Alpha Heroes & Spitfire Heroines discussion

Even though I love the BDB, I wasn't intending on buying Lover Avenged just yet, but I went to the postal center in my favorite used book store today to mail a bunch of books for PBS. Lo and behold, what did I find on the new releases rack when I walked in the door, but a copy of Lover Avenged. Well I couldn't very well pass up a like new book at half price.;-) It will probably still be a while before I get to it though.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone has decoded the Old Language inside the front cover yet. My geek husband talked me into it, and together we figured it out. It was pretty fun and the Warden is running a contest on her website for anyone who can translate it:
http://www.jrward.com/index-contests....

Question: How are we supposed to decode this? Is this some actual language?

Holy cow Julie, to find a used copy already is pretty awesome! I would've jumped on that baby too!

Lucky you Julie with the UBS find :D

That decoding contest sounds very cool.

I'm so heading to my nearest UBS.

Yeah, I was so totally shocked to find a used copy 2 days after it was released, I had to do a double take. Needless to say, I grabbed that puppy before I even went to the postal center. I wasn't taking any chances on anyone snatching it from under my nose while I was mailing packages.:-)

Auntee, hubby and I decoded it the old-fashioned way, one symbol at a time. It took us about two hours, but we had fun doing it. I'm pretty sure it's a made up code. Each symbol stands for a letter of the English alphabet. It actually wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Once I figured out a couple of letters, the rest fell into place pretty quickly. It's kind of like playing Wheel of Fortune.

Okay, I broke the code (lol).
Actually, the answer hit me in the face once I finally got to a certain passage in the book. (Hint: this is something that Wrath says to the Brothers.)

Julie, I don't know how you figured this out without reading the book--you must be a genious!
BTW, there is actually a typo/mispelling in this message, I swear!

Okay, I just checked her website contest page, and there is NOT a typo on her coded message. So obviously, my book has a typo. I wonder if all the books are this way, or I'm one of the lucky ones?:)

I've already caught a few typos in my book, so it's probably not just you, Auntee.

It probably will be more obvious to people who've read it. I found out after we decoded the message that it was an actual passage from the book.

Honestly figuring it out without the benefit of that knowledge wasn't too difficult, just a little time-consuming. My husband and I just pooled our collective strengths. He figured out how to do it, and I did most of actual decoding. Given some time, anyone who is good at word puzzles should be able to figure out.

It's not just you Auntee. My book had the typo too. In fact there are two of them, and I mentioned them both in my entry email just to cover all my bases. LOL! One is a missing character/letter in one of the words and the other is a character that was incorrectly drawn. I hadn't paid much attention to the message on the website, but now I had to go look. You're right the typo isn't there. Good catch! I did notice that a couple of the character symbols are formed a little differently than they are in the book though. Wonder what's up with that?

The phrase is repeated twice on each page. The second time there is no typo (symbol/letter left out). I did notice that the symbols aren't drawn exactly each time.
That's smart of you to cover your bases, Julie!:)

I can see how that would be time consuming but possible, especially if you like to do puzzles.

Do you know what the winner gets?

The website says the prize is a complete autographed set of the BDB books personalized for the winner.