Daily Archives: August 26, 2013

Aug 26 2013

Nutty Search Engine Results (on my WP Stats Page!)

New York 576

If you’re familiar with my blog, consider whether the phrase “headless horsman [no e!] nude” should match anything in my WordPress blog. (I added the [no e!] part myself to emphasize that I do know how to spell the word correctly.)

Well, I was checking the search engine results on my site stats page at WordPress, and that was one of the search engine terms that someone used and not only found my blog in the search results, but even clicked on it.

I’m afraid if the searcher was looking for anything “nude,” they must have been gravely disappointed. (Of course, now I’ve used that word twice in this post. I hope I haven’t created any future disappointments.)

The funny part, to me, is that the search term misspelled “horseman,” has another word that totally doesn’t apply to my blog, and still pulled up my blog in the results (and there were only three words in the search).

Curious, I went to Google and tried this search myself. I was persistent enough to find my blog on page 9 of the results. However, I deliberately didn’t click my search result: Since the result clearly isn’t relevant, I didn’t want Google to get any crazy ideas. (Well, now if everyone reading this blog post does this, I guess I’ll be responsible for creating mayhem after all…)

Ordinarily, the search terms make sense. For example, I see search terms like “image compression Word,” which actually is a topic of one of my posts.

Have you figured out which of my previous posts might be a search result for “headless horsman nude,” (remember, there was no ‘e’ in “horseman”)? It was the post on Lyndhurst Castle, from when I attended a wedding in Tarrytown, New York. (I hope this silly post doesn’t start showing up in the “Lyndhurst Castle” search results now. If it does, I guess they can always click on the link below to my other post.)

https://chrismcmullen.wordpress.com/2013/05/29/photos-from-lyndhurst-castle-in-tarrytown-new-york-sleepy-hollow/

I reread the post, but don’t see any e-less horsemen… You can see the rear end of the statue in the foreground of one of the castle images, but I don’t believe I used the word “nude” anywhere…

Good grief! 🙂

Aug 26 2013

Dis-a-vowel-ed (A Simple Word Puzzle)

I have a little puzzle for you. Don’t worry, it’s easy. You can figure it out. 🙂

See if you can figure out what the following puzzle says. It’s in English! Really, it is! Following the puzzle is a hint. If you need help, read the hint (but not the answer). When you want to check that you’ve solved the puzzle correctly, then you can check the answer.

PUZZLE

O cen nut omegoni why yua moght nut bi ebli tu andirstend thos!

Ell yua hevi tu du os ripleci iech vuwil woth thi vuwil thet pricidis ot, whiri thi littir ‘a’ pricidis thi littir ‘e’ (will, nut qaoti, bat thet os thi ginirel odie).

Hevi yua gut ot fogarid uat yit?

Thos os yuar lest chenci.

HINT

If you didn’t mean to read this far yet, you better lift your eyes in a hurry!

Ready or not, here comes the hint: Try reading it aloud and you might recognize some of the words. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to consider the title of this post, too. 🙂

SOLUTION

Here comes the solution. So if you don’t want to read it yet, look up fast. All of the consonants are correct. The vowels are correctly positioned, but each vowel has been changed. More precisely, each vowel was replaced with the vowel that follows it. For example, ‘a’ was replaced with ‘e,’ ‘e’ was replaced with ‘i,’ and so on; also, the ‘u’ was replaced with ‘a.’

For example, the word ‘idea’ becomes ‘odie.’ Note that one sentence from the puzzle has a phrase that reads, “where the letter ‘u’ precedes the letter ‘a,’” in which the ‘u’ changed to ‘a’ and the ‘a’ changed to ‘e.’

I thought about changing the ‘u’ to a ‘y’ and the ‘y’ to an ‘a,’ but only when the ‘y’ makes the vowel sound, but I decided to keep things simple. 🙂

If you had to read the solution to figure out how to solve the puzzle, it isn’t too late to see if you can now translate the puzzle text.

ANSWER

Following is the translation of the puzzle text using the technique described in the solution. Don’t read the following text unless you are ready to check your answer.

I can not imagine why you might not be able to understand this!

All you have to do is replace each vowel with the vowel that precedes it, where the letter ‘u’ precedes the letter ‘a’ (well, not quite, but that is the general idea).

Have you got it figured out yet?

This is your last chance.