1. If he drops a thousand dollars, he won’t even bother to pick it up because during the 4 seconds he picks it, he would’ve already earned it back.
2. He can donate US$15 to everyone on earth but still be left with US$ 5 Million for his pocket money.
3. If Bill Gates was a country, he would be the 37th richest country on earth.
4. Bill Gates is 42 this year. If we assume that he will live for another 35 years, he has to spend US$8.78 Million per day to finish all his money before he goes to heaven.
5. If Microsoft Windows’ users can claim US$1 for every time their computers hang because of Microsoft Windows, Bill Gates will be bankrupt in 3 years..
6. Consider an average American of modest wealth. Perhaps she has a net worth of $70,000. Mr. Gates’ worth is 800,000 times larger. Which means that if something costs $100,000 to her, to Bill it’s as though it costs 12 cents. You can work out the right multiplier for your own net worth.

Last week’s desecration of a Shi’ite shrine moved Iraq towards civil war. Abdel Bari Atwan, who has had unique access to Osama Bin Laden, explains why Al-Qaeda wants to divide Islam.


Osama Bin Laden, who had been sitting cross-legged on a carpet, placed his Kalashnikov rifle on the ground and got up. He came towards me with a warm smile that turned into barely repressed laughter as he took in the way I was dressed.

I had been kitted out in baggy trousers, a long shirt and a turban for my clandestine journey to his hideout in southern Afghanistan. The turban in particular made me feel self-conscious, as I had never worn such a thing in my life.

I spent three days with Bin Laden in Tora Bora, the only western-based journalist to spend such a significant amount of time with him, before or since. I talked at length to him, slept next to him in his cave and shared his modest food.

Listening to him during that visit 10 years ago I realised he was no ordinary figure, but it didn’t occur to me for one moment that this polite, soft-spoken, smiling and apparently gentle person would become the world’s most dangerous man, terrorising western capitals, inflicting hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of damage on the United States, threatening its economic stability and embroiling it in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
....................
He told me about past Al-Qaeda attacks on the Americans — including the 1993 ambush on American troops in Mogadishu, which he said had been wrongly blamed on the Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid.

More attacks were in the planning stages, he said, and he emphasised that these “operations” took a long time to prepare. He hinted at a strike at the Americans on their home territory, but I confess I did not register the enormity of what he implied when he came out with an unforgettable statement: “We hope to reach ignition point in the not-too-distant future.”

Bin Laden also explained his long-term anti-American strategy. He told me he knew he would never be able to defeat America on its own soil using conventional weapons. He had another plan, one that would take years to reach fruition.

“We want to bring the Americans to fight us on Muslim land,” he said as we walked through the woods in the high mountains at Tora Bora. “If we can fight them on our own territory we will beat them, because the battle will be on our terms in a land they neither know nor understand.”

We are witnessing part of that plan now, in the battlefields of Iraq, which has become a breeding ground for the most ruthless and militant Al-Qaeda fighters we have seen. In the process we are discovering the new face of Al-Qaeda, as a movement involved in bloody sectarian strife against fellow Muslims.

Paradoxically, the strike on American home territory in September 2001 was a setback to Bin Laden’s long-term plan. Al-Qaeda lost support among more moderate Muslims, who sympathised with the victims. It lost its safe haven and training camps in Afghanistan. And, crucially, there was dissent within the movement itself.

Some inner-circle Al-Qaeda members left as a result of what they considered to be a catastrophic decision, according to Abu Qatada, a radical cleric believed to be Al-Qaeda’s spiritual leader in Europe. (He is currently fighting a deportation order in Britain.) They predicted the US would respond with unparalleled ferocity.
..................
Iraq is in many ways a better base for Al-Qaeda than Afghanistan. It provides an Arabic-speaking environment and culture. Geographically it is the heart of the region. In Islamic terms it is as important as Saudi Arabia and Palestine.
....................

from http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=15900

I will here explain how Ottendorf Cipher works.
Look at the following three lines,

1) This line is the first.
2) Now comes the second one.
3) Perhaps the third line.

