NACLO 2025 - Problem IA Handheld Tablet

This is a fairly tedious problem. Just find similar shapes. Remember that cuneiform is at least to some extent logographic, so the symbols here should resemble its meaning, especially for Sumerian. There's a group of glyphs in the pool that don't have wedge-shaped stroke endings (A, C, I, M, P); these are probably Sumerian given that there are only 5 of them. The second noticeable group of glyphs are those that look largely rectangular (L, O, Q). There are only 3 of them, so they are Assyrian—indeed, the 2 given Assyrian glyphs are both rectangular.

Now we exercise our imagination for the 5 Sumerian glyphs. A contains a crown, so it is "king". C contains a beak and a wing, so it is "bird". I resembles a human, so it is "prince". M looks like a "fish". This leaves P as a "house"—indeed it has a square shape and a base.

For "king", given the stroke complexity of A, we would expect its successors to be complex as well. G looks sufficiently complex. It might be tempting to say that G evolves into E, which has the same triangular shape. However, E is sufficiently complex in its strokes that we probably want to use it as an Early Babylonian glyph elsewhere. The other key feature of G is the horizontal lines on the left, which is only preserved in K. Finally Q preserves the same horizontal lines. So the "king" row is A → G → K → Q.

For "house", the obvious next step is R, which just rotates the shape 90°. The next simplification would be N, which makes it slightly more rectangular and removes one stroke. Finally, it's easy to see that the corresponding rectangular shape is L, because it keeps the same fully enclosed region. So the "house" row is P → R → N → L.

For "prince", B is the closest possible—also rotated 90° and regularized. When you regularize it further, you get D and the given Assyrian glyph. So the "prince" row is I → B → D.

For "bird", once you rotate C, H immediately stands out. It's also rectangular enough that no one modifies it later.

Finally, for "fish", after rotating M, F is the closest. I don't know how it evolved into the Late Babylonian form though.

The remaining glyphs are E, J, O. Naturally these form the sequence for "man". Notice how similar G and E are; the only difference is the extra horizontal lines on the left for "king". So in the Sumerian glyph, "man" is just "king" without the "crown".

So to summarize, Sumerian glyphs don't have wedge-shaped stroke endings. Sumerian becomes Early Babylonian by rotating the glyphs 90° counterclockwise. Early Babylonian becomes Late Babylonian by simplification. Finally, Assyrian does further simplification and also makes the glyphs more rectangular.

In I3, the outside of the glyph looks like "house", and the inside looks like a "fish", so the answer is "house of fish".

I did not enjoy this problem at all—it's just a bunch of guesswork and imagination.