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Listen up everyone! I'm going to meet a friend of mine in about 2 weeks but she's too sneaky to tell me the meeting place right away. What's more: her name is Natasha, friends call her Tasha, and she's 26 years old.

I've known her for some years now and she knows I like riddles.

Last time Tasha had to hurry to get on her plane so she quickly scribbled a note for me and said:

"There is something hidden. Answer it and you'll know what I want to eat. I hope I didn't use too many weird letters. If so, just use those of yours that look alike. You'll figure out 'what we ate' - it's one of those from last weekend."

Well, first of all here's what she wrote down:

PIC097110097103114097109

Our dance?
Not yet ;)
Three centuries
T. c

I've had this note at my desk for weeks but couldn't get anything from it. As far as I can remember, we've had (not quite healthy, I know)

  • fries
  • vegetable soup
  • pizza and also
  • popcorn at the cinema

One evening we tried clams, which was a horrible idea, so I assume we can cross that one out.

I asked for a hint some days ago and she replied:

"First it has to be exactly as written down. Then is has to be completely different."

Although she made it look like a spontanious idea I suspect she already had the riddle finished beforehand because it seems to be way too difficult for sudden inspiration.

Anyway, someone has an idea on this?

Hints:

♦ None of the dishes she mentioned in her note have all of their letters contained in the clue
♦ Where may Tasha be from?
♦ Does her age ring a bell? Something in connection with letters maybe?
♦ Tasha is not a mod

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    $\begingroup$ Is that word in the note "ceuturies" like it looks like (not a word) or "centuries" as it should be (I assume)? $\endgroup$
    – owlswipe
    Aug 1, 2016 at 18:22
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    $\begingroup$ Dont be too hard on her handwriting ;) It's "n" as the description says $\endgroup$
    – Avigrail
    Aug 1, 2016 at 18:42
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    $\begingroup$ "Some browsers don't support bullet points within spoiler tags. That's why I used ASCII-diamonds here. No hint or anything! If you are a mod and want to edit: bullet points are &#8226 :P" - Oh no... That ":P" at the end just make me believe even more that there is a very important hint hidden here. Especially because you used diamond symbols and then gave the hint "Tasha is not a mod" $\endgroup$
    – user14478
    Aug 2, 2016 at 20:58
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    $\begingroup$ Just because someone is suffering from a serious persecution complex doesn't mean they aren't persecuted. A mad man sees what a mad man wants so see, eh? ;) $\endgroup$
    – Avigrail
    Aug 2, 2016 at 21:21
  • $\begingroup$ @Avigrail i think answer is pasta Schupfnudel $\endgroup$
    – Vishal Thakkar
    Aug 4, 2016 at 5:54

6 Answers 6

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To summarize, I believe the answer is

FRIES.

Piggy backing on @YowE3K's solution,

translating into Russian gives Наш танец? Ещё нет ;) Три века Т. с

If we rewrite that to look like the

Roman alphabet, as clued by her age (26 letters in the alphabet)

then we get

HAW TAHEU EWEHET TPN BEKA TC

There is a clue in Tasha's original speech, she says

'what we ate' in quotes, meaning this will appear in the unscrambled anagram. So the anagram gives "What we ate beneath ketchup?" This would clue to the answer being FRIES.

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    $\begingroup$ This was easy, wasn't it? Btw what can you get from the title ? ;) $\endgroup$
    – Avigrail
    Aug 4, 2016 at 13:34
  • $\begingroup$ I would never have gotten it if @YowE3K did not do the grunt work with the Russian. And nice, I did not even think about the title. :D $\endgroup$
    – C. Woods
    Aug 4, 2016 at 13:37
  • $\begingroup$ So would you agree with giving him/her the rep? It's a tough one to decide. $\endgroup$
    – Avigrail
    Aug 4, 2016 at 13:38
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    $\begingroup$ Not that I know. I'd also feel comfortable with giving the prize money to you since you figured out some clues others haven't. So congratulations mate! Maybe you can give 150 to him later :) $\endgroup$
    – Avigrail
    Aug 4, 2016 at 13:42
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    $\begingroup$ @Avigrail - no need to split the rep points - just getting somewhere close to the route to the answer has given me enough satisfaction $\endgroup$
    – YowE3K
    Aug 4, 2016 at 15:42
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Perhaps we have to

translate:
Our dance?
Not yet ;)
Three centuries
T. c
into Russian which gives:
Наш танец? Не все же;) Три века Т. с
and then find an anagram of the letters that look like English characters.

If I use HAWTAHEUHEBCEKETPNBEKATC, I can create Buckwheat pancake, but I have some letters left over (bethethe).

I'm not sure what her age has to do with anything, other than perhaps

she was probably born in 1990 which was the year of the first free parliamentary election in Russia since 1917.

But what that has to do with anything, I don't know.

