Apparently, there are or once were stone inscriptions carved into a wall in Bebington, in the UK.
Some of the alleged solutions look a trifle thin to me.
See what the Cryptology Dopers can make of them.
“My name And sign is thirty Shillings just, and he that will tell My Name Shall have a Quart on trust, for why is not Five the Fourth Part of Twenty the Same in All Cases?”
This was easier to guess at the time of its inscription. The landlord of the Two Crowns was Mark Noble, the old English coin known as the noble was worth 6 shillings and eightpence, the mark was worth 13 shillings and fourpence, and two crowns were worth 10 shillings. Together these values total 30 shillings.
If accurate, that explains the first part. but what about “for why is not Five the Fourth Part of Twenty the Same in All Cases?” Maybe it refers to another numbering system? It does work with Roman numerals V and XX. Divide X horizontally through the middle and you get V on top of an inverted V, thus four Vs.
Binary numbers were used before the 19th century, so they were known. 10100 (20 in binary) is divisible by 101 (5 in binary), so that works.
Twenty is divisible by five and four in every radix. I doubt that “all cases” refers to different radices, but I don’t know what it refers to. It may be some long-lost reference like the one to the landlord of the pub. It’s suggestive that “Fourth Part” immediately follows a reference to a “Quart” (a fourth of a gallon), but I don’t see the connection.