Substitute digits for letters (different letters, different digits; same letters, same digits) so ALPHABET + LETTERS = SCRABBLE. No number begins with zero.

Can you manage without a computer program?

(In reply to Charlie and Federico Kereki.... by Penny)

My original QuickBasic program ran in under 1 second to check for all possibilities, not just to get the first (and only) answer.

The following program runs in Visual Basic 5.0 and probably .net (which I don't have) also:

Dim taken(10)

Private Sub Command1_Click()
Print Time
For i = 1 To 10: taken(i) = 0: Next
a = 1: s = 2: t1 = 10001000 - 10000 + 2 - 20000000
taken(1) = 1: taken(2) = 1
For l = 0 To 9
 If taken(l) = 0 Then
  taken(l) = 1
  t2 = t1 + l * (2000000 - 10)
For p = 0 To 9
 If taken(p) = 0 Then
  taken(p) = 1
  t3 = t2 + p * 100000
For b = 0 To 9
 If taken(b) = 0 Then
  taken(b) = 1
  t4 = t3 + b * (100 - 1100)
For e = 0 To 9
 If taken(e) = 0 Then
  taken(e) = 1
  t5 = t4 + e * (100110 - 1)
For t = 0 To 9
 If taken(t) = 0 Then
  taken(t) = 1
  t6 = t5 + t * 11001
For r = 0 To 9
 If taken(r) = 0 Then
  taken(r) = 1
  t7 = t6 + r * (10 - 100000)
For c = 0 To 9
 If taken(c) = 0 Then
  taken(c) = 1
  t8 = t7 - c * 1000000
For h = 0 To 9
 If taken(h) = 0 Then
  taken(h) = 1
  t9 = t8 + h * 10000

  If t9 = 0 Then
   Print a; l; p; h; a; b; e; t
   Print l; e; t; t; e; r; s
   Print s; c; r; a; b; b; l; e
  End If

  taken(h) = 0
 End If
Next
  taken(c) = 0
 End If
Next
  taken(r) = 0
 End If
Next
  taken(t) = 0
 End If
Next
  taken(e) = 0
 End If
Next
  taken(b) = 0
 End If
Next
  taken(p) = 0
 End If
Next
  taken(l) = 0
 End If
Next
Print Time

End Sub

And, when I just pressed the Command1 button, I got:

9:33:06 AM
 1 7 5 3 1 9 0 8
 7 0 8 8 0 6 2
 2 4 6 1 9 9 7 0
9:33:06 AM

The times match, between which all possibilities were checked.

Added this:

A better value is obtained by using the Timer function rather than the Time function. It resulted in 34741.69 as the start number of seconds past midnight and 34742.04 as the finish, for a time of 0.35 seconds to check all possibilities.

Edited on June 23, 2005, 2:12 pm

Posted by Charlie on 2005-06-23 14:07:20