In a certain coded language: A. 'Best way to win' is written as 'bau mau shau…

Concept

In sentence-based coding, common words shared by two statements correspond to the common codes shared by those statements.

Repeated overlaps can be eliminated one at a time. After known word-code pairs are removed, the remaining word matches the remaining code.

Application

1. Statements A and B share the words ‘way’ and ‘to’. Their common codes are ‘mau’ and ‘sa’, so these two codes belong to ‘way’ and ‘to’ in an undetermined order.

2. Statements A and C share only the word ‘win’. Their common code is ‘shau’, so ‘win’ corresponds to ‘shau’.

3. Statements B and C share only the word ‘the’. Their common code is ‘tau’, so ‘the’ corresponds to ‘tau’.

4. In statement B, remove ‘mau’ and ‘sa’ for ‘way’ and ‘to’, and remove ‘tau’ for ‘the’. The only code left is ‘hau’, paired with the only word left, ‘hell’.

Cross-check

Substituting the known pairs back into statement B accounts for ‘tau’, ‘mau’, and ‘sa’; ‘hau’ is the sole unused code.

Therefore, the code for ‘hell’ is ‘hau’.