A Puzzle

[rochvelleth]

You're in the middle of a zombie apocalypse (bear with me!). You're hiding out in a building, and you have a flashlight. You look out of the window and see a light. That must be another survivor hiding out nearby, because zombies don't use flashlights. You flash back at them, thinking it would be cool to survive together[1

Comments

[vyvyan]

I think I could pick it up (even if I didn't know the Morse code for SOS), using my knowledge of letter frequencies in English and word structure etc. I've deciphered short encoded messages where each letter of the alphabet has been replaced by a different letter of the alphabet, and this problem is nearly equivalent: one would just have to observe the signalling for long enough to build up a full inventory of symbols. I think looking for a known language in an undeciphered (ancient) script is a harder problem, because of the likelihood of highly variable spelling, and indeed, our probable ignorance of the written conventions and general cultural context of that known language in general.

[darkentwisted]

Its almost like doing a cryptoquote. You have two known letters s, (three short blinks) and o,(three long blinks) then find th emost common letters and go from there This is hoping that;

1. The other person is flashing the same message repeatedly.

2. His batteries don't go dead first.

3. One of Jane Austin's party guests doesn't have yours or his liver as pâté.

AUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH...Pâté foi gras le human!
*drools a little* XD~

[pseudomonas]

1: you want the other person to be producing lots of text. If it's a short message repeated lots of times then once you've written it down correctly you're not gaining very much :)

[darkentwisted]

True, very true (just thinking of the liver pâté.)

Would give the better chance of picking up common letters and words.

(And prove to be a welcome diversion from the well dressed, aristocratic undead at the door.)

[vitriol_]

I'd probably resort to something like flashing the first dozen primes or so, which should hopefully make clear that I'm another survivor rather than a random light flashing on and off, but that I can't understand them.

Hopefully, they'll then beginning teaching me the language with some method like signalling the letters in sequence. If they don't, I'll probably make up a basic alphabet (go go Huffman coding!) and do that.

[ewx]

I know S and O and recall that E and T (being the most common letters in English) are a single symbol, although not which way round. So I guess I'd be having lots of conversations about toes...

[pseudomonas]

4: yes, IIRC.