Does this count as innuendo?
You outdo yourself each time, bib. Would that we all had your work ethic and attention to detail. (I’ve given up on trying to ever attempt your level of humor).
Excellent. 
This answer amused and interested me so much that, in homage… I made a lame quiz. rolls eyes at self
Which Indecipherable Script Are You?
I am such a geek.
Great job Bibliophage - I loved it! So Thoreau!
I am a great fan of word puzzles and with extreme interest read the part about Bauer deciphering the Ugaritic texts by, it seems, a trial and error assignment of letter for letter tranfers from a Semitic language model. This is the same method that I’ve used with word jumble or puzzles - if you know the frequently used letters and common prefix/suffix usages it becomes a fairly simple exercise to “plug and chug”, particularly if you have a clue as to the gist of the sentence/text (even though sometimes these clues are indirect or a pun related to the jumbled text). Of course these puzzles are English to English, but I think I could do the same thing in English to Spanish or vice-versa (even with only a passable knowledge of Spanish). I’ve also used this method on crossword puzzles, and sometimes head down a wrong path by assigning a word that fits the clue/space, and leads to other assumptions that result in not completing the crossword correctly.
My questions/observations are: does anyone/everyone else do these puzzles like this (trial and error substitution); and how much more difficult must this be when the language you’re trying to decpher is “unknown” but may be related to/have characteristics similar to an existing language?
Why are you comparing him to Thoreau? We don’t want to insult the man.
You think I’m kidding. In his report, bibliophage achieved a level of clarity and expression of which Thoreau could not even dream.
[sub]Pssssst, Spatial, it’s a pun on “thorough.”[/sub]
Oh. I knew that. Really. I was, uh, testing you all. Yeah, that’s it. Testing. :o
I thought I’d gotten the Harrappan paper pun, but it turns out I’d just misremembered the name as ‘Rappan’. Or was that the pun?
PS I haven’t been wondering about that constantly all this time… it just struck me just now…
Dear Sir,
Please Refer the URL:
http://murugan.org/research/valluvan.htm
Thanks & Regards,
N.S.VALLUVAN.
Well… um… yeah. And your point is?
It’s supposed to be a response to this thread:
I’ll see if I can find a mod to merge it in where it belongs.
Welcome to the boards, N.S.
Done, thanks, Unc – CKDH
:smack: Now I see what the reason for the post is! Carry on!
I can maybe buy that the Indus script carvings are meant to represent astronomical phenomena, but I’m not following the argument at all. What does it mean, for instance, to say that Draco is the dominant constellation in the northern sky? For that matter, is there any indication that the Indus civilization recognized the same set of stars as “Draco”? It would be quite reasonable to consider the stars of any particular constellation to be parts of other constellations, especially for a constellation as large and spread out as Draco.
Rappan? Oo-wee!
Now tell me more about rongorongo… What was that island again…