Tips To Solve Coding – Decoding Problems
Deciphering Message Word Codes:
In this type of questions,
- Some messages are given in the coded language
- The code for a particular word or a message is asked
Important Points to follow while solving this question:
- Compare any two messages bearing a common word
- Compare the codes of these two messages to find a common code-word
- This common code word will represent the common word in the message
- Repeat the same by picking all the possible combinations of common words from messages and thus determining the common code-words
- Thus the entire message can be decoded and the codes for individual words can be found
FOR EXAMPLE:
In a certain language,
‘you are good’ is written as ‘pi da na’
‘good and bad’ is written as ‘da to pa’
‘they are bad’ is written as ‘ti na to’
What is the code for ‘they’?
(a) na
(b) to
(c) ti
(d) pi
Given:
List down all the words in the messages
Message 1: you, are, good
Message 2: and, bad (take only words which are not repeated)
Message 3: they (take only words that are not repeated)
Solution:
Compare the common words in messages to find their respective code-words
MESSAGE 1:
- From the question, the word ‘good’ is common in message 1 & 2. So its code is also common in both code 1 & 2 i.e., ‘da” Good => da
- The word ‘are’ is common in message 1 & 3, i.e., ‘na’ Are => na
- The word ‘you’ is not repeated in any of the messages, so it is represented by the code other than da and na in code1 i.e., pi , You => pi
MESSAGE 2:
- The word ‘bad’ is common in both messages 2&3, therefore the common code-word from codes 2&3 is the code for ‘bad’ i.e., ‘to’ Bad => to
- Code for the word ‘good’ is already found Good => da
- Since, we know the code for both ‘good’ & ‘bad’ the remaining code ‘pa’ is for ‘and’ And => pa
MESSAGE 3:
The code for both words ‘are’ & ‘bad’ are already found in the previous steps. Therefore, the remaining code ‘ti’ is for ‘they’ they=> ti
As found in the solution, they => ti
ANSWER: (c) ti
