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Nathan Slake's avatar

Certainly looks like a word puzzle when you see it. Was it a deliberate decision to make each chunk of text 5 characters long, or did the ROT13 encoder you used do this automatically?

Congrats on the 75, btw. Big milestone!

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Terry Freedman's avatar

Automatically? Pffft! Of course it was deliberate, old bean. Details of how I did it will be revealed soon. Thanks for congrats!

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Mark R DeLong's avatar

I sent Terry an email with the noodling that follows. I was a hesitant to post it in the comments section ... part out of a desire to avoid cementing my reputation as nerd even more snuggly than ever and partly because it doesn't fit the "style" of comments sections. But Terry encouraged me to post, so here it is:

Your experiment today made me think of boundaries that I haven't really considered, but that are actually made quite visible with you various experiments. Basically today's experiment made me wonder about writing styles and "codes." I bet this is a boring bit of info in the oulipo world, but it was new to me.

What is the boundary between code and style?

It made me think of the notion of "code-switching," which has kinda ridden the wake of identity politics and the like. I guess that is a bigger thing in the US than in the UK, since it seems everything is about "identity" in the US. (And I do think that it isn't a positive thing that we're obsessed with on this side of the pond.) For a definition: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching

The ROT-13 try violated the human intelligibility standard that I bet applies in oulipo, but it made me wonder how oulipo audiences draw the line, so to speak.

Just a note and speculation.

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Matthew Murray's avatar

Looks like gobbly-gook. 🤣

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Terry Freedman's avatar

😂

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Rebecca Holden's avatar

No voiceover?! 😉😂

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Terry Freedman's avatar

Lol

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David Perlmutter's avatar

???

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Terry Freedman's avatar

😄

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Mary B's avatar

I'm stumped and don't have the brain power this morning to go 13 letters away from what's there. Does that make me lazy? I searched for a ROT13 translator but don't have Java installed on my Mac, so that's a dead end. I'm impressed with other's brain power that I lack . . . 🧐

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Terry Freedman's avatar

Mary, it's the original story. Mark de long, in the comments here, gave a website decoder, so can just copy and paste the text into that.

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Richbee's avatar

Must be a code of ethics.

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Terry Freedman's avatar

🤣

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Paul McCutchen's avatar

I will look at it later. I haven't had my coffee yet

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Terry Freedman's avatar

😅

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Good Humor by CK Steefel's avatar

Congrats on 75. Where is Alan Turing when you need him?

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Terry Freedman's avatar

Thanks! 😂

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Jim Cummings's avatar

TBBQ BAR GREEL!

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Terry Freedman's avatar

Cheers, Jim!

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Mark R DeLong's avatar

Challenging to decipher in one's head, but there's an app for that: https://cryptii.com/pipes/rot13-decoder. A perfect transformation for middle school secret societies.

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Terry Freedman's avatar

Excellent. Just tried it, and it works! Cheers, Mark 😁

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Beth T (BethOfAus)'s avatar

Hmmmmm….. 🤨

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Terry Freedman's avatar

Ps but as Nathan Slake said, these are experiments 😁

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Terry Freedman's avatar

I agree, Beth

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