A Professor's Presentation

Question

Me and my three rich programmer friends who also happen to be very clever have these real life puzzle games from time to time. This time I am the creator.

I told them to visit a different country every week and that they would get a phone call from me at the end of the week telling them which country to go to next (a new country every week, they didn't know all their visiting countries beforehand) in a specific order and assigned them numbers from 1 to 3. Once 10 weeks have passed they're all done and will meet at my place and hopefully give me the correct answer which is a single word, otherwise they'll each give me a million dollars.

Here is what they all know:

PUBLIC INFORMATION:

• Friend 1 visits seven countries in a specific order
• Friend 2 visits ten countries in a specific order
• Friend 3 should visit nine countries, but can only visit seven countries in a specific order

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Here is what a single person knows after 7-10 weeks (they only know their own visiting countries):

PERSONAL INFORMATION:

Friend 1:  POLAND -> YEMEN -> FRANCE -> GREECE -> CHINA -> RUSSIA -> LITHUANIA
               
Friend 2:  ARGENTINA -> OMAN -> ECUADOR -> URUGUAY -> INDIA -> DENMARK -> HAITI -> THAILAND -> NORWAY -> SWEDEN

Friend 3:  QATAR -> JAPAN -> KENYA -> BRAZIL -> MOLDOVA -> VENEZUELA -> ZIMBABWE  

10 weeks later and we're all gathered in my house and I tell them that one of them can ask 1 question to each of the other two. I ask them: - "Well do you guys have an idea of what the answer might be?" Friend 1 and Friend 3 both say "no, I didn't see a pattern". However, Friend 2 says: - "I definitely see a pattern and I think I know the answer and why I was assigned number 2 AND why Friend 3 only was able to visit seven countries, so I'll ask the questions just to make sure".

He asks Friend 1 if his second visited country was Yemen and Friend 1 of course says yes. Then he asks Friend 3 if his first visited country was Qatar and Friend 3 of course says yes. "Now I'm very sure of the answer," says Friend 2. "It's..."

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What 6-letter answer did he give to me?

Answer 1

The answer is

Dvorak

because

If you take the starting letters of each country, it forms the Dvorak keyboard layout, with Person 1 representing the top row, Person 2 the middle and Person 3 the bottom row.

Further explanations/hints:

Friend 3 could only visit 7 countries because there are no countries starting with the letter X/W

Friend 2 had the most important role because in the Dvorak layout, the middle row contains the most commonly used letters in the english language

Friend 2 asked about Yemen and Qatar because those are the only countries starting with Y/Q

The title "A Professors Presentation": August Dvorak was a professor of education at the University of Washington in Seattle.

I suspect the friends are all programmers because 1) there is a variant of the Dvorak layout specifically suited for programming and/or 2) Dvorak is somewhat popular among programmers in general.