# A puzzle in 280 characters

In the past, you found I felt Twitter's character limit was too small when each tweet only fit 140 characters, but what's my opinion now that it fits twice that?

I'll be here to confirm any subanswers, all of which are words or phrases, or in the Sphinx's Lair.

Here's a link to the tweet and here is the text of the tweet:

ᴜ⪪>ㅂ⊓∋…🎌➡️🐷BXFIPF.♌#㊾⬅️sxrt⑷ni,⑶txsin,rᴜĆ🚇H11⎕2N⠰ΛMfb调子密文来自轻打ririmvdfoʊimz├˦ᐦ|¡|ıᴵ|🍕+👕=💕,👂+🛑+φ=?⟐̅◬ᐆ⍍MscẒḦṆṖṢ⢝⣃⁘┈⡓→▦⛳🦅82{.)}2@49]'+੩陸១൪༥꘢cis¼πx|1U3U5,7Mig 　   ​  ᥞb∔đ₠㏊ध돼👸:🍑::👨‍🔧:↴̯͕̹̠̹̼̰U+(🥤-🍵+🍒)+(💷-🎵)(946)Mg+MMt

I've finally come back to put this puzzle to rest.

Various parts of this puzzle were solved by Akumu, Alconja, Autumn Leaves, betaveros, edderiofer, ffao, frictionlessemu, Jack Lance, Penzo, Polaris, ManyPinkHats, Skynet000, and Volatility.

# General Structure

Each "section" of characters produces an answer; the size of each section must be figured out by the solver. There are occasionally three-letter strings of the form Mxx, where x can be any lowercase letter; these mark metapuzzles, where the xx is a social media site.

# Part 1

ᴜ⪪>ㅂ⊓∋…

Each of these symbols has three characteristics: type of symbol (angle, square, rounded); direction of opening; and horizontal line.

The type of symbol is the same for each pair (starting from the second), then switches to the next type.
The direction alternates between 90 degree clockwise rotation and 180 degree rotation.
The horizontal line is on every other symbol.
The next few symbols are CAVE.

🎌➡️🐷BXFIPF.

Interpret the letters given as semaphore, then read the semaphore symbols off as pigpen to get GUITAR.

♌#㊾⬅️

This is a visual cryptic clue: "#" is "NO", the abbreviation for "number". "㊾" is the roman numerals IL; reversing both of those gives LION, as defined by "♌".

sxrt⑷ni,⑶txsin,r

On a QWERTY keyboard, the keys sxrt draw out a ROOT symbol; similarly, the keys ni, trace out an AND symbol (∧). Assign each letter to the corresponding character (s=R, x=O, r=O...) and read off in order of the last seven characters to get TORNADO.

ᴜĆ🚇H11⎕2N⠰Λ

The ᴜ seems to indicate that this puzzle is a callback somehow. After that one, each of these characters appears in this puzzle's prequel and gives a single letter: T (morse code dash), R (metro), I (rotated H 90 degrees), AT (meta extraction), H (XORed part of the square), A (2 in the 3x3 grid), L (first letter in unicode name), O (braille "rot193"), N (flag semaphore). These letters spell out TRIATHLON.

Mfb

This is the Facebook meta. Each of these items has a body part associated with it: mouth of a cave, neck of a guitar, heart of a lion, eye of a tornado, leg of a triathlon. Order the answers top to bottom on the body, then take the first letter of the first answer, the second letter of the second, and so on to get TAINT.

# Part 2

These characters translate to "tone ciphertext from tapping". As it happens, there is a cipher called the "tap code" where letters A-Z are arranged in a 5×5 grid and indexed by coordinates 1-5.

There are also five tones in Mandarin, conveniently numbered. The tones of the characters there are 4, 5, 4, 2, 2, 4, 1, 3; reading as pairs and using the tap code, this gives URIC.

ririmvdfoʊimz

This is almost the phrase "read removed phonemes" in the International Phonetic Alphabet, but with d, u, and n missing, making the word DUNE.

├˦ᐦ|¡|ıᴵ|

The whitespace in between symbols here spells SWAN.

🍕+👕=💕,👂+🛑+φ=?

