Puzzles and Riddles

To the next puzzle!

I am twice as old as three times the age of
the Ikthutrul of Tatal, Aratamin,
divided by one-tenth the age of
the Ikthutrul of Abena, Ordul,
who entered his next cycle twenty-six years ago.
What then is my age?

Okay, I'll be the first to say I'm stumped. :) It's got to be an encoded riddle, since there's no logical solution to arrive at more than a range of possible answers otherwise, without further information to cement one particular answer. So the real riddle is hidden inside the visible riddle... 26 is the key? It seems the kind of extra bit of data that these kinds of riddles dangle out as a hint to suggest how they're meant to be solved. I'm just not sure how to apply it. 26... days of the month on Serifia, 26 levels of the Great Pyramid of Kurash, 26 verses of the Summer Tithe, 26 characters in the precis alphabet of Thesserit, 26... what else... is it a substitution puzzle? What language should I be reading it in?

Is it like my fingers puzzle? Like, it's multiplying and dividing, and you could make the argument that dead people don't have an age so zero? How do Salarians reckon that?

A hint: the division between letters and numbers is largely arbitrary.

It would also help to know that I learned this riddle from a human.

Okay so... switch the letters to their position on the Terran ASO Latin alphabet... if it's the names alone, A = 77 and Or = 70, so 462 over 70/10... is it 66?

Precisely. Carry on.

Yay! Drat, I've got nothing prepared...

Okay, best I've got on the spur of the moment. Why do the asari who live on the Citadel eat less than those on Thessia?

'Cause there's fewer of them. :P

I'm so bad at this. :) Your go!

Alright, let's make this one a set. What are these things?

1. Lighter than what I'm made of,
I hide more of myself than you can see.

2. I can’t be used unless I am broken.


3. I always go up and never come down.

4. I have holes in my top and bottom, my left and right, and my middle.
But still I hold water.

5. Catch me you can but you cannot throw me.

6. I belong to you but other people use me more.

Ooh, I like this kind.

1: Iceberg.
2: ...but apparently liking isn't the same as being good at, necessarily. Not used unless broken... I suppose a law, technically, maybe?
3: Steam?
4: Sponge.
5: An infection?
6: M- no. Erm... comms ident?

2 and 3 are a little off.

my suggestions:
2: an egg
3: age

Egg, argh! I wouldn't have gotten that... If those are right, Taleeze, you do the next riddle, I think I kinda answered the easy ones out of that bunch. (I'm still turning 'law' over in my head though, that's a notion that hadn't really occurred to me before, does a law experience any 'use' if it's being universally obeyed? I suppose maybe it functions in the sense of being an obvious deterrent, whereas the actual logic behind it might be a little more difficult to see at first in some cases... Still, food for thought.)

(Wish I'd thought "food for thought" earlier, that might've got me onto eggs.)

You're right. Next riddle!

What number's the X in this sequence?

31 41 59 26 53 58 9X

X = 7

The sequence above is the succession of digits in pi;

3.1415926535897...

So seven is the answer.

Glad you answered before I logged in this morning, that's exactly the kind of thing that ends up with me furiously multiplying and dividing and missing the point for ages.

(Actually speaking of pi, that came up in conversation with a client a couple of months ago, and he pointed out that as a non-terminating non-repeating number, pi logically contains within itself, sooner or later, a perfect numerical representation of the entire universe. Which is pretty cool really, every time I spot a circle somewhere it's a little 'wow' moment.)

You could say that about any irrational number. Plus, everyone knows that tau is superior.