# Athletes at the Rio Olympics

This is an entry in the 13th Fortnightly Topic Challenge.

The little country of Asrius finally made it into the Olympics game! Yay!

CROWD CHEERING!!!

Five competitors from this country (Martin Fuis, Dumber Nanoslav, Vastena Nanopi, Bert Naluga, and Zakary Holiva) are in these 2016 Olympics.

Each competes in a different event : archery, diving, fencing, judo, and taekwondo.

Also, they all wear a different color jersey : red, green, blue, white, and yellow.

At the end of the competition, they all finished in the top 5 of their respective sport, but they did not finished at the same place.

Moreover, these athletes are not only good in their sport, they also have hidden hobbies! Among them, there is :

• a fanatic of mathematics
• a crazy chemist apprentice
• an evening french classes teacher
• a trivia monster
• a cryptography amateur

Your mission, should you decide to accept it You have to determine each competitor with their associated Olympic sport, their jersey color, their final place and of course, their hobby.

Have fun!

1) The sportsman in the blue jersey finished at a better place than the one in the yellow jersey.

2) Bert Naluga is a trivia monster! Did you know that?

3) The judoka finished in a better place than the diver.

4) The cryptographer sent the following SMS to a member of the IOC before his event: "QV 1 0ZMMV 43QUUQV0 XWWT, 4MZQWC4TG?"

5) Vastena Nanopi, Zakary Holiva, and Dumber Nanoslav each have a primary colored jersey.

6) Vastena Nanopi could not prevent herself from correcting a journalist: "It's omelette au fromage, not omelette du fromage!"

7) Vastena Nanopi finished in a better place than Bert Naluga, but at a worse place than Dumber Nanoslav.

8) If we could mix Vastena Nanopi and Bert Naluga's jersey colors, we will obtain the color of the jersey that Zakary Holiva wears.

9) The competitor that came in 4th place knows how to foil.

10) The crazy chemist apprentice was happy to find that the number of his place was the same as an alkaline earth metal's atomic number.

11) The competitor participating in diving ended in a lower place than Martin Fuis.

12) Martin Fuis did not wear the green jersey.

13) During the interview of the trivia monster, he said : "That's funny, the number of my finishing place is the same as the number of floors of the Eiffel Tower!"

14) The fanatic of mathematics told us that the number of letters in his sport can be found by solving this equation : $\frac{IPISSPURPLE}{40}$.

15) The athlete practicing taekwondo wore a jersey which was neither white, neither blue.

Bonus : Can you spot what's going with the name of this little country and the names of the athletes? (I'll gladly help you for this one, if you can't find it! But first, look at the tags!)

• I believe clues 5 and 8 contradict each other. The only color given that can be mixed from the other colors is green, implying that Zakary wears a green jersey. But according to clue 5 he either wears a red, yellow, or blue jersey. – Morgan G Aug 11 '16 at 17:01
• @MorganG I think the the general primary colors for additive combinations of colors are red, green and blue. – user14478 Aug 11 '16 at 17:06
• @LukasRotter you're right! I didn't know there were two classes of primary colors until just now. When i think of mixing colors, I usually think of subtractive combinations, like the ones used for paints, not the ones used for electronic displays. I think it should be clarified in the question. – Morgan G Aug 11 '16 at 17:14
• Wait that still doesn't solve the problem. If Zakary has a primary colored jersey, no jersey colors can be mixed to make his jersey color. – Morgan G Aug 11 '16 at 17:20
• May we call it a trap? – IAmInPLS Aug 11 '16 at 18:20

Thanks to Morgan G I could get the last three sports I was missing. I also could not figure out 14.

Martin Fuis:

Sport: Fencing
Jersey: White
Place: 4th
Hobby: Crazy Chemist Apprentice

Dumber Nanoslav:

Sport: Judo
Jersey: Red
Place: 1st
Hobby: Fanatic of Mathematics

Vastena Nanopi:

Sport: Archer
Jersey: Blue
Place: 2nd
Hobby: Evening French Teacher

Bert Naluga:

Sport: Taekwondo
Jersey: Yellow
Place: 3rd
Hobby: Trivia Monster

Zakary Holiva:

Sport: Diving
Jersey: Green
Place: 5th
Hobby: Cryptography Amateur

Clues:

1) The sportsman in the blue jersey finished at a better place than the one in the yellow jersey.

Blue > Yellow

2) Bert Naluga is a trivia monster! Did you know that?

Naluga is the trivia monster.

3) The judoka finished in a better place than the diver.

Judo > Diver

4) The cryptographer sent the following SMS to a member of the IOC before his event: "QV 1 0ZMMV 43QUUQV0 XWWT, 4MZQWC4TG?"

Since this was made by the cryptographer, I used the simplest cryptography that I knew to solve it, which is a Caesar cypher. By using the key 18 for the cypher, I got the text "IN 1 0REEN 43IMMIN0 POOL, 4ERIOU4LY?". Which from watching the Olympics I knew it was talking about the green swimming pool, which told me that the Cryptographer = Diver.

5) Vastena Nanopi, Zakary Holiva, and Dumber Nanoslav each have a primary colored jersey.

Nanopi, Holiva, and Nanoslav have either the Red, Green, or Blue Jersey. Which means that Fuis and Naluga have either the White or Yellow.

