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Q81: Where is the sea-horse?

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MrCutts
Member
#11 · Posted: 5 Nov 2006 14:35
But Yamilah said it was some sort of symbol so the morse code idea isn't gonna work..is it?

Some good info there though Balthazar.
Surely the seahorse must appear in the book as a seahorse. No idea what is meant by the Walrus (coo coo a choo)

Google is indeed a wonderful thing :o) and I'm beginning to think I need to get out more.
Captain Chester
Member
#12 · Posted: 5 Nov 2006 17:36
Yamilah-ing...Yamilah-ing, it has a nice ring to it lol :)
MrCutts
Member
#13 · Posted: 6 Nov 2006 00:56
Totally obscure
Perhaps the yeti in Tibet was on a diet of dried seahorse left out for him by the monks overnight. And the dried seahorse is actually inside the yeti :o/ ????
yamilah
Member
#14 · Posted: 6 Nov 2006 11:34
Thanks for your most interesting comments about seahorses.
At last here is the answer -sorry I wasn't around last week-end:

In The Broken Ear (p.12-D3), the erstwhile Air France company logo -a sea-horse- can be seen on the yellow & black plane.
'Ideogramme' was a chief clue, as Google shows this sea-horse on page 2 (images).

see http://membres.lycos.fr/wings2/tintin/oreille/oreille.htm
and http://aviatechno.free.fr/crevette/crevette.php
and http://aviatechno.free.fr/vilgenis/images/larges/vilg-constell.jpg
Levent
Member
#15 · Posted: 6 Nov 2006 11:50
Very good question. Other than this I will update my 'Brands in Tintin Albums' list.
edcharlesadams
Trivia Challenge Score Keeper
#16 · Posted: 6 Nov 2006 11:53
As no-one got this one, anyone (except yamilah) may set the next question.

Ed
Balthazar
Moderator
#17 · Posted: 6 Nov 2006 13:03
The creature in that logo (shown very clearly in yamilah's second suggested link) is surely a version of the mythical creature Hippocampus (front-half horse, back half-fish), with added Peagusus-like wings (presumeably because it was designed as an airline logo).

What the creature clearly isn't - with those horse's front legs, wings and loopy mermaid-like tail - is "a fish belonging to the species hippocampus", as specified very clearly in yamilah's original question.

Obviously the scientific name of the fish species echoes the name of the legendary creature, and if yamilah's original question had been something like: "where can we see a seahorse which shares its name with the fish species hippocampus?", or simply "where can we see a seahorse?" or "where can we see a hippocampus?" the given answer would fit. But that wasn't the question so, in my opinion, the answer doesn't quite work.

Sorry to sound picky, but I did attempt to clarify whether the question did indeed refer to the fish species (see several posts above). Yamilah chose to ignore the point of my query. (Maybe I should have been more polite!)

This had the makings of a good question, as the old Air France logo is an interesting detail I'd never been aware of before; and I'm certainly not claiming I'd have spotted the answer if the original question had been less misleading. But I think the wording of questions - however tricky or cryptic - has to fit the final answer.

Is that a fair constructive criticism or am I just sounding like a bad loser?!

Anyway, well done yamilah, and thanks for those links to some nice old Tintin-related plane photos, which I love.
yamilah
Member
#18 · Posted: 6 Nov 2006 13:12
'Hippocampus' was just meant to help you to look for a 'seahorse', not a 'walrus' -that anyway doesn't show in Tintin, except under the form of 'Morse' code.

Then the clues 'ideogramme' & 'emblem' somehow hinted at the non-animal nature of that 'fish'.
MrCutts
Member
#19 · Posted: 7 Nov 2006 01:08
well blow me down!

Looking at the picture in the link,it's bloomin hard to make out the logo anyway! I imagined a sea-horse to be a fish not a half horse - half fish affair. Oh well. Pointless me doing these quizzes as I haven't got books to hand, have to rely on me old photographic memory :o)
Levent
Member
#20 · Posted: 7 Nov 2006 08:00
Clue was given as 'hippocampus'. It means an emblem or a logo, not a real sea-horse. Emblems and logos take their forms in our brain.

In which album can we see a sea-horse, no walrus but a fish belonging to the species 'hippocampus'?

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