Tìngäzìk: a Retrospective – ep. 9 “Sìjiǎo”

Sìjiǎo #chinese

Expected solvable difficulty

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

Level design

The Four-Corner Method (Sìjiǎo Hàomǎ Jiǎnzìfǎ) is a character-input method used for encoding Chinese characters into either a computer or a manual typewriter, using four or five numerical digits per character. It is also known as the Four-Corner System.

Four-Corner System, Wikipedia

The question was simple, if you the system, it would be easy to solve. Just look at the table. The four questions are chosen in the following way:

• 非莾凸亠, 11111 44444 77777 00000
  4 Hànzì that bares the same 5 digits in the system
• 广票红宝爽撼員巨谷炎, 00100 10901 21112 30103 40804 53035 60806 71717 80608 90809
  10 common Hànzì with palindrome code in the system
• 永東國鬱三力今書鷹袋, 30902 50906 60153 44722 10101 40027 80207 50601 00227 23732
  A series of Hànzì commonly used as a demo text to show details of Hànzì typefaces, similar to Hamburgefonstiv in Latin typefaces.
• 天地玄黄, 10804 44112 00732 44806
  The first line of Qiānzì Wén, which was written in China in the first millennium.

Expected thought process

Realize the one Hànzì to 5 digit correspondence, trying to search for such code and find Sìjiǎo Hàomǎ. Then lookup the code for words in the question.