Ten nine-letter words have been separated into units of three letters. The units have been randomly put in the below list. Can you determine the original 10 words?

   dst rbr ard man tor rbo
   ove and con erf ent dli
   new fly spa dif hai ght
   per all fis ban ush hea
   dra gon fer wat duc her 

When I expanded my word list to include an unabridged dictionary, bringing it to 354,531 words, my program turned up only 14 possible words in English that can be formed by combining any three of the given 30 syllables: bandstand, conductor, different, dragonfly, fisherman, hairbrush, headlight, headstand, headstall, newspaper, overboard, overbrush, permanent and waterfall.

So there is only one answer to this puzzle in the English language: bandstand, conductor, different, dragonfly, fisherman, hairbrush, headlight, newspaper, overboard, waterfall.

(However, if you use the Ainu language, there are 1024 possible solutions.)

 

 

 

 

 

Edited on August 12, 2004, 6:26 am

Posted by Penny on 2004-08-12 05:41:18