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

(In reply to i can name 22! by nickson)

As I understand the requirements, a word is to be broken up into blocks, reading from left to right without jumping letters, and then an anagram of those letters is to be constructed.

Also, having chosen a block, the order of letters must be altered; note LATE in the problem text must be altered to be acceptable.

Edited on July 21, 2005, 12:46 pm

Posted by brianjn on 2005-07-21 12:38:33