What is the Navajo language?

harumph. saratoga = damaged and not used at Midway. yorktown = damaged, yet heroically, surprisingly, and triumphantly repaired during a 72 hour dry dock at pearl before surprising the japanese at midway. with aircraft and crew from saratoga aboard.

and my only guess, which i *think* is a good one, is that that the Navajo language is the mysterious code to which you refer.

Oo, I'm impressed. Yep, the Navajo language. I thought that one would give you guys more trouble.

And, yes, Saratoga was too badly damaged at Coral Sea to be available for Midway. Now that you mention it, I think Yorktown did get a surprisingly quick repair job in time for the battle -- in which, unfortunately, she got sunk.

Anybody else want to try asking a set of questions?

There was a movie a few years ago "Code Talkers" so a lot of people have been exposed to the story.

I think one-time pads are considered impossible to break. You could decode a message if you somehow captured the key, but that key is only ever used once.

There are a number of math-based codes that would require millions of years of computation to break without the key, but if you captured the key, you'd have the code. The only way to break the Navajo language would be to capture a Navajo and get him to translate messages, and then there's a key to how some non-Navajo military terms were expressed.

OK, since no one else is leaping forward, new category: Name That Speaker!

#1: If nominated I will not run. If elected I will not serve.

Who was Roosevelt?

Who was Lyndon B Johnson?

no

LBJ said, "I will not seek nor will I accept the nomination of my party for another term as President." Close, but not quite there.

Yeah, I remembered that quote (Letterman ran it often before showing one of W's many gaffes). So, I'm trying to think of non-presidents that may have had to "beg off" the job. Maybe a popular military figure? Colin Powell? Am I right in assuming that the reference is to the presidency, in the US for that matter?

The office in question was, in fact, the Presidency of the U.S.

And when did either Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt ever decline to run? FDR ran for a fourth term after his doctors told him he wouldn't live through it and, indeed, the campaign might kill him. As political comedian Mark Russell (you might have seen him on PBS) said years later of another candidate, "He couldn't stop running if he fell into a vat of Kaopectate."