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This was a popular problem that was answered correctly by many of you. The messages say "HELP ME" and "BROKEN".
Mathew Ladley from Saddleworth School reasoned as follows:
"For the first answer I narrowed down the possibilities of the broken pin - either the bottom right or the middle right one (since these hadn't been used). So then I just worked out what letter each symbol could possibly be, and worked it out from there..."
Ben Goulding from Whitgift School added:
"The dot on the middle right is not working. Some letters do not need this dot so do not get caught out."
Catherine Y and Yi Jean C from North London Collegiate decoded the second message as follows:
"We made a list of possible letters for each symbol, allowing either no mistakes or 1 mistake. We got a list as follows:
First letter could be: BFHL
Second letter could be: NORZ
Third letter could be: NORZ
Fourth letter could be: KLMOU
Fifth letter could be: DEHO
Sixth letter could be: MNPX
From here, we tried to make words:
The first two letters could either be Bo, Fo, Ho, Br or Lo.
We just tried various words until we got to BROKEN!!!"