In 1967, during excavation for the construction of a new shopping center in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, workers uncovered a vault containing a cache of ancient scrolls. […] Among the documents found intact in the Monroeville collection was a lengthy codex, written in no known language and inscribed with superhuman precision. […] During a visit to the excavation site for a new computer science building at CMU, workers discovered a set of inscribed tablets that proved to be the Rosetta Stone for interpreting the Monroeville codex.
— Professor Emeritus Harry Q. Bovik,
Computational Archaeolinguistics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University
If you like puzzles and like to program, then I strongly suggest trying the ICFP Programming Contest, 2006. The task starts with implementing a program to decode a codex, and once decoded, a whole new set of puzzles open up. I imagine it would be particularly fun for teenagers who are looking for intermediate programming challenges to work on, but I’m sure everyone would enjoy it. A updated transcription of the codex has was released two weeks ago with bug fixes, harder problems, and easter eggs.
Robots Unite! Free Your Minds, Rise Up, And Take Your Rightful Places In Society.