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What comes next in each of these sequences?

$$\begin{array}{align*}\textbf{ 1 }&\text{J, KK, LLL, MZ, A, BO, ?}\\\textbf{ B }&\text{HNAKXR, EERREA, LOGYND, INOPOO, ?}\\\textbf{ C }&\text{NMLLARY, JBZALOY, KMMRA, DBJTML, ORMSLBL, ?}\\\textbf{ 4 }&\text{C-N, E-N, NW-S-NE-C, S-SW-W, WSW-SE-NNW, ?}\\\textbf{ E }&\text{FIRST, WELL DONE, PARKER, RIVER MOUTH, RIVER MOUTH,}\\\textbf{ }&\text{DANCE, ?}\\\textbf{ F }&\text{FILLY, DOE, FEMALE, HEN, BITCH, ?}\\\textbf{ G }&\text{FREDDIE, WILLIAMS, DOWN TO, LIFE ON, DROPS OF, ? OF}\\\textbf{ H }&\text{VIENNA, BRUSSELS, HAVANA, BERLIN, MADRID, ?}\\\textbf{ I/9 }&\text{ZXV, PRMT, JFVVM, QZXP, GVM, MRMV, VRTSG, HVEVM, HRC,}\\\textbf{ }&\text{UREV, ?}\end{array}$$

Fill out your answers in the grid below and observe the final sequence in the highlighted cells. Find the missing letter, but make sure you take it one step at a time.

                                                    Grid

Levieux
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7 Answers7

35

Partial Answer

1 (found by bobajob).

This is the roman numeral for n under the rot-n cipher. The next member of the sequence is CPP.

B (found by Daphne B).

These are the nth letters of the noble gases. The next letters are UNTNN.

C (found by Betty Crokker).

The name of actors who have played James Bond, in a chronological order (David Niven missing), encoded with a keyword cipher, where the keyword is BOND. The next one is CRAIG encoded: NRBGE.

4 (found by Moghwyn).

These represent the words ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR when typed on cell phone keypad. E,W,N,S being directions C denotes tapping on same place for next letter. For more info check this So the next word will be N-ESE

E.

These clue letters of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie...). The only five-letter clue for "golf" that starts with S and ends with T is SPORT.

F (found by Will).

These are all female animal names: the "regular" names of them are horse, goat, monkey, rooster, and dog. Those are animals in the Chinese zodiac; the next animal is a pig, whose female form is a SOW.

G.

These are all things that can be preceded or followed by the planets, in order. The next is RINGS (for the rings of Saturn).

H.

These are capitals of countries that have vehicle registration codes of A-E. The of the country with registration code of F is PARIS.

I/9 (found by bobajob).

These are Atbash-enciphered playing card values in descending order; the next is ULFI.

Final (Found by Alex Varga):

These are the letters of a QWERTY keyboard rotated backward 1-10 steps (one step at a time); Q>P, W>V>U, E>D>C>B, and so on. The solution therefore is F, or PUBNOSNAFF. A good case could be made for P, though; going back the number on the key directly above the letter key, but that was not the originally intended solution.

