Help with a brain teaser, please

Factual Questions
1

There’s not a lot riding on this - coffee daily for a year and bragging rights.

Background:

The brain teaser was devised by a male friend of my female friend. Apparently the answer is not personal, although they both work in post-secondary education, yet at different institutions, so there may be some tie in. They also vacation at Disney World regularly.

Teaser:

ThLaBeYb is for you and ThBTaCu is for me.

What are they?

/Teaser
So can anyone help crack the code? I’d like to say there’d be a coffee in it for you, but instead I’ll just be content to know that this board community DOES in fact hold the smartest group of people online.

2

Those all appear to be element symbols, in case that helps anyone any.

Broken apart they are: Th, La, Be, Yb, and Th, B, Ta, Cu, .

These correspond to element numbers 0, 5, 4, 7*, and 9*, 5, *3, *9, which are thallium, lanthanum, beryllium, ytterbium, boron, tantalum, copper.

3

Elementary Dear Heckity…thanks to Q.E.D. it is easy to tell that they are the phone numbers. They are now available for calling in southern Ontario.

4

The first thing I notice is that both of those “words” seem to be constructed from symbols for elements. So the first one would be “Thorium Lanthanum Berillium Ytterbium”, and the second would be “Thorium Boron Tantalum Copper”. The corresponding atomic numbers would be “0 5 4 0" and "9 5 3 2”. Past that, though, I can’t tell much.

5

You really need to type with more than one finger, Chronos. :wink:

6

Okay - got it . . . thanks so much. Teach me to put such things on the internet. Now I hope only folks mature enough to not act on those um, elemental numbers will read this post.

See? I knew you were the smartest folks - and therefore entitled to those bragging rights . . . and a coffee should we ever meet.

7

Not sure if this helps at all, but the instant I read between the teasers, a song from an episode of the Simpsons popped into my head. Bart, Lisa, and Aunt Selma (I think) are at Duff Gardens (a Disney World knock-off). In a boat ride through automated puppets, we hear a ditty repeated over and over, “Duff beer for me, Duff beer for you. I’ll have a Duff, you’ll have one too.”

Now it’s stuck in my head and I can’t get it out!

Incidentally, in ASCII those elemental numbers become
“Z 9 (ETX) F (EOT) for you and Z (ENQ) I (GS) N for you.”

(are we getting closer?)

8

Visit FAO Schwartz and it will be gone, replaced with “WELCOME TO OUR WORLD, WELCOME TO OUR WORLD, WELCOME TO OUR WORLD OF TOYS!!!” How those employees keep their sanity is beyond me.

Oh yeah, and you guys are smart!