So then ilshtarnh is southnorthwesteast?
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Err. I hadn’t thought that far ahead…
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This all reminds me of the fact that left and right are (almost) impossible to distinguish from each other mathematically or physically. It was thought for centuries that the laws of physics work symmetrically under reflection. So if you were somehow able to communicate with a very distant alien civilization, it would be impossible to distinguish between ‘left’ and ‘right’ (unless you embedded it in your signal somehow, like making the wave a corkscrew). Even in a lot of dictionaries I’ve seen definitions for ‘left’ and ‘right’ being things like ‘the direction of the setting sun when facing north’.
But there is an experiment called the Wu experiment that showed that cobalt atoms experience decay from the weak force more often in one direction of spin than another (so something like, more particles are emitted in the direction from which, if you look that way, it’s spinning counterclockwise than in the direction from which, if you look that way, it’s spinning clockwise).
So maybe we should look for some decaying cobalt atoms in the transcript to see if we can nail this down.
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Fascinating! I’d always thought that the world was symmetric under reflection, and all the right-handedness in physics was an artifact of our insistence on using vectors for things that are properly bivectors (rotations, magnetic fields). I’ll have to look into that experiment, it might undermine a lot of my mathematical arguments…
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The N response is clearly an Inform inventory description. From this we have:
N = i[nventory]; likely “NOL” or a related noun with the same stem
NOL-O = to carry + (present participle)
WIRN-O = to provide + (present participle)
FOIT = light
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Or more mundanely, maybe we will eventually get a sunrise or other hints about which direction is which 
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Since the voting for which name to give which direction seems to be unexpectedly close, I’m going to let that run a little longer. But in the meantime, I’d like to take a look at the commands which the player gives in the transcript.
Some of them we are pretty clear on already:
- THINK (INFO)
- STOP (SCORE)
- X (LOOK - are there any likely verbs beginning with X elsewhere in the text that could be “look”?)
- N (INVENTORY, possibly short for NOLO, i.e. literally “carrying”?)
- I (go ILSH)
- IT (go ILSHTARNH)
- Z (go ZERNH)
- EAT (DOWN)
- PRAY GET MOUSE (GIVE get mouse)
- NW WAKE (EXAMINE wake - not clear yet what NW might be short for?)
- DRESS BOOK (press book)
- STATION (EXIT)
- WATCH (AMUSING, although exactly what’s going on with the grammar of the verb itself here may not be fully resolved)
- XYZZY (QUIT)
Many of the others involved currently-unknown verbs but seem like fairly straightforward VERB NOUN constructions:
- UPHOLSTER SEAT
- SWORD WAVE
- FAN DANCE
- FENCE TAKE
- NEXT TURN
- SMOOTH DUCK
- DOWN ANESTHETI
- FISH SWIM
- READ LOOK UP (we know that the look up is an object of some sort, and UP is included in the command because a look package is also in scope)
- SHIP PACKAGE
- TOY SLEEP
- PICK POLISH APPLE
- TRIM CORSET
- PUT GREY ON BLUE (a multiple object command)
- HELP MAN
Then we have:
- STAKE
This sounds like maybe a magic word of some sort, like those in the original Adventure?
- EYE MIRROR POSE UNDO
We know that pose is “on”, so this is an unknown two-noun verb.
- LISTEN FOLKS DRAW
This one puzzles me, because DRAW is a noun, but FOLKS appears nowhere else. It could be a preposition, but we think we’ve identified all of the obvious ones. Or it could be a two-word verb?
- DRINK DRINK
What common parser command involves the same word twice? I think this has to be SWITCH SWITCH, right?
- PRESENT BOWL
From the disambiguation prompt which follows is, this has to be something like “push” or “turn”, with the offered options being either left/right or clockwise/counterclockwise.
- PLAY STRING
This is also a VERB NOUN construction, but it causes our location to change. To me, the most likely interpretation of this is that play is “enter”.
There are three commands that cause objects to enter our inventory:
- ZRBLM TAKE ALL
- EGG STAND ON EAST
- LIGHT FIRE
The response to taking multiple objects is to acknowledge each with “eggen”, which is “taken” in the Inform library. If egg is “take” then light is presumably the other common synonym, “get”, and light fire is “get all”. When the verb zrblm is used, we are taking the take all out of some sort of container, and I think the parser providing the clarification message “(pise se falok)” is consistent with how Inform responds to the command “REMOVE <object currently in or on something>”. So zrblm is “remove”.
Finally we have three more two-noun commands:
- UNLOCK DOOR SWITCH PLOVER
The plover is an item in our inventory, and all of the uses of switch in the transcript are consistent with it meaning “with”.
