WOR Secret Anagram - Hoid Gibberish

[Aether he/him]

I do not think so, but it might be worth a look.

[Claincy he/him]

I have not. It's an interesting idea. Hoid appeared in other books as well. One of the Mistbornes I think? also Warbreaker and Elantris. Could be from there.

All of the mistborn ones actually. He didn't "appear" in emporer's soul but he was present and did impact the story. Don't think searching these will yield anything, but it might.

[Elisheva]

Maybe balderdash just happened to work for one whole word, but the other two words must be split and combined before rearranging. Figgldygrak has suspiciously few vowels whereas nonsense has several...

[Levian]

I absolutely love this, and while it seems to have been debunked, I really think this is something that someone needs to ask Brandon! It's way too much of a coincidence that Balderdash spells Shardblade. 

[Aether he/him]

I've asked PrncRny to get help with Figgldygrak from Brandon when he goes to a signing later today.

[Levian]

I've asked PrncRny to get help with Figgldygrak from Brandon when he goes to a signing later today.

That's great! Now let's hope he chooses that question to ask! 

[GreyPilgrim he/him]

To this whole topic, I reply: There's always another secret.

[FirstSelector]

It's worth noting that we are reading the English translation of what is presumably an Alethi conversation - has anyone considered looking at how these words are spelled in the Alethi alphabet?  It isn't bijective to english and perhaps some of these extraneous consanants go away.

 

EDIT:  What if it's not even as simple as that?  Given the similarity of the Alethi characters, one might consider that the phonetic spelling of these two words could, with slight tweaking, be an entirely other set of characters.  This could be some very clever wordplay by Hoid.

Edited December 8, 2013 by FirstSelector

[Claincy he/him]

@FirstSelector, clever idea. Looking at it and going from memory I don't think it would be much different in Alethi. The double g might become one, I'm not certain if that was in alethi or just steel alphabet. I'll take a better look into it tomorrow once I've had some sleep

[Mailliw73 he/him]

I think it would become figldgrak phonetically.

[Swimmingly he/him]

We got an answer (kind of) to this question via PrncRny: Brandon said :

Everything Wit says is significant. The degree of significance varies, but everything is significant. So yes.

[Claincy he/him]

I think it would become figldgrak phonetically.

I thought the y would still be represented, though not by a y. More likely an i or e depending on how it is pronounced. (Kind of hard to tell that from a written word ).

[Natans he/him]

I thought the y would still be represented, though not by a y. More likely an i or e depending on how it is pronounced. (Kind of hard to tell that from a written word ).

 

Now that we know that there is something here we need ask what figldgrak mean =)

Edited December 8, 2013 by Natans

[Claincy he/him]

Ok so I ran figldegrak, figldigrak and figldgrack through my program (still only using words with a double g so its only looking at a small subset of possibilities.)

 

figldigrak came up with nothing.

figldegrak came out with dagger, with filkg left over (if we are being consistent with whether double letters count as 1 or 2) or digger with flakg.

fgldgrack also came up with nothing from that subset of words.

 

So almost a possibility there, but not quite. :/ It was worth a try.

[Goatborn he/him]

Let's think a little sideways: What if it's not an anagram?

 

It could be an acronym - eleven letters, but eleven isn't particularly significant in the Cosmere. The only example that comes to mind is the 11th metal that was brought up early in the Mistborn Trilogy. How many worlds are there in the Cosmere?

 

It could also be a cipher? Are there any simple codes that come up in Sanderson's other works?

 

The problem I've found is the lack of vowels. 

 

By reversing the positions of the letters in the alphabet (A becomes Z, etc) I got: BINORTTTUWZ which could transfer to TOR WINZ BUTT but I don't think that's the secret.

 

Personally, I'm leaning toward the only significance here being that it hid some wordplay with balderdash, but I haven't used my brain in a while, so let's exhaust this!

[hoser he/him]

... TOR WINZ BUTT ...

Priceless!

[Mailliw73 he/him]

The publishers made him put that in.

[Gamma Fiend he/him]

Game over. We've revealed Sanderson's ultimate secret message.

TOR WINZ BUTT

[kraefzke]

I solved it. We actually have to include "nonsense":

 

"Kaglygrengse finds no Shardblade"

 

I'm pretty sure that in the next book (or somewhere in the series) the character named Kaglygrengse will play an important role and be in bad need of a shardblade, but horrible things will happen because he can't find one. Also, it might be that this is not the actual spelling of the name. Could be two words: Kaglyg Rengse. Sounds Makabaki. Or maybe Horneater-ish.

 

Edit: How could I be so blind! It's Rysn from the interludes!

I assume her second name is Galgkege or something close.

 

Nonsense. Balderdash. Figgldygrak.

Rysn Galgkege finds no Shardblade.

Edited December 11, 2013 by kraefzke

[Pechvarry]

Rysn finds shardblade on Galgkege.

We should probably look at cosmere maps for places with no current plot significance (in-universe words that our wiki could miss).

I really don't expect an encoded sentence. I expect, if anything, scrambled words that are prime examples of what Hoid is talking about.

[Swimmingly he/him]

what about gibletish and gibberish?

[marianmi]

Rysn finds shardblade on Galgkege.

We should probably look at cosmere maps for places with no current plot significance (in-universe words that our wiki could miss).

I really don't expect an encoded sentence. I expect, if anything, scrambled words that are prime examples of what Hoid is talking about.

 

sounds like a river. or one of the islands.

[kraefzke]

Unsure if gibberish should be included. Did include gibletish:

 

So: Nonsense. Balderdash. Figgldygrak. Gibletish.

Lo, Rysn finds big Shardblade in salt-egg-keg, eh?!

 

Salt-eggs are probably a rare delicacy on Roshar (I'm imagining something like sole eggs here), of which Rysn will acquire a keg, in which she will discover said Shardblade.

 

That must be it. I'm sure about it. In fact, sure enough that if it turns out wrong, I'll eat a cheeseburger. That's right! Kurk can record this!

 

I'm so excited about this discovery!

 

Edit: Removed swearing and included leftover letters.

Edited December 13, 2013 by kraefzke
no swearing, please

[Musica she/her]

it would be awesome if it turns out to really have some meaning but... well, since balderdash is an actual word (from dictionary: sensless talk\writing, nonsense.) I think we are grasping at straws here...

[Claincy he/him]

it would be awesome if it turns out to really have some meaning but... well, since balderdash is an actual word (from dictionary: sensless talk\writing, nonsense.) I think we are grasping at straws here...

Oh we've certainly been grasping at straws the whole time

At least one of the straws appears to be thicker than any of us really suspected though