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Other questions in this series can be found here.
One of my friends, Com, has sent me a code to show where he lives:
ARIA, ---, ---, ESIA, ---, KAAN, KYAN, LAIA, ---, MOVA, RUIA, TAAN, TUAN, UKNE, ---
3, 15, 9, 5, 2, 11
Can you figure out where he is?
Does your friend live in
Bulgaria?
As @Deepthinker has already mentioned, the rest of the countries are made from front 2 and back 2 letters from former Soviet Union countries:
ARMENIA = ARIA
ESTONIA = ESIA
KAZAKHSTAN = KAAN
KYRGYZSTAN = KYAN
LATVIA = LAIA
MOLDOVA = MOVA
RUSSIA = RUIA
TAJIKISTAN = TAAN
TURKMENISTAN = TUAN
UKRAINE = UKNE
The missing five countries are therefore:
Azerbaijan
Belarus
Georgia
Lithuania
Uzbekistan
Using the number hint, we just need to take the first letter of the country represented by that number in an alphabetical order. This spells out "BULGAR". These were members of a group of people living during the Middle Ages and a branch of this became the primary three ethnic ancestors of modern Bulgarians, as seen here. This means that Com probably live in "BULGARIA".
They the former countries of the USSR in alphabetical order.
Armenia , Azerbaijan , Belarus, Estonia , Georgia , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , Latvia , Lithuania , Moldova, Russia , Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
these are the remaining countries it must be a cipher.
Reason is that BEUS UZAN LIIA GEIA AZAN RUIA take the capitals of each.
The answer is Bulgaria
Com is a reference to communism.
