On the Subject of Stenography

Typing at an astonishing one word per minute!

Welcome to your new job as a court reporter. All words must be input using the plover system. No words will require the * modifier as part of their plover representation, and all words can and must be input with a single stroke. Refer to Appendix 1 for more information on the plover system.

However, there’s just one small problem: the display is broken. To fix it, take the product of the digits in the bomb’s serial number modulo 64. If there are no digits, use 0. Use that resulting value to look up the corresponding word in table 1 with the first word in the table having value 0 and the last 63 in reading order. To enter the fix word, first hold down the * key and input the word. The * key may only be pressed or released when the last seconds digit on the timer matches the number of Stenography modules on the bomb.

Upon inputting each part of the word, the display will reveal a section of the key word. Releasing the * button will cause all other keys to release automatically.

Next, input the key word by selecting all keys that are part of the stroke and releasing them all at once using the release button. Then, find the word in Table 1 and move to the right by (the number of batteries on the bomb modulo 7) plus one, then move down by (the number of battery holders on the bomb modulo 7) plus one, wrapping around when necessary. Jump over any words that have already been submitted. Repeat this once more to submit a third word.

Once the first word is submitted, the next two words must be entered within 10 seconds else the court will be displeased, you will be fired (the module resets).

Table 1 - Word Dictionary

feels	waned	mound	grind	ports	aimed	meals	found
joint	climb	hoard	vinyl	plume	awful	pages	bring
claim	twine	rhyme	nukes	mines	louse	books	weird
veins	lines	gleam	quote	dance	rules	wurst	brick
rifle	slope	drone	swipe	nails	limbs	jewel	trite
veers	knife	glued	curse	quilt	kills	keeps	names
fried	quite	hinge	hoist	swoon	tunes	joins	blind
short	glove	roped	urged	waist	signs	blown	oiled

Appendix 1 - Stenography Basics

Stenographs are used to transcribe spoken word to text at the pace of the speaker. Rather than typing individual letters, multiple keys are pressed and then released at once to form letter clusters, typically syllables of words. Strokes are always formed by an optional starting consonant performed by the left fingers, a vowel formed by the thumbs, and an optional ending consonant formed by the right fingers.

The keys are divided into seven keys on the left for the starting consonant, ten keys on the right for the ending consonant, and four keys underneath for the vowels. The central key dividing the two halves is a disambiguator used to distinguish between two words with the same sound. This is necessary because words are generally formed using the phonetics of the syllables and not the written structure of the word.

Any stroke with a short vowel (a vowel on its own) however, uses the vowel as in the written word even if the vowel sounds different. ‘EU’ is used to form the short ‘i’ sound like in ‘lid.’ For grouped vowels, the sound that the vowel would typically make it used. (Heart uses ‘a’ because the ‘ea’ forms the short a vowel sound). Unstressed vowel sounds can be dropped entirely such as in ‘ment(a)l’.

Generally, letters must be pressed in steno order depicted below or written as STKPWHRAO*EUFRPBLGTSDZ. Strokes can only be formed from letters read in steno order except in the case of inversions. A word may violate steno order if it saves a stroke, there is no more than one inversion, and it only inverts two sounds adjacent. For example, ‘portal’ cannot be stroked as ‘PORTL’ since ‘L’ comes before ‘T’ in steno order, but since this is a valid case for an inversion, we may stroke ‘PORLT.’

Stenography Clusters

Some sounds do not have one-to-one mappings to keys on the steno keyboard. As such, multiple keys stroked together can create compound clusters. The following table should be used as a reference for these sounds though the rules above must also be respected when forming words.

Starting Sound	Stroke	Vowel Sound	Stroke	Ending Sound	Stroke
D	TK	cAt	A	K	BG
F	TP	lOt	O	N	PB
L	HR	bEt	E	M/psaLM	PL
hard G	TKPW	sUn	U	J (soft G)	PBLG
B	PW	bIn	EU	truTH	*T
V	SR	tApe	AEU	suCH	FP
N	TPH	lEEp	AOE	bruSH	RB
M	PH	bOAt	OE	briNG/biNGe	PBG
J (soft G)	SKWR	glUE/fEW	AOU	buMP	*PL
Y	KWR	wIse	AOEU	caRVe	FRB
THink	TH	thOUght/sAW	AU	beLCH/buLGe	LG
CHild	KH	tOWn	OU	miLK	*LG
SHow	SH	tOY/fOIl	OEU	wiNK	*PBG
		OO	AO	noTION (shn)	GS
				aCTION (kshn)	BGS
				churCH/munCH	FRPB
				ST	FT
				V	F