Twelve nine-letter words, which include a former president of the USA, a state of the USA, and a county in England, have been divided into three-letter groups, producing:
Edu | cON | NeL | quO | oMe | TRE |
PeR | Son | jEf | oFF | ErE | thi |
inG | iNS | siN | ioN | EtH | kSh |
WiS | iRe | YoR | KiL | rOm | oLE |
iSe | caT | nCE | Pim | Rti | Mae |
tUr | iGN | sPr | Fer | sOV | Lst |
| | | | | |
Can you work out the twelve words? Pay no attention to the colours of the grid, or to uppercase/lowercase letters!
Yorkshire, Jefferson and Wisconsin leap out, as does education.
From there I set the computer running with
DIM pc$(36)
OPEN "triplets.txt" FOR INPUT AS #1
FOR i = 1 TO 36
LINE INPUT #1, pc$(i)
pc$(i) = LTRIM$(RTRIM$(LCASE$(pc$(i))))
PRINT pc$(i); " ";
NEXT
CLOSE
OPEN "\words\words9.txt" FOR BINARY AS #1
w$ = SPACE$(9)
DO
GET #1, , w$
IF EOF(1) THEN EXIT DO
p$ = LEFT$(w$, 3)
GOSUB check
IF good THEN
p$ = RIGHT$(w$, 3)
GOSUB check
IF good THEN
p$ = MID$(w$, 4, 3)
GOSUB check
IF good THEN PRINT w$
END IF
END IF
LOOP
END
check:
good = 0
FOR i = 1 TO 36
IF p$ = pc$(i) THEN good = 1: EXIT FOR
NEXT
RETURN
which found
education
insolence
maelstrom
offspring
personnel
pimpernel
sovereign
springing
thirtieth
turquoise
but springing is out as it uses two ing's. Also, personnel and pimpernel cannot both be right as they both use nel and per. But it's personnel that would reuse the son from Jefferson, so pimpernel it is.
That gives us
Jefferson
Yorkshire
Wisconsin
education
insolence
maelstrom
offspring
pimpernel
sovereign
thirtieth
turquoise
That's only 11. Looking at D's answer, it looks like kilometre is the 12th, and not in my word list, due to its spelling.
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Posted by Charlie
on 2006-12-12 14:20:26 |
No Subject
