It is #EnigMarch, and each day the excellent EnigMarch people post a prompt word; then puzzle nerds try to design puzzles around that word. (Today's word is shift.)
Did you ever wonder how keyboards came to have "Shift" keys and how they got that name? The earliest typewriters only supported capital letters. But then:
For the second Remington model [typewriter], engineers Lucien Crandall and Byron Books chose to add lowercase letters using a clever method: they changed each of the typebars to have two letters, one above the other, and added a key that would shift up the entire carriage—the moving mechanism that carried the paper wrapped around the platen—and cause the subsequent typebar to hit the shifted carriage with the other letter.
Naturally, they named that key Upper Case. …
The Upper Case key had its counterpart, Lower Case. … At some point in the 1880s, the maker renamed both keys Shift while swapping the action so that the carriage shifted only when one of the keys was held.
Keeping that in mind, consider the following. It should appear sideways. (I worry that RSS readers and such might not display it correctly? If it doesn't appear sideways, maybe you want to click through to the blog post.)
| Keep it stiff, old chap: | _ _◯ |
| Become less vigilant: | _ _ _ _ _◯_ _ _ |
| Punish harshly: | _ _ _ _ _ _◯ |
| Despicable: | _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _'_ ◯_ _ _ _ |
| Advantage: | _ _◯_ |
| Society's class that has the bread (affluent): | _ _ _◯_ |
Hints and solution, rot13'd:
Rnpu pyhr yrnqf gb n cuenfr bs gur sbez hccre fbzrguvat be ybjre fbzrguvat.
Jura jevgvat nafjref va gur oynax, yrnir bhg gur "hccre" be "ybjre" jbeq; ohg guvf gryyf lbh juvpu qverpgvba gb jevgr gur erznvavat jbeqf va gur oynaxf. R.t., sbe "hccre yvc", jevgr yvc hcjneqf fb gung gur Y vf va gur pvepyr.
Gur cuenfrf ner:
hccre yvc
ybjre lbhe thneq
ybjre gur obbz
ybjre guna n fanxr'f oryyl
hccre unaq
hccre pehfg
Gur pvepyrq yrggref fcryy yhzone. Gung'f lbhe ybjre onpx, fb jevgr onpx qbjajneqf va gur oynaxf
