Here are some words translated from an artificial language. agnoscrenia means…
2024
Here are some words translated from an artificial language.
agnoscrenia means poisonous spider
delanocrenia means poisonous snake
agnosdeery means brown spider
Which word could mean "black widow spider"?
- A.
deeryclostagnos
- B.
agnosdelano
- C.
agnosvitriblunin
- D.
trymuttiagnos
Attempted by 8 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
Concept:
In artificial-language coding-decoding puzzles, when two given words share a root, that shared root carries the meaning common to both words, while the root that differs carries the meaning that differs. The word order established by the given examples (which root comes first, which comes second) must also hold for the new word — any candidate that reverses that order, or that reuses a root already fixed to a different meaning, is invalid.
Application:
Compare agnoscrenia (poisonous spider) with delanocrenia (poisonous snake): the shared segment "crenia" ties to the shared meaning "poisonous"; the segment that differs, agnos/delano, ties to the meaning that differs, spider/snake. So agnos = spider, delano = snake, crenia = poisonous.
Compare agnoscrenia (poisonous spider) with agnosdeery (brown spider): the shared segment "agnos" confirms "spider"; the differing segment crenia/deery ties to poisonous/brown. So deery = brown.
In every given word, the noun-root (agnos or delano) comes first and the descriptor-root (crenia or deery) comes second — establishing a fixed noun-then-descriptor order.
"Black widow spider" is a noun (spider) plus a descriptor (black widow), so its coded form must start with agnos and end with a root that has not been assigned any other meaning.
Any word that places agnos at the end rather than the start breaks the noun-first order seen in every example, so it is eliminated.
Any word that pairs agnos with delano is eliminated too: delano is already fixed to "snake" by delanocrenia, so reusing it here would force it to also mean the "black widow" descriptor — a contradiction.
The one remaining word starts with agnos and pairs it with a root that appears nowhere else in the given set, so it does not conflict with any already-fixed meaning.
Cross-check:
Re-applying both filters independently to the surviving word confirms it: it opens with the spider-root and its second segment is unattested elsewhere in the given translations, so it introduces no contradiction with any fixed meaning — the only structurally valid choice.