Volume 1 Issue 3 | October-December 2021

Quiz: Spy gadgets

James Bond has his marvellous gadgets that may be too good to be true, but real-life spies and agencies have also used mindboggling tools to carry out their espionage activities. This article took a peek at these, and featured quiz questions related to some of them. Here are the answers to those questions.

Q1. If you had a scytale which made every 5th letter in a message line up, and received a message that read as below, what should you do once you have figured out what it says?
RBAPOSLTJUMPTEDLRANIEXCORMOKETY
A1. To solve this, check each possible solution where only the 5th letters are read. Here are the possibilities:
* RSMLEMY
* BLPRXO
* ATTACK
* PJENOE
* OUDIRT
Of these, only one word makes sense, so that’s the one you should choose — ‘ATTACK’

Q2. Using the information above, can you figure out which war the dog poop transmitter was used in?
A2. The Ho Chi Minh Trail, which is mentioned in the first line of the snippet about the dog poop, was a vital supply line for the North Vietnamese Army during the Vietnam War

Q3. This character (visual above) from ‘Asterix and the Black Gold’, quite obviously based on the James Bond actor Sean Connery, also has a tiny spy insect – though in his case, a real one. The character’s funny name refers to James Bond’s code number, but with a twist. Considering how the names of Gaulish characters in the Asterix comics end, work out what this character is called.
A3. He is called Dubbelosix, a reference to James Bond’s 007 (read as ‘double-o-seven’) code name. Gaulish character’s name in the Asterix comics have names that end in ‘-ix’, such as Asterix, Obelix, and Dogmatix.

Q4. What small word, which could otherwise mean an insect or a problem with a computer program, is used for a listening device planted in a place such as a phone or an office where one wants to eavesdrop on conversations?
A4. Bug