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Question for ya'll about a GEB puzzle

By Anonymous 7324 in Anonymous 7324's Diary
Thu Jan 23, 2003 at 05:56:12 PM EST
Tags: (all tags)

Anyways, the actual question already involves giving away spoilers (the specific bit is about the dialog for Contracrostipunctus), so I'll put it in the body.

Anyways. In Contracrostipunctus, the first letter of each line of dialog can be made into a sentence:
"Hofstadter's Contracrostipunctus acrostic" all backwards spells J. S. Bach.
there's also an extra "Y" that seems spurious between 'all' and 'backwards.' For one, something leads me to believe that the "Y" is not really spurious.
Also, I'm not sure how to get something or other to be spelled backwards to give J. S. Bach. That name spelled backwards is: hcab sj. I've even tried replacing the H with a B, to no avail. I think I'm on the right track, because the tortoise talks about playing the notes BACH backwards and upside-down, so I'm assuming I should be looking at the above sentence backwards somehow.
hcab sj or similar patterns don't show up in Hofstader, Contracrostipunctus, acrostic, "goblet g" or much of anything else. The best I've gotten is that "Hofstadter's Contracrostipunctus acrostic" is HCA ..., but the next letter is the 'A' in 'all', and then that weird, spurious Y.
Frankly, I'm stumped.

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Anonymous 7324's Diary

Question for ya'll about a GEB puzzle | 4 comments (4 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

just an extra a... (5.00 / 2) (#1)
by sully on Thu Jan 23, 2003 at 06:17:56 PM EST

'"Hofstadter's Contracrostipunctus acrostic" all backwards spells J. S. Bach.' itself spells hcaabsj, or js baach backwards, with the first letter of each word (considering the name to be one word). As you mentioned, there's that extra a, plus the y if you consider it, but I'd say that's close enough that it's got to be the point.

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The opinions expressed above are not necessarily those of my prefrontal cortex.

Cool! by drivers, 01/23/2003 07:24:32 PM EST (5.00 / 1)

mysta was right by drivers, 01/23/2003 07:30:11 PM EST (5.00 / 1)

Misreading (5.00 / 2) (#2)
by mysta on Thu Jan 23, 2003 at 06:56:15 PM EST

I've got GEB right here and I think you have misread it.

It reads:

Hofstadter's Contracrostipunctus Acrostically Backwards Spells 'J.S. Bach'

(Make sure you read lines that start with punctuation as letters too).

Now, let's write that sentence like this:

Hofstadter's
Contracrostipunctus
Acrostically
Backwards
Spells
'J.S. Bach'

What happens if we take this acrostically backwards (ie, all the first letters read backwards)? We get

J S BACH

Magic.

Some other things to watch for in that book:

Read the "Crab Cannon" backwards
Count how many pushes and pops there are in "Little Harmonic Labyrithn"
Look carefully through the index
Read the entry for Gebstarter in the Bibliography

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Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?

Question for ya'll about a GEB puzzle | 4 comments (4 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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