Tìngäzìk: a Retrospective – ep. 11 “IDS”

IDS #chinese #unicode

Expected solvable difficulty

  • 1sample+: experienced solvers with CJK proficiency
  • keywords+: most solvers

Level design

Ideographic Description Sequences (IDS) is a standard defined by Unicode that describe the composition of Hànzì. For example, 明 (bright) can be expressed as ⿰日月. This standard is commonly used to express characters in digital media that are not yet defined in Unicode. Source Han Serif included a “ligature” of ⿺ 辶⿳穴⿰月⿰⿲⿱幺長⿱言馬⿱幺長刂心 to represent the character 𰻞 (a name to a noodle dish in China) when released. The character was later included in Unicode as U+30EDE.

The main question is picked from various IDS databases such that the Hànzì in the question falls in the Basic Multilingual Plane, while a component of the character is not. In this case, 㳈 should be broken down as ⿰氵𣎳, instead of ⿰氵木, ⿰氵术 or ⿰氵朩.

Expected thought process

Realize that the question is asking for IDS of the Hànzì in the question (1sample+), and search for IDS databases online. Several databases and tools can be found for this purpose:

Using any of the tools to find the IDS of the question as the answer.


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