Category: Puzzles

Puzzle

By Simon

This inscription, sent in by a visitor to Omniglot, appears on silver pendant which is apparently Tuareg.

Tuareg pendant

I think it might be South Arabian.

Can you identify the script and/or decipher it?

Puzzle

By Simon

A visitor to Omniglot sent in this image of some mysterious writing from an inscription on a Biedermeier glass from 1830-1860, a type of Bohemian / Czechoslovakian glass. Can you make any sense of it?

Cursive Cyrillic mystery inscription

It looks like a cursive form of Cyrillic and reads something like “Сйо мень одь Госйос Дир Кторке Тр?імуко Сиус” or “Sjo menʹ odʹ Gosjos Dir Ktorke Tr?imuko Sius”. I have no idea what this might mean.

Puzzle

By Simon

This image were sent in by a visitor to Omniglot. Can any of you identify the symbols on it? They look like a writing system of some kind, but I don’t recognise it.

Rock with mysterious symbols

As we are not sure which way up it should be, the rock is shown both ways up.

Puzzle

By Simon

A visitor to Omniglot would like your help deciphering the writing below. It comes from an old silk painting which appears Chinese, or maybe Japanese.

Writing from old painting

The bit on the left appears to be a signature which I think is 三抆向 (San Wenxiang) and perhaps the name of a town 圓山？ (Yuanshan ?) – a small town in Taiwan.

The other bit of writing might be a poem, though I can’t make out all of the characters (reading vertically from right to left): 昚中斑 (shèn zhōng​ bān) 一面二有​ (yī​ miàn èr yǒu​). The characters in the third row from the right might be Chinese hanzi: 力夕？石 (lì xī​ ? shí), or Japanese katakana: カタノ石 (ka ta no shiki), and in the next line 二而？ (èr ér ?). I’m not sure about the characters in the last line.