smithsonian and been impressed by this exhibit:
https://www.familyjewelers.com/blog/2024/Nov/30/smithsonian-saturday-22892-carat-american-golden-t/
5 Likes
Wow! That really is big enough to creln your firf on! Maybe even to break your foot!
1 Like
That is a seriously large topaz, although I have to admit I was really hoping to read in the Wikipedia article something like “in 1998, museum curator Arthur Foolish broke several of his teeth while attempting to demonstrate that he could fit the topaz inside his mouth.”
3 Likes
The mental image of someone trying to secretly weigh a record-setting topaz on a meat scale in a grocery store is fun.
1 Like
This feels far too big to break teeth on or even hang your hat on—I’m feeling much more confident in “break your foot/toe on” now.
So, practically speaking, I guess this suggests that PACKAGE is yellow, not green (or maybe PAC is yellow and PACKAGE is a compound word with yellow in it)? Does that help at all with guessing what LOOK means? Solving LOOK would help with the TAKE ALL, but if the colour labels are arbitrary then this doesn’t really help.
1 Like
I think the LOOK are still controls of some sort; we had them as red and green before since those colours often appear in opposition to one another, but since both controls are used in opening the door, having them be red and yellow instead doesn’t make much difference. The biggest clue is still that LOOK can appear as both a verb and a noun; I think our guesses at this point run to “lock”, “slide” and “lever”?
2 Likes
Yeah, LOOK has to be a word that makes sense as:
- A noun: a type of control, which there are two of on the panel (in different colors), which can have two different actions applied to it (READ and SHIP).
- A verb: one object LOOKs in (or into?) a mechanism with a click. This activates the mechanism.
Personally, I think READ and SHIP are most likely “push” and “pull”. “Slide” makes the most sense for the verb side, but “lever” makes more sense for the noun side; I don’t think “lock” works as a noun here. Between the two, I like “slide” more, but I’m not fully happy with it. It can’t be “button”, “switch”, or “wheel”.
1 Like
“Stick” is another option I mentioned earlier.
2 Likes
“Screw” and “wedge” are also outside possibilities.
True, but I don’t think those are plausible here—we already have TURN, and I can’t think of two obvious things to do to a wedge on a control panel.
1 Like
I updated the transcript with a handful of further likely-seeming words (diff). I discovered that in a previous update, I put in MEFAL=“flood”; having forgotten this, I’d been intending to put in MEFAL=“fill” and swap in a different synonym for TOKE (previously “fill”). I wondered about TOKE=“pack” (giving TOKEN RO SE ERIC=“packed to the top”) and then I started wondering if there’s any significance to the fact that a “pack” (TOKE) can be a container and what this means for the theory that a TAKE is a (presumably different) kind of container …
1 Like