-------- Original Message --------
If we extend to ADA Carolyn K's Pale Fire links to 1950s movies, Bras
d'Or would point to Otto Preminger's 1955 classic "The Man with the
Golden Arm."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_with_the_Golden_Arm
The idiom here, of course, is less glamorous than Jansy's tempting
Cognac label, but offers Alexey the wider field of narcotics for
sniffing out* allusion-truffles! Heroin -> Heroine; Drug ->
Drugoi (as
in Van: Drugoi Brat [Ada's dear brat of a brother).
Alexey & VN would be good at CODEWORD, a cryptographic form of
Crossword. There are no verbal clues. Each square in the grid has a
number 1-26 and you have to
solve the cipher: pair off each number with a letter from A-Z (no
duplicates)
They start you off with just 3 pairs, eg 8=Y; 23=H; 11=Z leaving you to
find the other 23 pairs. Why am I telling you this? The Times Codeword
had a 7-letter word [1][8][12][3][23][10][6]. Using the given pairs, I
got
[1][Y][12][3][H][10][6]. Guess how I proceeded? Naturally I tried
NYMPHET giving me
[1=N][Y][12=M][3=P][H][10=E][6=T].
Soon found my error as none of the other words agreed with my guess.
Damn Lolita. Curse Nabokov. Getting the E right is vital (the most
frequent letter).
But 10=E was not working. To cut this email short, I did get the
solution:
SYCHRO [1=S][Y][12=N][3=C][H][10=R][6=O]. NB: my tutor at Warwick was
Max Newman who was Turing's Boss at Bletchl[e]y (ENIGMA decoding centre)
CTaH
* "We knocked at a door, all painted green
"The sign outside said 'No morphine'
Chorus: Singin' Honey have a whiff, have a whiff on me,
Honey have a whiff on me.
"Came to a door all painted red
"Sign outside said 'We're all dead'
Chorus
"This story only goes to show
"There ain't much sense in sniffin' snow
Chorus
Quoting jansymello <jansy@AETERN.US>:
> The internet image of (mmm, delicious and auctioned for almost
> US$400.00) a cognac bottle with "Bras d'Or" ( golden arm) is
fitting
> for the VN-List iconographic assemblage.
> But I agree with Alexey, VN is also heady enough for me (now).
>
>