Prefixes of facility and difficulty (auð-, tor-)

Whether you are analyzing a hacker's intercepts or decrypting a secret file, you will frequently need to describe how easy or difficult a code is to crack.

The hacker wrote the messages in a cipher.
Tölvuþrjóturinn skrifaði skilaboðin í dulmáli.

The Prefix "auð-" (Easy to)

To express that an action can be done easily, Icelandic uses the prefix auð-. By attaching it to the front of a past participle, you create an adjective meaning "easily [done]" or "easy to [do]".

For example, combining auð- with séður (seen) gives you auðséður (easily seen).

The cipher was easily seen.
Dulmálið var auðséð.
Is the new encryption easily understood?
Er nýja dulkóðunin auðskilin?

The Prefix "tor-" (Hard to)

Conversely, when something is difficult to accomplish, use the prefix tor- ("with difficulty" or "hard to").

Attaching it to the past participle skilinn (understood) creates torskilinn (hard to understand).

In short, the encryption was hard to understand.
Í stuttu máli var dulkóðunin torskilin.
The cipher is very hard to decipher.
Dulmálið er mjög torráðið.

Adjectival Agreement

Because these combined words function as adjectives, their endings change to agree with the noun they describe in gender, number, and case.

Notice how the masculine form auðleystur (easily solved) adapts to the neuter form auðleyst to match the neuter noun vandamálið (the problem):

This short code is easily solved.
Þessi stutti kóði er auðleystur.
The problem was easily solved because the text was easily read.
Vandamálið var auðleyst af því að textinn var auðlesinn.

You can apply these highly productive prefixes to almost any past participle to describe the difficulty of a task.

We found the document, but it was hard to read.
Við fundum skjalið en það var torlesið.
The solution is hard to find, but it must be somewhere.
Lausnin er torfundin en hún hlýtur að vera einhvers staðar.