Tuesday, 10 June 2025

Back To Bletchley Park?

I love puzzles - number ones and word ones. Most days I try to complete the Guardian Crossword, a Killer Sudoku and Wordle. This little book is currently by my bed and I keep dipping into it. A gift from Rosie, who is very proud that her great-grandma [my Mum] was a BP codebreaker. Currently reading a Peter Wimsey whodunnit which involves code-breaking. [to be reviewed later]

But this week I was in The Range, and was totally baffled by two signs on display. The were obviously relating to products on sale, but I found the combination of words quite incomprehensible. I walked over to get a better look and even then I wasn't quite sure... this bizarre arrangement of nouns [or verbs?] looked like some sort of coded messages 

Take the first one. Ignore the fact that of all the words here, Wilko should have a capital letter. But the spacing makes it hard to follow
Wilko Skin Tea
Tree Face 25
Wipes  79p
What is 'skin tea'? It sounds like a drink. I have heard of 'body milk' and 'hand cream' ... but tea? Tree Face is clearly an insult, or maybe the top part of Julia Donaldson's StickMan. You have to look at the packet to realise they have missed out crucial words
Wilko - Skin Therapy Range
25 wipes enriched 
with Tea Tree   79p

OK that makes sense. Let us move on to the second item costing 760 times as much.
Wave Vienna
Drop Stitch
Spa £599.99
So what is this one about?  Am I to wave Goodnight to Vienna? [GV is the title of a film from 1932, and also an album by Ringo Starr, 1974]
Drop Stitch - well, I thought I knew that, it is a mistake in your knitting
Spa £599.99 a leisure item for the back garden.
Clearly if I go to Austria and sing Ringo's song whilst lounging in warm bubbly water, I will get very expensive holes in my knitting...

After much research I found that Wave is a company making these tubs, and Vienna is the name of this particular model of home spa. And it appears that drop stitch is nothing to do with knitting. It is a type of material. Defined thus Using tens of thousands of tough polyester threads 'drop-stitch fabric enables the building of inflatable structures with flat surfaces that can be inflated to rock-hard rigidity
So know I know. I did not buy either product, and as far as I could tell, nobody else in the checkout queue was buying them either! I was tempted to ask the assistant what the words meant.

But maybe it is coded messages for passing spooks. Drop Stitch Spa is an anagram of Ditch passport  and Skin Tea Tree Face can become Fire Ken, Case Tate 



18 comments:

  1. Oooo errr!! Those signs are unnecessarily ambiguous. I knew what they meant but they were far too wordy! X

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  2. I'm just reading The Jim Eldridge library book set in wartime London and they mentioned "secret work at Bletchley Park" . I had assumed no one knew about it until later. So I hope he's right or I shall doubt other things in his books!

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    1. I've just got to the part in MY book where Wimsey "sends the code off to Bletchley" . He IS doing espionage work for the Govt so I guess he would know. But I don't think he was supposed to tell his wife.

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  3. I guess those shop signs were a form of short hand! But, they made you look at them and make a note of them, which is what they are designed to do, so they worked!

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    1. I guess so. But I was not tempted to buy either product

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  4. I guessed the strangely worded first one, but the second one had me stumped. I start each day with Wordle and then do Woodoku, so you definitely out-brain me first thing in the morning. 😄

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    1. A bit of puzzling wakes up my brain. Getting my body into gear takes longer

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  5. Thank you for making those two signs clear. Totally bizarre.

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  6. I like your idea of the coded messages! I've just started reading a book about an actual spy in the Cold War.

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  7. Second try at leaving a comment-just wouldn’t publish earlier. I’m puzzled by number puzzles but love wordy ones. Catriona

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  8. It does make me wonder why we ever tried to teach the use of English.

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    1. I blame the National Literacy Strategy!

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  9. The second sign in particular was.... non-sense!

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