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Two 'spatio-temporal faults' occur in the Tintinverse (too long a stay in America + too short a hijacking in Flight 714), both of which merge into Indian worlds (see related threads)...

Both these 'faults' take the reader to some special internal data:
The "American fault" leads to native drawings seen in an 'obscure passage', threee pages before the oil field bursts up to the surface with Tintin, whereas the "Sondonesian fault" leads to more many mysterious transmission systems, similarly linked with an 'obscure passage' that will take the heroes to Mik and his 'thought transmitter'...


Now to extract constructive external data from these 'faults', let's consider 'space' and 'time' separately:

1 'space'-fault:
Amongst the real-life Indian world, some tribes are famous for their efficient missions as 'code-talkers' during WW I & II, mainly the Choctaw & Navajo who provided a noway esoteric but hermetic 'language barrier' for Intelligence during wartime...
Similarly, an 'obscure' Indian tongue could have been borrowed in order to 'erase' Tintin's word-image(*) message, via some linguistic translations...

Such a system is nothing but substitution cryptography (see Simon Singh's 'Code Book'),
as expressed by 'Tintin = tilted quiff' (see 'nickname' thread) = the message's first 'erased syllables'...


2 'time'-fault:
'Anachronism' concerning word-images(*) could have been used similarly, in order to improve the 'erasure' via non-linguistic but simple position translations resulting in shifted 'word-images' able to produce an 'unseen rebus-like writing' (see this thread)...

Such a system is nothing but transposition cryptography (see Simon Singh's 'Code Book'),
as expressed by word-images that look to be drawn 'at random', but aren't = message's 'scrambled' images...


The above-described 'external data' might help any interested fan to perceive the delayed-action writing of the so-called clear line, or to read the 'illustrous' line...


(*) provided one admits the hypothesis of word-images standing for a 'rebus' able to transmit syllables... syllables from someone who confessed he used a "child's means" to say "what he had to say" (listen to "Tintin et moi" DVD)...

This looks interesting, but is it possible to make your definitions easy to explain in layman's terms?

As for Tintin's stay in America, it wouldn't be considered too long; the Moon series spanned several months.

Yes, "Flight 714" was one day long, but Tintin could have been in Jakarta in the morning and struggled all day against Rastapopoulos and Allan. It is interesting to note that the Russian film "Burnt by the Sun" (centered around the purging of a former friend of Stalin) also made a very long movie out of events that lasted within a day. "Flight 714" wasn't too uninimaginable, after all...

I don't have a clue what he's talking about. Speak plain english please.

snafu
make your definitions easy to explain in layman's terms

Thanks for your interest, snafu, but your post shows you might have missed some of Yamilah's threads, just like Tintinrulz...

About the Tintinverse's spatio-temporal faults, please refer to the related threads, i.e. "Tintin in America: how long was Tintin in hospital" + "Flight Carreidas 610 hijacking"...

About the Tintinverse's possible unseen rebus as well as internal and external data, please use the search function, for these concepts have been evoked in quite a few threads already...

Those were surely the definitions you wanted, weren't they?


Or did you rather want some more info about the 'unseen rebus' principles? Well such a rebus requires 'multilingualism', needs 'repetitions' to counterbalance the hermetic effect (i.e. unlegibility) produced by 'multilingualism', can also use 'shifts' to complicate and delay the reading, etc.
Here is a simple 'bilingual' and 'non-shifted' one (i.e. that can be read in the order, like any usual rebus):

cat spade 16

How would you read it, if you guess you just need an English - French - English dictionary, and it's subject is 'a famous building in Rome' ?

Very childish, and very complicated too, I must admit...


Tintinrulz

Is the present post 'plain English' enough?

I don't know if I buy what has previously been said. I thought that Tintin was in the hospital for the average amount of time it took for someone to recover from a serious road accident (who would believe it if Tintin left the hospital the day after that...like how he did in "The Black Island" or in "King Ottokar's Sceptre").

As for the hijackings, such a process doesn't need to take more than an hour.
Much of the recorded evidence on the four September 11 flights suggests that the time between the seizure of the cockpit (and whole plane) and the crashes could have taken less than an hour. Those were large planes.

A fast hijacking of the Carreidas 160 was therefore quite reasonable in terms of time length...

snafu
Thanks for your answer, but I'm afraid you have been personally contaminated by Tintin's 'spatiotemporal faults'...

'America': a 46 days' stay in hospital -according to the police's chronology- is far too long, it's not just 'some time' or a 'few days', as asserted page 5...

'Flight 714': the 20 minutes' hijacking time from Sumbawa to the Celebes Sea is far too short, the plane just can't fly at 3000 m.p.h. ...

Please read these detailed threads again!!

I really don't think there's anything in it. Hergé simply didn't notice there was anything wrong with the time taken in either of these examples. You may say that he was too meticulous to allow these errors, that he must have meant something by them - that they were intentional - but I say that he 'allowed' them simply because he didn't notice them.

What you are doing is finding imperfections and concluding that they cannot possibly be just the result of human error. How strange and unlikely it would be if Hergé's work was 100% perfect or else 'intentionally' flawed, as you claim.

Personally I think even errors like these can be 'worked out' or explained within the framework of the Tintinverse, allowing it to 'work' logically; for example with the 'too-long stay' in hospital, we can say that between the scene where Tintin is pictured in hospital and the next plate that shows him carrying on where he left off, maybe he took some time off after being discharged to just have a break - after all he isn't supposed to be a machine. Maybe Hergé even meant this. I haven't got the book to hand so I'm not sure if it says 'Next day' or 'A few days later' above the plate where he is out of hospital. If that is the case, then we can say that some time Tintin spent in America after this was not 'recorded' in the book, simply because it was uneventful. Do you think that if Tintin in America really happenned, that every event would follow on from the other without any gaps of uneventfulness? You are too logical in your analysis of the corpus.

yamilah
cat spade 16

How would you read it, if you guess you just need an English - French - English dictionary, and it's subject is 'a famous building in Rome' ?


I just saw this now, but having been in Rome but two weeks ago, the answer is "Chapelle Sixtine." :)

Jyrki21
I just saw this now, but having been in Rome but two weeks ago, the answer is "Chapelle Sixtine." :)

Congratulations, Jyrki21!
Thanks for 'calling a spade a spade', i.e. French appeler un chat un chat... Now two comments:

- For over 2 months, no Tintinologist could nor would disclose that very childish yet very complicated riddle, in which two common languages are used...

- If a multilingual riddle's speed discovery is 1 month per language, it might still take some time for the few interested to read the globetrotter's 'obscure passage'...

ClaroQuerido
You are too logical in your analysis of the corpus.

Er.. sorry, too logical doesn't match with Yamilah's madness you mentioned the other day on The Shooting Star thread...

for example with the 'too-long stay' in hospital, we can say that between the scene where Tintin is pictured in hospital and the next plate that shows him carrying on where he left off, maybe he took some time off after being discharged to just have a break

I think you should read the book again indeed...
Even if Tintin takes some 'time off' (on p.5, between frame A1 & A2, which I doubt very much), the chief police officer hasn't heard about him since 2 months (p.43, D2), i.e. before his arrival in America...
Hence Tintin is seen by all Americans, but invisible to this officer, hence this album's 'fault'...

I am desperately confused.