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This puzzle follows from the Purple Periodic Puzzle and Green Periodic Puzzle (these puzzles are solved independently).

Yet another periodic table has been uncovered and hides a secret word.

Can you find out what's strange about this blue periodic table and find the answer?

enter image description here


Hint #1

Can you spot the 3 types of differences?

Hint #2

Both the letters that were altered and the letters they were changed into are important for finding the missing words.

Hint #3

The answer contains 11 letters, but it is not an element on the periodic table.

Hint #4

For each of 11 letters that were changed, take the original letter and the letter it was changed to, to get a new letter which is part of the solution.

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    $\begingroup$ Is there a reason why copernicium (Cn) which is correct, is a lighter shade of blue than all of the other elements in the table? $\endgroup$
    – Area 51
    Mar 5, 2021 at 1:26
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    $\begingroup$ I can find a hidden word but I have letters left over so I suspect there is something still to do. $\endgroup$ Mar 5, 2021 at 12:40
  • $\begingroup$ @JamesCoyle Nice, if you've found a meaningful answer, you've probably gotten it. (Some of the letters are just extra.) $\endgroup$ Mar 5, 2021 at 12:43

2 Answers 2

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Building off of James Coyle's answer, Hint #2 suggests

looking at what the letters in the word COPERNICIUM were originally in the altered periodic table, which are ODJMSFVHHZE. In the case of a repeated letter (C, I), we take the alteration that appears first on the periodic table ahead of the other.

Now, Hint #4 indicates that

we need to manipulate these two strings together to get our true final answer. The manipulation we need to do is clued in Hint #1: we need to take the difference between these two strings. (The other two "differences" are the letters on the periodic table and the different shade of blue on copernicium's square.)

What we have to do then is

convert all the letters into numbers using A1Z26, take away the values in the modified string from the original string modulo 26, and convert back into a letter. For instance, for the second letter we convert D -> 4 and O -> 15, then take the difference between these values mod 26, which is 4 - 15 = -11 = 15 mod 26. This represents the letter O when we convert back.

When we do this for all the letters, we get the actual final answer

LOTHAR MEYER, a German chemist known for his work on the earliest periodic tables.

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  • $\begingroup$ That's exactly correct! $\endgroup$ Mar 20, 2021 at 17:24
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Comparing the provided table to the periodic table we find the following differences:

The incorrect elements on the provided picture above

If we figure out what the letters should be we get:

IFGCIORFPEUCMNL

With some careful anagram solving skills (an online solver) we can find the word:

Copernicium (by leaving out the letters FFGL)

Which would make sense as the answer because:

As pointed out in the comment by @Joe Kerr the representation of Copernicium in the given image is a different shade of blue to the rest of the elements.

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    $\begingroup$ Good work, the 4 letters are extra, but there is still one more part, though. $\endgroup$ Mar 5, 2021 at 13:07

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