What is the logic of this puzzle?

Factual Questions
1

This is a puzzle that I know the answer to, but can’t figure out how to get the answer from the question.

It appears in the game “Space Rangers 2”, and I was only able to solve it by trial and error. I found a pattern after multiple runs, but I’m still wondering how it’s solvable as given.

One possible hint - this game was translated from Russian, so it’s possible there’s something in the way Russian numbers are written out that makes more sense.

Here is the puzzle, roughly as it would appear in the game. Unfortunately I stupidly lost that save game, and due to the game’s nature it’s difficult to go back to it again, so this is not an exact quote. I’m 97% sure, though, that it contains all the necessary information:

The natives of this planet have an unusual
language that few have been able to decipher.
Their method of writing numbers, in particular,
is quite odd. If you figure this out, I’ll
give you another piece of advice for free:

If ‘hoo di-hell izzat’ is 607,
‘gou-tuu hell’ is 56,
‘tuu-hell wizzat’ is 810,
and ‘izzat sou’ is 25,
then what number is
‘tuu-hell hoo di-gou izzat’?

A. 256
B. 278
C. 678
D. 872
My next post will detail the pattern I found, so if you want to try and work it on your own, don’t read on.

This is the right answer:

B. 278

2

Before I wrote over my save game, I was able to go back and re-run the puzzle several times. What I found was that different numbers were used, but eventually I discovered that 8 patterns showed up, and that the multiple choice answers were always chosen from a group of 8 numbers - so each wrong answer was an answer to one of the alternate versions of the puzzle.

By looking at the numbers given, I was eventually able to see a pattern in the digits. I did not test every single combination, but I did test three of them and it worked out correctly.

It is, in fact, entirely possible that you’re expected to solve the puzzle in this fashion (by reloading and figuring out the pattern, kind of the way you had to solve ‘Hacker’). It would not be out of the spirit of the game. If I remember, when you do answer correctly, the questioner gets a bit angry and says, “You couldn’t have known that! Someone must have told you!” which might indicate something, or it might not. People in the game frequently talk to you like that.

Here are the listings of the question/answer pairs. The first four numbers correspond to the numbers in the question as given ( the first one is ‘hoo di-hell izzat’, the second ‘gou-tuu hell’, etc.), followed by an answer. The * indicates confirmed as correct.

(607,56,210,85) : 872
(207,52,810,65) : 678
(208,52,710,65) : 687 *
(805,78,610,27) : 256
(708,67,210,56) : 582 *
(206,82,510,78) : 765
(206,52,710,85) : 867
(607,56,810,25) : 278 *

The pattern I found, by the way is :

First digit of the last number-
last digit of the first number-
first digit of the third number

I don’t see how those correspond with the words in the problem, however.

3

Looks like it was lost in translation: http://www.proz.com/kudoz/1297872.

4

Thanks for that. I guess I worked harder than I was expected to.

Can anyone who reads Russian explain how it works?

From that link :

5

It doesn’t. Sorry. As in, it doesn’t make any more sense to me in Russian as it does in English, except the Russian system is clearly not applicable to the English translation.
Basically there is a fixed assignment that gives each word a digit or a multiple of 10. The numbers are read the equivalent of right to left and ’ ’ is addition with ‘-’ being multiplication. It works out that it only gets multiplied by “-да” (10) and “-та” (100).
So “чеза хрэн-та — 805” is 5+8*100. The way you’re supposed to figure this out is by symbolic substitution.

Trying this on your English version does not seem to work as nicely.
hoo di-hell izzat = 607
gou-tuu hell = 56,
tuu-hell wizzat = 810,
izzat sou = 25,
tuu-hell hoo di-gou izzat = ?

Ok, using the same system exactly won’t work at all, but if you stare at it long
enough you get a headache. I’ll take a break later and maybe give it another try.

6

I’m confused. Your first paragraph says the riddle makes no sense in Russian. But then you immediately go on to explain how the riddle makes sense in Russian.

What am I not understanding?

-FrL-

7

It makes exactly the same amount of sense in Russian as in English. Except the puzzles are different, and the Russian one is much easier to solve. The easiness has nothing to do with the Russian language. Somebody just made the puzzle harder when translating because they probably thought it was too easy (Which it is).
чеза хрэн-та — 805
хрэн ти-да — 78
да ладна-та — 610
ти пнял-да — 27
ладна чеза-да пнял-та - ??

Might as well be (by substituting letters for words):

A B-C = 805
B D-E = 78
E F-C = 610
D G-E = 27
F A-E G-C = ???

This is very easy to solve by just staring at it. You will notice that “-” is used in a special way, there’s only “-C” and “-E” and “-C” occurs in 3 digit numbers and “-E” occurs in 2 digit numbers. Trying “-” being multiplication, C = 100 and E = 10 will quickly yield the result. Applying the same principle to the OP’s version yields a much more complex puzzle with a different system.

hoo di-hell izzat = 607
gou-tuu hell = 56,
tuu-hell wizzat = 810,
izzat sou = 25,
tuu-hell hoo di-gou izzat = ?

Can be:

A B-C D = 607
E-F C = 56
F-C G = 810
D H = 25
F-C A B-E D = 278

Here we have “-E”, “-F” and “-C”. C = 100 doesn’t work because of E-F C = 56. C = 10 would require F or E to be 23. Basically it’s not as easy but I’m not convinced there is no answer.

If you consider “-” to be a linking operator (as in it simply keeps two words as one) then it can be represented as

A X D = 607
Y C = 56
Z G = 810
D H = 25
Z A W D = ?278?

Now if you just fill it in from first digits it becomes: 8 7 W 2 = ?278?

Which is exactly what the OP already came up with just in terms of symbols, but what to do with W and why is it in reverse, and how does the logic work out, I haven’t yet figured out.

8

You can solve the russian puzzle as it’s written, understanding the words aren’t necessary.

Here:

If ‘чеза хрэн-та’ is 805
‘хрэн ти-да’ is 78
‘да ладна-та’ is 610
and ‘ти пнял-да’ is 27
then what number is
‘ладна чеза-да пнял-та’?

9

In case it’s still not clear from the posts above:

Huge clue:

Each line is an equation where the spaces should be replaced by a plus sign and the dashes should be replaced by a multiplication sign. Then figure out which numbers make the equations true and substitute in for the last equation.

The solution:

[spoiler]чеза = 5
хрэн = 8
та = 100
ти = 7
да = 10
ладна = 100
пнял = 2

5 + 8 x 100 is 805
8 + 7 x 10 is 78
10 + 6 x 100 is 610
7 + 2 x 10 is 27

6 + 5 x 10 + 2 x 100 = 256[/spoiler]

The american translation just doesn’t work.