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Most accomplished autohrs are aware of the critical importance of proper grammar and spelling. The the neccessity of riting one's ideas succinctly, appropriately, and without error is parmaount. Occassional oversights may be forgived, but generall the technical corectness of a written document is considered a gauge of proffesionalism, a reflection of the author's erudition and attention do detail. Propar care must be taken to avoid simple mistakes that betray ignorance of bsaic language mechanics such as tense, subject-verb aggreement and the proper use of holonyms. An writer with with a mastery of the English language should be able to write, boldly and without assisstance, "Precisely what is done upto the former, that cahnge must be done also to the latter." But I digresses, as I often has. The answer to this puzzle is also the answer to the question:

O H T H E C A M S D I B F T O A A S G L A N W I T H S P A H E S S ?

What is the answer to the puzzle, dear reader?

COTO
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1 Answers1

26

The text has a number of spelling a grammar mistakes that should be corrected.

Swap 'O' and 'H' in 'autohrs'
Remove 'THE'
Remove 'C' from 'neccessity'
Add 'W' to 'riting'
Swap 'M' and 'A' in 'parmaount'
Remove 'S' from 'occassional'
'D' --> 'N' in 'forgived'
Add 'Y' to 'generall'
Add 'R' to 'corectness'
Remove 'F' from 'proffesionalism'
Add 'S' to 'proffesionalism'
'D' --> 'T' in 'do'
'A' --> 'E' in 'propar'
Swap 'S' and 'A' in 'bsaic'
Remove 'G' from 'aggreement'
'L' --> 'M' in 'holonyms'
Remove 'N' from 'an'
'P' --> 'N' in 'upto'
Swap 'A' and 'H' in 'cahnge'
Remove 'ES' from 'digresses'
'S' --> 'VE' in 'has'

Making the same changes to the string
'O H T H E C A M S D I B F T O A A S G L A N W I T H S P A H E S S?' results in:
'HOW MANY RIBS DOES A MAN HAVE?'
The answer is 24.

Julian Rosen
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    Darn. You guys are fast! These things never make it more than an hour. >___< – COTO Jul 12 '15 at 22:08
  • Wow, I had been designing a puzzle using the same mechanism! – xnor Jul 13 '15 at 00:05
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    Isn't the question a bit like asking "how many toes does a man have?" The "man" part seems oddly specific... – superphonic Jul 13 '15 at 13:13
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    It could be part of the old "women have an extra rib" myth. Or it could be man as in "human". – Set Big O Jul 13 '15 at 13:26
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    @superphonic: You're overthinking things. I wanted a question of specific length (to ensure there was enough work involved in deciphering the string), and I wanted the words to be 4 letters or less so that it would be harder to guess them after translating only a few letters. ;) – COTO Jul 13 '15 at 16:31