Here are some words translated from an artificial language. hapllesh means…

Concept:

In an artificial-language decoding puzzle, each compound word is built by joining two roots, and each root carries exactly one part of the compound's meaning. When two different compound words share a common root, that root must carry the same meaning in both, which lets you pin down its meaning by comparing the two English compounds it appears in.

Application:

1. srenchoch means pinball and resbosrench means ninepin; both words contain the root srench. Since "pin" is the part common to both English compounds (pin-ball and nine-pin), srench must denote "pin".

2. With srench fixed as "pin", the other root in each word is fixed too: och (from srenchoch) must denote "ball", and resbo (from resbosrench) must denote "nine".

3. hapllesh means cloudburst, so hapl and lesh together denote "cloud" and "burst" in some order; neither is fixed on its own yet.

4. To form cloud nine we need a word built from resbo ("nine") plus whichever root means "cloud". Checking the four given words: leshsrench = lesh + srench ("pin") has no trace of "nine"; ochhapl = och ("ball") + hapl has no trace of "nine"; haploch = hapl + och ("ball") has no trace of "nine"; haplresbo = hapl + resbo ("nine") is the only one built from resbo.

5. Since haplresbo is the only offered word containing resbo ("nine") at all, hapl must be the "cloud" half of hapllesh (leaving lesh as "burst"), so haplresbo denotes cloud nine.

Cross-check:

• leshsrench is built on srench ("pin"), so it can only relate to "pin" — never cloud nine.

• ochhapl and haploch are both built on och ("ball"), so both stay tied to "ball" — never cloud nine.

• haplresbo is the only word built on resbo ("nine"), matching cloud nine exactly.

haplresbo is the word that means cloud nine.