This contest closed on February 15, 2010. A new contest will appear soon.
Here was the challenge:
Top-Level Thinking
The following list of cities encodes in some way a sentence about a well-known board game.
Can you figure out what the sentence is?
Bangkok
Asmara
Madrid
Saint-Denis
Tirana
Tripoli
Oslo
Luxembourg City
Avarua
New Delhi
Bern
Quito
Nairobi
Belgrade
Here’s a hint, in cryptogram form:
GO TF GR GEODXE DF TS TF GR TLDS.
Solution: The cities are capitals of:
Thailand
Eritrea
Spain
Réunion
Albania
Libya
Norway
Luxembourg
Cook Islands
India
Switzerland
Ecuador
Kenya
Serbia
The plaintext of the hint reads:
TV IS TO TUVALU AS IQ IS TO IRAQ.
The extensions .tv and .iq are the Internet top-level domains (TLDS—see final cipher word in hint) for Tuvalu and Iraq. The TLDs for the other countries are as follows:
TH
ER
ES
RE
AL
LY
NO
LU
CK
IN
CH
EC
KE
RS
Read in order, they make the sentence “There’s really no luck in checkers.”
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