Lost In Translation
โฉ๏ธ Back to puzzleSolved! ๐ += 25;
Fortunately, it turns out that it’s just technical issues.
All one has to do is notice the FILE SPECIAL FORMAT,
and convert the Korean symbols back into English.
There’s a computer workstation located nearby, conveniently, so you fire it up and start feeding the handbook into it. The machine hums softly as it starts processing the large amount of input.
You admit to yourself you’re looking forward to seeing what comes out. You hope that with the processed handbook, you’ll feel ready to tackle some more serious problems in your newfound role as assistant director.
Finally the machine spits out an output, and you grab it to see the translation. The first few lines read:
์ค๋ฌผ ์ค๋ฌผ์ ๋๋ฅผ ๋ง์ ์ ์์ด
์ผ์ดํ ์ฐ๋ง ๋ฉ๊ฐ ๋ฏน์ค
150 ๊ณก ๋งค์์
๋ฒ์ ์ค ๋งค์ ์ ํ๋ธ
Huh, still Korean? Well, better than before. You plug it in to Google Translate and then realize what you are looking at. The handbook is actually just a band book. With a lot of K-pop.
Well, so much for getting any instructions for your newfound job. You shrug and keep the bandbook as a souvenir, and head out to see what’s around this campus.
Solution to Lost In Translation
As suggested by the flavor text, the first step is to figure out what language the strings are in. Either using Google Translate, or searching in a search engine directly, reveals that all the strings correspond to Korean keyboard inputs, e.g. dnjsjdnjs becomes ์๋์.
One can then translate the strings into Korean, upon which solvers discover all the strings yield K-pop groups which also have numbers in their names. These numbers can be indexed into the section titles. The table of data is shown below.
| Section | Korean | Band | Index | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.3. Assembly meeting | ์๋์ | Wanna One | 1 | A |
| 4.4. Panel | ์จ๋์์ด | 3YE | 3 | N |
| 6.1. sesh.fyi | ์์ด์ฆ์ | IZ*One | 1 | S |
| 2.1. Time table for a typical weekday | ํฌ์ ๋์ | 2NE1 | 21 | W |
| 7.4. Downloading problems | ์ธ๋ธํด | Seventeen | 17 | E |
| 7.1. Important confidentiality note | ํํ๊ณค | PENTAGON | 5 | R |
| 5.2. Test review | ๊ฐ์ธ๋ธ | GOT7 | 7 | V |
| 7.3. Please take the exams seriously | ๋์ธ๋ฎค์ง์ค | 9Muses | 9 | K |
| 2.2. Day by day calendar | ์ํฌ์ | 14U | 14 | D |
| 5.1. Optional Saturday classes | ์์ดํธ | 8Eight | 8 | L |
| 5.4. Office hours | ํฌ์์ด์ฆ | 2EYES | 2 | F |
| 7.2. Problems and exam format | ํธ๋ ์ | Treasure | 13 | X |
| 7.6. Formatting page | ํ์ดํฌ | High4 | 4 | M |
| 3.1. Spoilers | ๋ธ๋์ธ๋ธ | BLANC7 | 7 | R |
| 7.9. Student solutions manual | ํฌํผ์ | 2:00 PM | 2 | T |
| 4.5. Opening | ๋ณผ๋นจ๊ฐ ์ฌ์ถ๊ธฐ | Bolbbalgan4 | 4 | N |
| 5.3. Evening seminars | ์ธ๋ธ์ดํด๋ฝ | Seven O’Clock | 7 | G |
| 7.5. Lunch | ํธ์์ด์ค | TWICE | 2 | U |
| 7.7. Submitting your work to Gradescope | ํฌํฌ์ผ์ด | 24K | 24 | D |
| 4.2. Tests | ํฌ์ | 4L | 4 | T |
| 4.1. Classes | ํฌ์ง | 2Z | 2 | L |
| 7.8. Scoring | ํฌ๋ฏธ๋ | 4Minute | 4 | R |
This gives the cluephrase
ANSWER VK DLF XMR TN GUD TLR.
(The spaces are given according to the sections.)
As suggested by the Appendix enumeration 111111 22333 44455 666777,
one translates VK DLF, XMR TN, and GUD TLR another time
to get the answer FILE SPECIAL FORMAT.
Author Notes
Originally, we were going to have “banned book” instead of a “band book”, but then we realized that we had the opportunity to write a K-pop puzzle and couldn’t resist the temptation. Serena mentions that the inspiration for the Korean mechanic was all the nonsense strings that she would accidentally type whenever she forgot to change the keyboard layout into Korean.
The idea of using numbers in K-pop group names is not new; see Site Visits, from RedDot 2020 hunt.