alt.hn

2/18/2026 at 4:37:57 PM

Cistercian Numbers

 https://www.omniglot.com/language/numbers/cistercian-numbers.htm

by debo_

2/18/2026 at 6:07:16 PM

My minuscule pet peeve is that having only one source where the number 5 is depicted with a triangle (all others show it as a separated segment, like the number 6 but shorter), that's how every article or library draws it. It's all because the guy who wrote a book about them saw that source first so he based his figures on it.

Here's a small summary about the numbers with many examples: https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2020/20290-cistercian-digits.pdf

by tangus

2/18/2026 at 6:42:46 PM

Being first matters :')

I wrote a font for these, which does use the triangle-5 and the vertical layout: https://bobbiec.github.io/cistercian-font.html (recent discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46939312)

And my associated writeup: https://digitalseams.com/blog/making-a-font-with-9999-ligatu... .

As mentioned in the blog, I think the horizontal layout makes more sense too (in terms of writing order). But just like the triangle-5, the vertical layout is more commonly seen, so that's what I stuck with.

by bobbiechen

2/18/2026 at 7:16:51 PM

It might not be accurate but it does seem like it'd be easy to mistake a 5 and 6 without the triangle. Especially when the characters are being hurriedly written by hand. If I were going to use this system, I'd be sticking with the triangle.

by autoexec

2/18/2026 at 6:08:42 PM

It would never have occurred to me that anyone would want to get these into a Unicode standard. This document you linked is excellent, thank you.

by debo_

2/18/2026 at 10:03:02 PM

I wish the 6 was a triangle in the other direction instead

by culi

2/19/2026 at 1:08:43 AM

I am a little sad that bare zero is not represented. This is my first exposure to Cistercian numbers but it looks like a unadorned staff would fit for the bare zero.

The whole thing is a lot of fun, feels like a Myst puzzle. Or more accuratly, I don't think Myst had a number puzzle but Riven did and I recently picked up Obduction and it had one, So probably fairer to say a Cyan type puzzle as they appear to love creating wierd numeric representations.

by somat

2/19/2026 at 12:45:08 PM

Two odd things strike me:

1. 5 is the symbols for 4 and 1 combined, 6 is new, then 7=6+1, 8=6+2, and 9=6+3. It seems to me it would be more obvious to have 1 to 5 be unique symbols, then 6=5+1, 7=5+2, 8=5+3, and 9=5+4. Like how we do with tally marks.

2. The system is really just 4 digits combined in a square. I don't see the advantage over Arabic numerals.

by perilunar

2/19/2026 at 10:16:13 PM

They had limited space.

by szemy2

2/19/2026 at 2:45:21 AM

It's pretty cool but I'm surprised there wasn't confusion among the 2s (2 & 200, 20 & 2000) all the other symbols had enough to make it clear which side they're on, but the closer the 2-notch gets to the centre, the more ambiguous it gets. Could even be confused with a 1 if you're not careful

by iguana_shine

2/18/2026 at 7:05:28 PM

Shouldn't 523 in that list of "other numbers" actually be 522?

by dcanelhas

2/18/2026 at 7:42:50 PM

You're right

by poulpy123

2/19/2026 at 12:04:09 AM

Actually, it would automatically translate when we scan it with the camera, like Google Translate.

by beratbozkurt0

2/18/2026 at 7:01:58 PM

Wow, it's a while since I've seen one of those lists of hundreds of vampires that you have to deselect!

by klondike_klive