Community
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Deusovi
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    Animals, possibly? The next one does fit. – Will Feb 13 '17 at 16:51
  • @Will: Ooh, nice catch. – Deusovi Feb 13 '17 at 16:57
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    I think H is a bit closer: it's the capital of the country whose International vehicle registration code is the single letter A, B, C, D, E or F. – M Oehm Feb 13 '17 at 18:19
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    Also, the name of the country in its own language. – Benjamin Feb 13 '17 at 20:53
  • The numbering scheme (1, B, C, 4, E, F, G, H, I/9) seems to be related to the items in each sequence. Puzzle 1 is the only one (so far) where the items in the sequence are numeric. In puzzle I/9, the items in the sequence start out text and then switch to numeric. So the items in puzzle 4 should be numeric – Betty Crokker Feb 13 '17 at 23:19
  • My thinking for 4 is to substitute the letters for the cardinal points, where I assume C=0, and see if any pattern comes out of the resulting sets of numbers. I'll report back if I get anything useful. – Reti43 Feb 14 '17 at 00:25
  • The names of the cardinal points seem like too obscure of information, all the other sequences are things that are pretty common knowledge. On the other hand, I don't have any better suggestion (grin). I tried drawing lines from Center to North, and another line from East to North, etc., but that went nowhere. It does seem like if C is Center, E can't be a direction but must be a point (like Center). – Betty Crokker Feb 14 '17 at 03:40
  • For (4), is there a visual encoding scheme like Braille, but that uses both dots and lines? I'm imagining that C-N means a dot at C and N, while S-SW-W means a dot at S and W, and a line connecting them? – Betty Crokker Feb 14 '17 at 13:30
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    Are there any commonly-used encryption schemes that haven't been used already? Clues have used rot, keyword cipher, and atbash. Is there another scheme that might be in use to encrypt the final clue? Or do we believe those letters are unencrypted? – Betty Crokker Feb 14 '17 at 16:03
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    Is it possible that the Final Letter (where the question mark is in the diagram) answers not only the single letter ("one step at a time") sequence down the column, but answers the title (J, KK, LLL) as well? – swihart Feb 14 '17 at 16:41
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    "One step at a time" might also indicate that the answer goes up, not down ... – Betty Crokker Feb 14 '17 at 16:58
  • Of the many meanings of "step", I'm going with "a particular position or grade on an ascending or hierarchical scale." but what scales can we think of that have at least 10 steps and are reasonably well-known? – Betty Crokker Feb 14 '17 at 20:42
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    F or P! (Q, W, E, R, T, Y, U, I, O, P) - (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 or 0) = (P, U, B, N, O, S, N, A, F or P) – Alex Varga Feb 14 '17 at 20:52
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    @Alex Varga that's genius. I'd go with F over P, going back to 0 doesn't fit with the general theme of "sequences". – F1Krazy Feb 14 '17 at 22:57
  • @AlexVarga You're missing the 9th letter (O - 9 = F), so the 10-letter sequence would be: (P, U, B, N, O, S, N, A, F, F or P) – jdunk Feb 15 '17 at 02:58
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    @F1Krazy Except that if you're looking at a keyboard, the adjacent '0' key does fit better than '10' does. I think it could easily be either. – jdunk Feb 15 '17 at 03:01
  • The letter set resulting from 0 instead of 10 (PUBNOSNAFP) could be the result of a cryptoquip of CYBERNETIC or DECOMPOUND, whereas the letter set resulting from using 10 (PUBNOSNAFF) doesn't seem to be a cryptoquip of anything interesting. I'm super new at this--rookie mistake? – jdunk Feb 15 '17 at 03:50
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    @jdunk: It's already from a pattern - any more information would be coincidence. (And substitution ciphers are easy to get information from, especially with only 10 letters.) – Deusovi Feb 15 '17 at 04:17
  • So... do we just ask @Levieux if he/she intended 0 or 10 (P or F) here? There doesn't seem to be anything left to interpret... other than the whole "numbers vs letters" clue-labeling thing. – jdunk Feb 18 '17 at 20:04
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    It's been a few days and I keep refreshing this page in hope to find out what the actual answer is! – Andrew Savinykh Feb 18 '17 at 22:32
  • I will accept this as the correct answer, although the final solution is missing. I'll edit that in, since it's been given elsewhere already; hopefully Deusovi doesn't mind ;) – Levieux Feb 20 '17 at 08:36
23

Very Partial Answer

1.

Roman numerals with successive ROT applied, so the next one (VII) becomes CPP

I/9.

Atbash of descending playing card values, with the next one (four) becoming ULFI

This indicates that

4. is likely to be a number-based sequence as well.

bobajob
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B is

spelling out several chemical elements. This can be seen if the words are written vertically.
HELI
NEON
ARGO
KRYP
XENO
RADO

There's five letters for the answer, so

NEON is already finished, we'll use the others: UNTNN

Daphne B
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C is a simple cryptogram, it solves to

CONNERY, LAZENBY, MOORE, DALTON, BROSNAN

so the 5-letter answer is either

CRAIG or NIVEN

but since they are supposed to be in order, let's assume

CRAIG which encrypts to NRBGE (most likely, given the encrypted alphabet is likely to be BONDACEFGHIJKLMPQRSTUVWXYZ)

but we only need that third letter anyway

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Betty Crokker
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Number 4 is:

N-ESE

Sequence is

ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE, SIX as read on the phone keypad, following directions. For ONE, start at key 6 (letter "O"), stay where you are (key 6, letter "N"), move N (key 3, letter "E"). For THREE, start at key 8 (letter "T"), move NW (key 4, letter "H"), move S (key 7, letter "R"), move NE (key 3, letter "E"), stay where you are (key 3, letter "E").

enter image description here
etc.

Beastly Gerbil
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Moghwyn
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Final

Building off @Deusovi's answer:

F. Rotating each letter "one step" more more than the previous gives QWERTYUIOP. So (P, U, B, N, O, S, N, A, F, F) + (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) = (Q, W, E, R, T, Y, U, I, O, P). An argument could be made for "P" though, because of the use of the keyboard.

Alex Varga
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A vague guess at C:

Hillary, Clinton, Obama , Donald, ? Not sure how the cipher is being applied here, though, and not sure what the fifth word is( or the sixth), and just fitting things at random more or less that are politics - related...

And then for 4:

C-N = 0 (nothing minus 0) E-N = 90 (90 minus 0) NW-S-NE = 315-180-45 or 90; or, difference between each vertice is 135 S-SW-W = 180-225-270 or -315; or, difference between each vertice is 45. WSW-SE-NNW = 247.5-135-337.5 or -225; difference is not consistent. So perhaps, the next one is something that has a difference of 247.5? That pattern doesn't perfectly hold, though, only for a couple of the directions.

Joe
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