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It's late at night, and something very peculiar is happening. From your room, you can hear cries of true misery! Someone is wailing and repeating "O' woe is me!" over, and over again, and it's starting to get quite annoying, so naturally you decide to follow the sounds, and, lo and behold, you find the King of Acting himself, sobbing outside the drama studio!

"What's wrong, your highness?", you ask, to which he responds by reciting a very strange and contemporary monologue of sorts, throwing the script at you:

Oh woe is me,
Two terms combined,
Those yews are ours,
Beginning and end, intertwined.

Begging for amnesty,
They flow,
In a sea of decay,
But Never giving up Hope,
In what remains.

...Aaaaand he's gone back to his wailing. You look at the script he's handed you. It looks like any normal script, except at the bottom of the page, scrawled in messy handwriting:

DUVCOPLOZUM

How incredibly strange... Perhaps you can try and figure out what has upset the King so much?

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    $\begingroup$ Not sure of how to use it, but it seems that some of the poem is hinting at letters to be used >!"O" woe is me... Those "U"s are "R"s... a "C" of "D" "K" $\endgroup$
    – elmer007
    Apr 27, 2016 at 14:31
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    $\begingroup$ (I don't think you can put spoiler blocks in comments.) I suspect "O woe" is actually "O O". I guess the "U"s in the scrawl need to be turned into "R"s. I wonder whether the C of DK is coincidence. Note also: "amnesty" ends with ST. $\endgroup$
    – Gareth McCaughan ♦
    Apr 27, 2016 at 14:33
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    $\begingroup$ I think Z is an A (Beginning and End intertwined) $\endgroup$
    – gannolloy
    Apr 27, 2016 at 17:16
  • $\begingroup$ You're all definitely on the right track! $\endgroup$
    – KoA
    Apr 27, 2016 at 21:53

1 Answer 1

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The answer is

BROKENHEART

This is created by substituting the letters in DUVCOPLOZUM

Explanations:

Oh woe is me, Two terms combined,

O O = E (@Gareth McCaughan)

Those yews are ours

U = R (@elmer007)

Beginning and end, intertwined.

Z = A (@gannolloy)

Begging for Amnesty

M = T (Amnesty = M is T)

They flow,

??? V = O

In a sea of decay,

C = K

At this point, we have

_ROKE__EART

But Never giving up Hope,
In what remains.

Fill in the blanks with B, N, and H. (@feelinferrety)
BROKENHEART

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    $\begingroup$ B... N... H... in what remains. $\endgroup$
    – feelinferrety
    Apr 28, 2016 at 1:32
  • $\begingroup$ Yup, that's right! They flow is just the sound 'They' = V, 'flow' = O $\endgroup$
    – KoA
    Apr 28, 2016 at 1:44
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    $\begingroup$ I'm still at a loss for how 'They' sounds like 'V'. 'We' sounds like 'V' to me, though. $\endgroup$
    – Wesley Situ
    Apr 28, 2016 at 1:46
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    $\begingroup$ @Deusovi Wait, shieldbug's profile says hes from Australia. So with an Australian accent, V could be pronounced 'Vay' instead of 'Vee' $\endgroup$
    – Wesley Situ
    Apr 28, 2016 at 1:50
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    $\begingroup$ The sounds are phonetically quite similar, and can merge in some dialects. However, they are different for most speakers. Personally, I would not have gotten that "they" was meant to clue the letter V. $\endgroup$
    – f''
    Apr 28, 2016 at 2:25

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