17
$\begingroup$

On a recent job application, I was asked to make a list of notes that I thought were pertinent to my being considered for the job. They asked me for "No more than 1101" numbered statements, and I think they said that each statement should contain two items, but I ignored that.

These are what I came up with:

  1. The reason I'm departing my other job is, like, them other dudes told me to, like, get to work at eight AM. Screw that!
  2. The previous goons that tried to employ me tried making me cook the nearby hillfolk.
  3. Paddy O'Connor told me I'd get Oreos for every other lunch; this I demand.
  4. A Googol simoleons is a tiny fee, in my opinion, considering the workmanship I bring.
  5. Oh, you wouldn't believe it, but heights at night spook me; so ixnay climbing large oaks late at night.
  6. One personal hobby I have: bloodletting (I cook with it).
  7. Note: please don't misconstrue "too many listed jobs" to mean I'm a job hopper.
  8. One situation: wooden boots won't be worn by me. Not going to occur.
  9. Another thing I've done that makes me impressive? Wholly responsible, I was, for 2 failed establishments.
  10. Curiously, I have no type of mechanism I use for transit, per se, I confess, yet I certainly get around.
  11. One thing I have in overabundance? Humility, often I am told. Will this be a problem?
  12. The only music hobby that interests me? The cello. I tried the bassoon, and my instructor nearly Hara-kiri'd himself.
  13. An addition, I have a dog that looks funny (his name escapes me!). The hound likes playing with miniscule bones and organs.

Now, I'm pretty old (HA!) and forgetful, so I'd like you to help me remember some stuff.

What name do I sign at the bottom of the application, what job am I applying for and, obviously, What is my dog's name???

Hint 1:

Perhaps This Previous Question of mine will provide some food for thought?
Note: This puzzle won't be solved exactly as the previous one was.

Hint 2:

Maybe the order I was given was that my statements should be pairs of thoughts.

Hint 3:

(From statement #1) Depending on the location, I could possibly get to work at 8AM.

Hint 4:

(From statement #4) My workmanship is light-years ahead of its time.

Hint 5:

(From statement #5) This statement is really, really hard to believe.

Hint 6:

Hint #2 is a very helpful hint.

Hint 7:

I apologize for the graphic nature of my hobby (#6).

$\endgroup$
1
  • 4
    $\begingroup$ I see I'm not the only one "not being on drugs" $\endgroup$
    – Keelhaul
    Mar 14, 2018 at 14:33

3 Answers 3

5
+50
$\begingroup$

Working from D Krueger's answer:

Would you sign Orion, and your Dog would be Majoris, or Sirius? As for your job, possibly Hunter, or Astronomer? OP made Intended answers bold

Because:

From the coordinated D Krueger found, the (19,27), (20,28) and (21,29) with the surrounding 4 points reminded me of the Orion constellation, which coincidentally is followed by Canis Major...

This fits with a few of the more "sane" sounding points (possibly more, but I'm not an expert here, and maybe I'm shoehorning horribly):

1. Spotting the constellations is heavily time dependent, but your location is obviously important here too...
5. A constellation afraid of being up high at night is a bit absurd
10. The stars "travel" across the sky, though there is no vehicle as such.
11. Orion was said to be the most handsome of the earth born

Picture:

showing plotted points in Green
enter image description here

$\endgroup$
8
$\begingroup$

Some initial thoughts just to get the ball rolling:

"No more than 1101 numbered statements" - 1101 is binary for 13, which is the number of statements supplied. "Each statement should contain two items" also seems to point to binary.

One other thing, possibly a red herring:

The language in the first clue sounds somewhat like the speech pattern of Shaggy from Scooby Doo. There's a Scooby-Doo series named "The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo", so it's possible the riddle pertains to it somehow, and that the answers to the first and last questions are Shaggy and Scooby respectively.


EDIT: The hint refers to one of Chowzen's previous questions, in which the first step was to

find the hidden powers of two inside each line.

So let's do that here.

Line 1: 2 8 ("told me to, like, get to work at eight AM")
Line 2: 2 ("that tried to employ me")
Line 3: 4 ("for every other lunch")
Line 4: 8 ("a tiny fee")
Line 5: 8 ("late at night")
Line 6: 1 ("One personal hobby")
Line 7: 2 ("too many listed jobs")
Line 8: 1 ("One situation")
Line 9: 4 2 ("for 2 failed establishments")
Line 10: 4 ("I use **for transit")
Line 11: 1 ("One thing I have")
Line 12: ...I can't find this one.
Line 13: ...or this one.

This is where my initial thought comes into play.

Convert each line into a binary nibble and you get:

1010 0010 0100 1000 1000 0001 0010 0001 0110 0100 0001 ???? ????
10 2 4 8 8 1 2 1 6 4 1 ? ?

I'll update this again once I figure out those last two lines.

$\endgroup$
1
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ To quote the Master: "Good try, but this puzzle isn't exactly like the one mentioned in the hint. If it were, it would be boring! The hint is less direct, meaning only that the idea of this puzzle is similar to (but not the same as) the idea of the previous one." – Rand al'Thor Mar 11 at 13:33 $\endgroup$
    – Chowzen
    Mar 16, 2018 at 11:55
6
$\begingroup$

Given "No more than 1101" and the fact that there are 13 questions, points us to binary. So we can start by...

selecting the characters that resemble 1 and 0: uppercase I and O and lowercase l and o. There are exactly twelve of these in each line. If we convert I and l to ones and O and o to zeroes, we get the following:

010010010100
000010001101
000011000011
000101000001
000110001101
001011001100
010000100100
000000000000
010011011011
011001010110
010101011101
010110100011
010100011100

I assumed that "each statement should contain two items" meant these should be broken into two six-bit values, which gives (edit: now in pairs per Chowzen's suggestion):

 1. 18 20
2. 2 13
3. 3 3
4. 5 1
5. 6 13
6. 11 12
7. 16 36
8. 0 0
9. 19 27
10. 25 22
11. 21 29
12. 22 35
13. 20 28

The statement "I ignored that" matches up with #8, which contains all zeroes.

Perhaps the hints offer some clues.

In hints #3 and #5 the words possibly and really are emphasized. Both words contain doubled letters, which could be hinted at by the emphasized word pairs in hint #2. There are exactly 26 words with doubled letters (which may be related to thirteen pairs):

 1. (None)
2. goons, cook, hillfolk
3. Paddy, O'Connor
4. Googol, fee
5. spook
6. hobby, bloodletting, cook
7. too, hopper
8. wooden, boots, occur
9. impressive, Wholly
10. confess
11. Will
12. hobby, cello, bassoon
13. addition, looks, funny

$\endgroup$
1
  • $\begingroup$ So you got all those numbers sitting together on the same line, huh? ...instead of having them sit 2 by 2, each pair on its own line, huh? ...like they were originally, huh? $\endgroup$
    – Chowzen
    Mar 15, 2018 at 20:45

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.