This is a cryptarithm: PIZZA + SHIRT = HEARTS. There is only one solution: 96448+31605 = 128053. Then, adding EAR + STOP + PHI gives 4779, which translates back as ZOOT.

⟐̅◬ᐆ⍍

Each of these symbols is made up of some combination of dots (1 vertex), lines (2 vertices), triangles (3 vertices), and rectangles (4 vertices). For each shape, write a 1 if the shape has that symbol and a 0 if it does not, in 4-3-2-1 order. Converted to binary, this reads KEEL.

Msc

This is the Snapchat meta. Just like "snap" and "chat", each answer is a four-letter word that can be paired with another four-letter word: URIC ACID, SAND DUNE, SWAN SONG, EVEN KEEL, ZOOT SUIT. These share a single letter (in the same position); the common letters spell INSET.
(There appears to be a mistake in ordering here, though; the meta answer was confirmed, but no ordering method seems to give INSET.)

# Part 3

ẒḦṆṖṢ

Shifting each character forwards or backwards based on the dots gives AFOOT.

⣪⣃⁘┈⡓→▦

These sets of dots can be fit into a 5×5 grid without rotation:

The uncovered squares are the first, third, thirteenth, and sixteenth. The corresponding letters anagram to CAMP.

⛳🦅82{.)}2@49]'+

Since an eagle means "two under par" in golf, this needs two characters added to it to become valid GolfScript. Adding * between 2 and @, and adding ' between ' and +, gives 82{.)}2*@49\]''+; interpreted as GolfScript, this becomes ST1R, which is the answer, STONER.

੩陸១൪༥꘢

These are all numbers: Gurmukhi 3, Japanese 6, Khmer 1, Malayalam 4, Tibetan 5, Vai 2. Indexing into the names of the scripts and sorting from 1-6 gives KARATE.

cis¼πx|1U3U5,7

"cis(θ)" is sometimes used to refer to e^(iθ); here, cis(¼πx) should be evaluated at 1, 3, and the interval from 5 to 7. Plotting these output points produces a SMILE.

Mig

This is the Instagram meta. Each of these is a unit of measure, plus a letter. (This is clued by the "gram" in "Instagram".) The extra letters spell out the word ACRES.

# Part 4

[ 　   ​  ] (brackets added for clarity)

This is a bunch of whitespace characters: a space, an ideographic space, an em space, a punctuation space, a six-per-em space, a zero-width space, an en space, and another regular space. The first characters of these spell SIMPSONS.

ᥞb∔đ₠㏊ध돼

Visually, each one of these seems to look like a ligature of two letters: the word GLITCHES has been overlaid onto the text NOTDEATH. "Glitches" are bugs, and "not death" is life, so the answer is the movie A BUG'S LIFE.

👸:🍑::👨‍🔧:

This is a standardized-test style analogy: "Princess is to Peach as plumber is to MARIO".

↴̯͕̹̠̹̼̰

This arrow says to rotate your head right: here, "CANINES" has been written with a bunch of combining diacritics. The answer to this puzzle is DOGS.

U+(🥤-🍵+🍒)+(💷-🎵)(946)

This is a rebus: the first is "cup with straw, minus cup, plus berry" making "strawberry". The second is "pound note", minus "note". The # symbol (also known as the "pound symbol") is ASCII 0x23; if you add 23 in decimal instead to the Unicode codepoint of the strawberry emoji, you get 🍪, an emoji depicting a CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE. (The conversion appears to be a mistake, but this answer is required for the meta.)

Mg+

This is the Google+ meta. Just like Google+ is the less popular version of many social networks, each of these answers has a less popular analogue: The Simpsons is more popular than FUTURAMA, A Bug's Life is more popular than ANTZ, Mario is more popular than LUIGI, Dogs are more popular than CATS, and chocolate chip cookies are more popular than OATMEAL RAISIN COOKIES. The first letters of these spell FALCO.

# Part 5

MMt

This is the Twitter metameta. The four answers we have so far can be arranged in a "hashtag" shape:

Reading around the outside, we can see that you feel the new character limit FITS TO A T ("fits two-eighty").

