Take, for example, the word INTERPOLATE. It could be broken into 3, INT / ERPOL / ATE, and with these three blocks, you can make the anagrams TIN, POLER and EAT, all English words. Since you broke the initial word in three, your score is 3. Or, you could cut your score to 2, by breaking it into INTERPO / LATE, to form POINTER and TALE. Note that LATE would not be allowed in the latter solution, because each answer word must involve some rearrangement of letters.

If you have trouble anagramming a block, you may add one or more additional letters of your choice, in order to form a word. Each added letter, however, counts as 2 (as a penalty) for your score. If you canīt find any solution for a given word, add 4 points to your score. Contractions, hyphenated words, and capitalized words are not allowed in answers, but plurals and past tense forms of verbs are fine.

Below are 8 words, and I achieve with them a score of 20. Can you match my score or, maybe, achieve a better one?

1. UNSTEADILY        2. INCONSIDERATE     3. ORCHESTRATION     4. SOMNAMBULANCE
5. UNFORTUNATELY     6. MISADAPTATIONS    7. ANTEPENULTIMATE   8. DISENFRANCHISEMENT

1.  Unsteadily  -  Unseat, idly
2. Inconsiderate - Coin (icon), snide, tare (tear)
3. Orchestration - Chores, trait, no
4. Somnambulance - Moans, bum, clean  (don't like coll. term)
5. Unfortunately - Fun, rot, neatly
6. Misadaptations - Aims, pad, station
7. Antepentultimate - Pentane, multiate  ***!!! Error -- mutilate instead
8. Disenfranchisement  [Fiends/Friends ...  ????]

Disregarding #8, I have 19. Therefore some of my 3 word options can be reduced to 2 words.

For #8 I see the possiblities of using chemist, machines, menace as starting points for the remainder of this one but I can push things the 'right' way.

Edited on July 22, 2005, 3:15 am

Posted by brianjn on 2005-07-21 05:38:59