- ABOUT PAINT
The parser responds with the clarification “(switch se plover)”. So whatever the plover is, it must be a sufficiently obvious tool for abouto paint that the game is happy to infer it without the player saying so explicitly.
- SWING KNIFE LION
The game responds by clarifying “(swing se door knife lion)”. I believe this is consistent with how Inform responds when you ASK ABOUT <topic> and there’s only one NPC present who you could reasonably be asking (in this case, the door).
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I deduced FAN = read/say based on E brox fooni fan "Stake". (A brox fooni reads “Stake”.) which would make the result of FAN DANCE a description of DANCE. It’s likely also conjugated as TOFAN in "Stake," tofan a brox fooni.
In language puzzles, it’s usually easiest to write best guesses early and revise often, instead of waiting for conclusive results, so I would put your guesses in (maybe in a color to indicate less certainty if you want) so that there’s a clearer picture of what’s going on.
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XOL perhaps? It makes sense for “to look” to be very similar to OXOL, “to see”?
Or maybe X is short for OXOL itself (and O isn’t used because it conflicts with some other standard command?)
If “Stake” is an Adventure-style magic word, we very likely have:
- BORYL = maze
- ZILFAN = passage
- CALAMI = twisty
- FIRE = all (as reinforced by the LIGHT FIRE you noticed)
- PREL = alike
SYLN = to be (are)- BROX = voice
- FOONI = hollow
By the way, would you mind pinning the link to the translation-in-progress to the top of the thread? I always have trouble finding it.
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Yeah, I was thinking it stood for oxol.
It could also be “tell”, but it’s got to be one of the common conversation verbs for sure.
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On second thought
- SYL = to go?
Do we know how verbs conjugate? Is -N the third-person plural present?
We also have the very similar BISYL and SHISYL in the transcript. From context BISYL seems to mean to increase or to move.
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Yes, it might have gotten lost in the shuffle but I did propose syln was “go”.
As far as we know, verbs don’t inflect for person at all. “You are” and “it is” use the same verb form.
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I believe someone mentioned this earlier in thread as well, but it’s a near certainty that “VA” which appears many places in the transcript is the pronoun “it”.
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I edited the top post to add the link at the end, but it’s not been updated for a couple of days because I haven’t had a chance to sit down at my computer. Syln and its derivatives and the pronoun va, along with fire, switch and knife will all go in in the next update.
I was wondering when someone would point out that the boryl is a maze of twisty little passages. The verb calam (twist) appears surprisingly often in the transcript. It really ought to be “all different” (as in the pirate maze), rather than “all alike”, since the room descriptions vary, but prel makes a lot more sense as “like” or “alike” thank it does as “different”.
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Yes, I prefer “like” to “different” since in the SWORD WAVE response,
Se wave fonn pase zaol sipass prel e gorong. Va bi ycle “Dance”.
PREL seems to introduce a simile.
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I think CALAM is likely “to turn” more generally rather than “to twist.”
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Firpay xol wornki. Zao oxol e wave nekko pase se dorop pe seat lede.
If FIRE is “all”, then could “FIRPAY” (a plural noun) be “everything”? Along with XOL = “to look”, “LISTEN FOLKS” being a compound verb (or verb + preposition) meaning something like “put on”, we would get the rather promising
put on DRAW
Everything looks WORNSKI. You see a WAVE NEKKO in the DOROP of SEAT LEDE.
I have some more thoughts, but I’ll stop hogging this thread for a while!
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“Everything looks …” is definitely compelling but I’m unsure what to make of LISTEN FOLKS. Prepositions mostly seem to have similar roles to those they have in English, in which case the ON in PUT ON should be pose, and I can’t think of any other two-word phrases for donning an item of clothing or equipment.
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It could also be “take off”, if the DRAW is a helmet or sunglasses or some such.
There’s no “(being worn)” annotation on the draw in the inventory, though.
I updated the translation but I haven’t had time to write a proper “installment” yet. I’ve added most of the vocab from this thread, except for va = “it”; that one appears a lot, should possibly be translated differently depending on what it refers to and also has a bunch of variants. Val is probably possessive “its”, vaob looks like it could be “itself”, and then there’s also vas.
Further questions to mull over in the meantime:
- If oxol is “see” and xol is “look” (as in “it looks harmless”), what is xolne? I don’t think we had a theory about a -ne suffix yet?
- What is the relationship between fan and tofan?
- What is the relationship between light (“get”) and lighan? I thought that lighan might be the imperative form, but it’s also used to describe something that the door does.
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