• I don't know about the Msc, but the part after seems to give AFOOT if you Caesar shift as the dots indicate. – xnor Dec 9 '18 at 9:45
• I think the golf isn't code golf, but clues that an eagle is two under par in golf, which to me suggests decreasing the characters that follow by 2 somehow. – xnor Dec 9 '18 at 9:52
• @xnor Oh, nice find for the first one! For the second, I just tried that, and had no luck - subtracting 2 from all ASCII/Unicode values still gives gibberish (and so does adding 2). – Deusovi Dec 9 '18 at 10:08
• U+(🥤-🍵+🍒) = U+(1F964 - 1F375 + 1F352) = U+1F941 = 🥁 (drum) – Stefan Dec 9 '18 at 22:32
• Arrow down with "canines"... Could it be "underdogs"? – jafe Jan 12 at 11:40

ᴜ⪪>ㅂ⊓∋…🎌➡️🐷BXFIPF.♌#㊾⬅️sxrt⑷ni,⑶txsin,rᴜĆ🚇H11⎕2N⠰ΛMfb调子密文来自轻打ririmvdfoʊimz├˦ᐦ|¡|ıᴵ|🍕+👕=💕,👂+🛑+φ=?⟐̅◬ᐆ⍍MscẒḦṆṖṢ⢝⣃⁘┈⡓→▦⛳🦅82{.)}2@49]'+੩陸១൪༥꘢cis¼πx|1U3U5,7Mig 　   ​  ᥞb∔đ₠㏊ध돼👸:🍑::👨‍🔧:↴̯͕̹̠̹̼̰U+(🥤-🍵+🍒)+(💷-🎵)(946)Mg+MMt

I have to admit this stream of consciousness fits very well on Twitter. This is the longest Twitter post ever.

The way that I interpreted this is entirely subjective as I used mental acumen and exaggerated brainpower to output a stream of nonsensical yet directed consciousness which may or may not be what your original intent was but does indeed solve the puzzle from at least one perspective.

Here is it broken down by neural codebreaking:

ᴜ⪪>ㅂ⊓∋…🎌➡️🐷BXFIPF.

♌#㊾⬅️sxrt⑷ni,

to the tune of 49 characters too much writing 4 anyone or anything,

⑶txsin,rᴜ

3 more texts just arrived, from russia,

Ć🚇H11⎕2N

and you see people in buses who both are missing as well,

⠰ΛMfb调子密文来自轻打riri

and you're on facebook right now talking with some chinese people, who know everything, and even they agree. They "riri" (really) agree ;)

mvdfoʊimz├˦ᐦ|¡|ıᴵ|

for you and i are amazing even if there was less than one of you then there would be 1 more of me.

🍕+👕=💕,👂+🛑+φ=?⟐̅◬ᐆ⍍MscẒḦṆṖṢ

Sometimes when the meat gets on your shirt you really like it, even though you can hear nothing even when you aren't talking, although you cannot understand some of the conversations, although streaming on your windows computer the end of songs before drifting off into some naps.

⢝⣃⁘┈⡓→▦⛳🦅82{.)}2@49]'+੩

Startled awake by the sounds on your game system, you grab your controller and quickly run to the safehouse, quickly enough that your team scored. Then after a long wait of 82 seconds, you paused the game 2 look at the 49th comment, what was a drawing in hexadecimal format,

and decided to go get some pie and before you knew it 1/4 of the pie was gone.

|1U3U5,7Mig 　   ​  ᥞ

after messaging u 1 more time to see if 3 of u are ready to play, 5 more people joined the game, and 7 more said they also might join. Sadly, none of them did show up, but you did get some okay-tasting tea

b∔đ₠㏊ध돼👸:🍑::👨‍🔧

but the flavor was not as good as your girlfriend's apple pie which you love to eat right before work.

:↴̯͕̹̠̹̼̰U+(🥤-🍵+🍒)+(💷-🎵)(946)

You aren't feeling too good after this tea, so you decide to stop drinking it and instead grab some cherries to nibble on while you turn off the music from high volume (9) down to about mid-volume (4-6).

Mg+MMt

Now my girlfriend is here and this is going to be monumental.

• Is anyone else as confused as I am about this answer and why it is accepted? – tyobrien Feb 3 at 20:20
• You need to read it using neural codebreaking ;) – Riddler Feb 3 at 20:22