Now if I say
(1-4), (1-3), (2-6) ,(3-1), (1-5), (3-2) = simple
Here (X –Y), where X is the line number and Y in the letter on the line X (skip all the spaces in between letters, they are not counted)

i.e ( 1-4) = "s" , first line, fourth letter :)



Now lets come to the first puzzle.

An English mathematician, logician, author, and photographer.

To find the answer to this puzzle we need answers to the six other puzzles that followed.(this time I have provided the answers :)

1) What is the name of one of the most learned men of all times who always described himself as "omo sanza lettere" (unlettered man)? = Leonardo Da Vinci (he often referes to himself as such)


2) Eating ______ is a crime equivalent to eating the heads of one's parents" = Beans (Pythagoras' famous expression)


3) The famous Latin proverb typifying Romans (and can easily typify a modern Hamas-led government strategy!). = "If you want peace prepare for war"

4) O3.7.5.5.4.7.6.6.7.? (What's the ? mark standing for)

O3 refers to the sun - (3) is the number of letters in the name - and then 7 = mercury , 5 = venus, 5 = earth and so on…the names of the planets and the ninth one "?" = Pluto ( though Pluto is no more a planet now but when I designed the puzzle it was still a planet :)….so the Answer here is PLUTO


5) What has two pairs of wings, three eyes, and a three-jointed beak, and it can be heard from a quarter-of-a-mile away when calling its ladylove? = Common Cicada

6) To what corresponds the hieroglyphic sign of 16 in the "Hieroglyphica" of Horappolo? = Pleasure (meaning the age from which this notion comes into the game)

So the following are the lines and the answers:

1) Leaonardo Da Vinci
2) Beans
3) If you want peace prepare for war
4) Pluto
5) Common cicada
6) Pleasure

and now look at the Ottendorf Cipher:

4-2 5-1
2-2 1-5
3-6 6-7
5-8 1-6
2-5 3-4
___6-2_
___1-1_

Considering that each of two columns is a word - name and surname - we have, beginning with (4-2) - line number 4 and the letter that comes in the 2nd position i.e "L"

Similarly, second letter of the first word (first column) is "e"
Third letter is "w"
Fourth letter is "i"
Fifth letter is "s"

The second column starts with (5-1) = "C"
Second letter is "a"
Third letter is "r"
Fourth letter is "r"
Fifth letter is "o"
Sixth letter is "l"
Seventh letter is "l"

Now lets see which are the two words we got!!!

Lewis Carroll

I know it wasnt all as easy as i claimed, and thanks to all the people who tried. Special thanks to Anu who was instrumental in bringing a more clarified and easy-to-understand reformulation of this puzzle.

P.S. There were two mistakes in the Ottendorf code of the answer for which i apologize and which might have perhaps deterred some of getting correct answers put together.

Dinosaurs have disappeared many years ago, partially because of their ignorance, or at least it is what is claimed....

Humans, risk to undertake the same route... Moreover, all evidence points that the direction we head to is that of oblivion... that of destruction... that of movies such as Terminator 1 - a science-fiction, where the humans dont see the sun, dont breath a fresh air... cause there is nothing remaining...

I hope the final result will not be the same as for dinosaurs...

Hi all,

First blog from me, and not just anything but a puzzle i would like you to think about. I thought there are other ways, more active, to learn about things, different things, by doing an active research and making your brains work yet harder. And being a big fan of all kinds of puzzles, riddles
and similar intriguing, curiousity-piquing and intelligence-requiring things, i decided to star posting puzzles here on my TIGblog. This is the first puzzle which i made out quite quickly and it might not have as much of ellegance and subtlety to itself as I would like to, nonetheless it is quite interesting and i tried to have quite some domains covered in it!

Please, whether you decide to solve it or no, tell me what you think of it! any feedback would be appreciated!

Below you will firstly read the guidelines on how to contruct the answer to the puzzle from solutions of six subproblems of the puzzle.

OK, enough of introduction, keep on reading and good luck!