6) Vastena Nanopi could not prevent herself from correcting a journalist: "It's omelette au fromage, not omelette du fromage!"

This is French, so that means Nanopi = French Teacher.

7) Vastena Nanopi finished in a better place than Bert Naluga, but at a worse place than Dumber Nanoslav.

Nanoslav > Nanopi > Naluga. This means that Nanoslav has to be in atleast 3rd place.

8) If we could mix Vastena Nanopi and Bert Naluga's jersey colors, we will obtain the color of the jersey that Zakary Holiva wears.

- Nanopi + Naluga = Holiva
- Nanopi is either Red, Green, or Blue.
- Naluga is either White or Yellow.
- Holiva is either Red, Green or Blue.
- This means Naluga has to have Yellow, because any color mixed with White is just a more dull version of the same color.
- So _____ + Yellow = ____
- The only color that mixes with Yellow out of the primaries, that also makes a primary, is Blue, which means that Nanopi is Blue, and that resulting color of Blue and Yellow is Green, which means Holiva is Green.
- So Blue + Yellow = Green
- The Color left for Fuis is White, which leaves Nanoslav with Red.

9) The competitor that came in 4th place knows how to foil.

I originally thought foiling was referring to the Mathematics way of foiling, but learned later that foiling is a term used for fencing.
Fencing = 4th

10) The crazy chemist apprentice was happy to find that the number of his place was the same as an alkaline earth metal's atomic number.

The Chemist has to have a place between 1 and 5, and the only Alkaline earth metal with an atomic number between 1 and 5 is Beryllium. Which has an atomic number of 4.
Chemist = 4th.

11) The competitor participating in diving ended in a lower place than Martin Fuis.

Fuis != Diver
Fuis > Diver

12) Martin Fuis did not wear the green jersey.

This didn't help much because by this time I already knew all the Jersey Colors.

13) During the interview of the trivia monster, he said : "That's funny, the number of my finishing place is the same as the number of floors of the Eiffel Tower!"

- I am an uncultured American ;), so I had to Google this one, which told me that the Eiffel Tower has 3 floors.
- This tells us that the Trivia Monster is in 3rd place. Since Naluga is the Trivia Monster, we know that Naluga is in 3rd place.

Deductive Reasoning from 13 and the questions before it:

- Since we know from question 7) Nanoslav > Nanopi > Naluga, that means that Nanoslav is 1st, and Nanopi is 2nd.
- Which leaves Fius and Holiva are either 4th or 5th. - Since we know that Fius > Diver from question 11, we know that Fius can not be last and has to be 4th. Which leaves Holiva in 5th.

14) The fanatic of mathematics told us that the number of letters in his sport can be found by solving this equation : $\frac{IPISSPURPLE}{40}$.

- Originally this question had the denominator being 41, which was very confusing because 41 is a prime and doesn't have many things that it can go into. - But after OP fixed the number to 40, it makes sense because you add the letter value of the the word "IPISSPURPLE" and then divide it by 40. The letter values being which position the letter is in the alphabet. For example, A is 1, B is 2.... Z is 26.
- IPISSPURPLE adds up to: 160. 160 / 40 = 4.
- The only 4 letter sport given is Judo, which means that Fanatic of Mathematics = Judo.

15) The athlete practicing Taekwondo wore a jersey which was neither white, neither blue.

- Taekwondo is either Red Green or Yellow.
- Which means either Nanoslav, Naluga, or Noliva are the competitor in Taekwondo.

• Hey, this is it! Nice :)! Before I accept your answer, can you explain the reasoning behind every clues? If you haven't found everything, I'll edit your answer to include what's left. – IAmInPLS Aug 12 '16 at 7:21
• @IAmInPLS Is this the correct amount of information to give on the reasoning behind the clues? I was unsure if I was supposed to give my reasoning as if I am going through all of the clues in order. Or give my reasoning as if I did not read the other clues yet. – Bcmonks Aug 12 '16 at 16:31
• Very good! Accepted :) – IAmInPLS Aug 12 '16 at 17:11

I still can't get 4 and 14, but here's my contribution to the bonus:

The athletes' names are all anagrams of real Russian olympians, and Asrius is an anagram of Russia.
Martin Fuis = Timur Safin, a fencer
Dumber Nanoslav = Beslan Mudranov, a judoka
Vastena Nanopi = Inna Stepanova, an archer
Bert Naluga = Albert Gaun, a taekwondo practitioner
Zakary Holiva = Ilya Zakharov, a diver.
Also, we can see that their sports in real life line up with the athletes' sports in the puzzle.

I believe the solution to clue 14 is

If you add the numbers of each letter in "IPISSPURPLE" together: 9+16+9+19+19+16+21+18+16+12+5 and divide by 40, you get 4. The only sport having 4 letters is judo.

• SPOILER: Assuming 4) was encrypted with a monoalphabetic substitution cipher, it is most likely IN A GREEN SWIMMING POOL, SERIOUSLY? – user14478 Aug 11 '16 at 18:49
• Good job Morgan! I thought the anagrams were going to take a longer time to solve... Also, there was a typo in my original post (it was 40 not 41) so i edited your answer accordingly. – IAmInPLS Aug 12 '16 at 7:22