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  • $\begingroup$ Translating surely is a good idea here +1 (stick a litter closer to the "exactly as written down" when translating) $\endgroup$
    – Avigrail
    Aug 4, 2016 at 5:00
  • $\begingroup$ @Avigrail - I noticed that translate.google gave different answers depending on whether words were capitalised or not, and whether there were line breaks, but I thought I had used it exactly as written. But perhaps "written down" is different to "written"? $\endgroup$
    – YowE3K
    Aug 4, 2016 at 5:09
  • $\begingroup$ As a native Russian speaker, I can say that "not yet" being translated as "не всё же" is a google translate mistake, it doesn't make sense in Russian. I don't know what is the best way to say that, but if you need the correct translation, try "Ещё нет" and "Пока нет". And maybe even "Ещё рано". But I don't know if you really need the correct phrase translation or just word-by-word literal translation. P.S. While "е" and "ё" are technically different letters, it's very common to write just "е" instead of "ё", so don't bother. $\endgroup$
    – Verence
    Aug 4, 2016 at 7:54
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the comment @Verence - I'm not sure whether it will help me or not, but extra information is always a good thing. $\endgroup$
    – YowE3K
    Aug 4, 2016 at 8:52
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    $\begingroup$ @YowE3K "I'm not sure what her age has to do with anything" - Well, when I hear 26, I instantly think of the basic latin alphabet ("Something in connection with letters maybe"). So I thought maybe each character maps to another one in the anagram, but it has only 13 distinct letters (which also seems suspicious, because it's exactly 26 / 2)... Probably I'm onto nothing here, but 26 just seems to indicate something like that IMO. $\endgroup$
    – user14478
    Aug 4, 2016 at 9:57
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Partial 'Answer'

If you pretend to edit the question, you will see that the image has this description:
PIC097110097103114097109

If you split the number sequence into parts of 3:
097 110 097 103 114 097 109

Now decode with ASCII:
anagram

This also 'verifies' the clue "First it has to be exactly as written down. Then is has to be completely different."

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Building off of LuxxMiner's answer here.

What Tasha wants to eat

oysters

Explanation

Upon editing the question, you'll see the image has this description: PIC097110097103114097109

Decoding those numbers with ASCII turns that into anagram.

An anagram is a word with all the letters jumbled, so we must take some of the letters from the clue on the index card and jumble them to get the food.

If we take two of the letters from each line (I took o and e from the first line, y and t from the second line, and s and r from the third line), we can scramble those letters to make the food oyster.

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    $\begingroup$ An angram shows its full beauty when all letters are used $\endgroup$
    – Avigrail
    Aug 1, 2016 at 18:44
  • $\begingroup$ @Avigrail Yup, I figured that. Let me get to work. $\endgroup$
    – owlswipe
    Aug 1, 2016 at 20:20
  • $\begingroup$ @Avigrail None of the dishes you mentioned in your question have all of their letters contained in the clue; what am I missing here? $\endgroup$
    – owlswipe
    Aug 1, 2016 at 20:36
  • $\begingroup$ Who would I be if directly mentioned the dish I'm looking for ;) $\endgroup$
    – Avigrail
    Aug 1, 2016 at 20:42
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    $\begingroup$ @Avigrail Oh gosh. I've spent a good hour on this anagram, I can't solve it. $\endgroup$
    – owlswipe
    Aug 2, 2016 at 2:06
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Tasha, short for Natasha, is commonly either

Greek or Russian


I looked for a food from either of these countries that fit as a 'vegetable soup', since this is the one food that seemed out of place in the list. Unfortunately, none of the vegetable soups I found on Wikipedia could be made with the letters provided.
Then I noticed

the name of the image -- "xXXKo".

So I added in those letters, and I could spell the word:

Ukha, which "is a warm watery fish dish"

The only fish I could find in the letters right off was

COD

So I'm thinking it might be something along the lines of

Cutie
Entrée UKHA; Cod?
No Oyster
XXX T.

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  • $\begingroup$ The name of an image, here "xXXKo" is auto generated and I didn't choose it. So it's not to be used for solving the riddle. $\endgroup$
    – Avigrail
    Aug 2, 2016 at 22:28
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I have translate your sentences in German. So I get like below:

Unser Tanz?
Noch nicht:)
Drei Jahrhunderte
T. c

I have Translate it In German Because you belong to Germany. And she is your friend.

Now i Have search for famous dish of Baden-Württemberg because you are from Stuttgart. So when you go out obliviously you eat famous food of Baden-Württemberg.

So i have search for it and get some food on wiki. In that some are main course.

But you tell that you had eaten some light food.

So i got Pasta Schupfnudel.

Which also contain some letters which is in your riddle when I have translated into German.

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  • $\begingroup$ An anagram should contain all letters + if she were German she wouldn't have mentioned the letters + the dish is not listed in the riddle + Schnupfnudel is some really heavy dish ;) $\endgroup$
    – Avigrail
    Aug 4, 2016 at 6:29

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