***********************************************************
GUIDELINES: Each of six sub-problems of the puzzle should yield and answer, a word or a phrase. These answers must be remembered(written down) in order to be used to construct the solution of the puzzle. The "construction" of the final solution of the puzzle will use the so-called simplified version of the Ottendorf cipher(see an example below). The
Ottendorf cipher of the solution will be given and TIG members will have to first solve the six subproblems and then input into the priorly-given Ottendorf-cipher solution the letters of the solutions of the subproblems which will give the final answer to the puzzle.

*****************************************************
SHORT DESCRIPTION OF THE SIMPLIFIED OTTENDORF CIPHER

The simplified Ottendorf cipher can be used to write a ciphered message based on known lines of text. Each of cipher's key has a X-Y format (where X and Y are natural numbers such as 1,2,3...) corresponding to one letter in any of known lines based on which the cipher is written. First part X of X-Y cipher key corresponds to a line number, and the second part Y corresponds to a letter in that line. In so making the cipher, each X-Y yields a letter in one of the lines, which could be consisted of words,phrases,senteces.

*********************************
EXAMPLE OF OTTENDORF CIPHER USAGE

Below are the (three) known lines based on which we wil lwrite an Ottendorf cipher of some words. Note that numbering of the lines at the beginning of each line is just for illustration purposes and will not be considered during cipher creation.
-----------------
1. one
2. two
3. three
-----------------

In order to write for example "the one" in Ottendorf cipher based on above three known lines, one must use number of the line(first part of Ottendorf cipher) and the placement of the letter in that line(second part of the Ottendorf cipher).

the one =
(t) 2-1 (o) 1-1
(h) 3-2 (n) 1-2
(e) 1-3 (e) 3-5

In brackets I just put the meaning - a letter - corresponding to each Ottendorf cipher key based on three lines above.

or if we were to construct "who", it would be as following:

who =
(w) 2-2
(h) 3-2
(o) 1-1

or

who =
(w) 2-2
(h) 3-2
(o) 2-3

In the second way of making the word "who" the last letter "o" was takne from the secodn line in difference from the first "who" where the third "o" is taken from the first line.
------------------------------------------

Finally here the puzzle numebr 1.

------------------ PUZZLE 1 --------------
An English mathematician, logician, author, and photographer.
------------------------------------------

---------------Six subproblems, solutions of which will yield, using the Ottendorf cipher- to the answer to this puzzle-----------------

1. What is the name of one of the most learned men of all times who always described himself as "omo sanza lettere" (unlettered man) ?

2. "Eating ______ is a crime equivalent to eating the heads of one's parents"

3. The famous Latin proverb typifying Romans (and can easily typify a modern Hamas-led government strategy!).

4. O3.7.5.5.4.7.6.6.7.? (What's the ? mark standing for)

5. What has two pairs of wings, three eyes, and a three-jointed beak, and it can be heard from a quarter-of-a-mile away when calling its ladylove?

6. To what corresponds the hieroglyphic sign of 16 in the "Hieroglyphica" of Horappolo?

The Ottendorf cipher solution is:
________
4-2 5-1
2-2 1-5
3-6 6-7
5-7 3-4
2-5 6-2
___1-1_


Each column of Ottendorf cipher above, as you probably already understood, correponds to one word where first number(the one before hyphen) is the number of the
subproblem(1...6) and the second number(the one after the hyphen) is the placement of the letter in the solution of that subproblem.
So in order to know the answer to the puzzle oen has to respond to all subproblems of the puzzle 1 and the use the above-decribed method to substitute Ottendorf-cipher solution with letters from solutions of six subproblems.
-------------------------------------
Response to the puzzle, when known, SHALL be send to me(mnopq) by a TIG messenger or by email at spider37503@yahoo.com. Please DO NOT POST any comments or questions on the blog unless you feel they will be of use for other TIG members.

Any questions, requests for clarification and other concerns should be addressed to me - mnopq - by TIG messenger or by email mentionend above.

GOOD LUCK!