RUBIK Substance Abuse (Solution)
by David Reiley and Timothy Chow, with assistance from Jill Sazama, Shrenik Shah, and Glenn Willen
This is a crypto-list of chemical properties and chemical substances. The trick is that each letter is consistently represented not by another letter, but by a chemical-element symbol. We only used 23 of the first 26 chemical elements on the periodic table, as the crypto-list answers don't include J, W, or X.)
We can rewrite the list with the following elemental symbols:
KBNScSiCrBNa
PSiCaFCrLiO
CrLiScNCa
LiKBBeCaLi
NCaBPArNScBNa
CaBNeHBK NSc HeScP
BCSiOClNCBNa
NeHBNaTiHeBCaSLiO
BHeSiPOSiPNCSiCa
SiNaScNCLi
NNaLiScSiCLi
NaArCaSiOSiMgSiOCr
NeHNOScAl
NCrCrSiCBN
NaSiOHCKHCr
CaFLi
PBScNaArBeCaLiCKLi
NaNPHeNBNaBC
ScArFCrSiCa
HeLiOSiScSiCBC
PHeBCaSiNaFBeBC
LiNaHeScNHeF
SNCBCaCaBC
The cipher key, sorted by chemical element from 1-24, is:
| H | U | |
| He | S | |
| Li | E | |
| Be | B | |
| B | I | |
| C | N | |
| N | A | |
| O | R | |
| F | Y | |
| Ne | Q | |
| Na | C | |
| Mg | F | |
| Al | Z | |
| Si | O | |
| P | P | |
| S | V | |
| Cl | G | |
| Ar | H | |
| K | D | |
| Ca | L | |
| Sc | T | |
| Ti | K | |
| V | ||
| Cr | M |
This leads to the following decryption:
DIATOMIC
POLYMER
METAL
EDIBLE
ALIPHATIC
LIQUID AT STP
INORGANIC
QUICKSILVER
ISOPROPANOL
OCTANE
ACETONE
CHLOROFORM
QUARTZ
AMMONIA
CORUNDUM
LYE
PITCHBLENDE
CAPSAICIN
THYMOL
SEROTONIN
PSILOCYBIN
ECSTASY
VANILLIN
Note that the first seven of these items are chemical properties, and the last sixteen are all common names for chemical compounds. Note also that the sorted cipherkey above spells out USE BINARY at the top. This clues the fact that we want you to make a 16x7 grid, marking 1 for properties that each compound has, and 0 for each property that each compound does not have.
| DIATOMIC | POLYMER | METAL | EDIBLE | ALIPHATIC | LIQUID AT STP | INORGANIC | Number in Base 10 | Atom | |||
| QUICKSILVER | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 19 | K | ||
| ISOPROPANOL | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 6 | C | ||
| OCTANE | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 6 | C | ||
| ACETONE | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 6 | C | ||
| CHLOROFORM | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 6 | C | ||
| QUARTZ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | H | ||
| AMMONIA | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | H | ||
| CORUNDUM | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | H | ||
| LYE | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | H | ||
| PITCHBLENDE | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | H | ||
| CAPSAICIN | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | O | ||
| THYMOL | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | O | ||
| SEROTONIN | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | O | ||
| PSILOCYBIN | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | O | ||
| ECSTASY | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | O | ||
| VANILLIN | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 8 | O |
The final answer pieces together a chemical compound from atoms represented by the above binary numbers. As shown in the rightmost two columns above, the puzzle yields one potassium atom, 4 carbon atoms, 5 hydrogen atoms, and 6 oxygen atoms. The only common chemical compound with the formula KC4H5O6 is the final answer: CREAM of TARTAR.