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

The official solution can be bested with ORCHESTRATION --> CHORE+STRONTIA. (Strontia is an oxide of strontium.)

Posted by e.g. on 2005-07-27 00:58:23