I want to inscribe letters on to nine cubical wooden blocks to be able to spell all the months of the year. For good appearance, I do not want to use the end grain of any block. That leaves four sides of the blocks to use, which is plenty. I also want one blank face (not end grain) on each block.
Is it possible to assign three letters to each block to spell out all twelve months, without resorting to tricks like inverting an 'n' to make a 'u'?

You may want to check out this puzzle for inspiration.

There is more than one solution, so to make this a little more challenging I tried to put a word on as many of the blocks I was able.  I succeeded with four English and two French words:

HER, LEG, JIB, OAR, MOU, EAU, CNS, PVY, DFT

January - JIB, EAU, CNS, MOU, OAR, HER, PVY
February - DFT, LEG, JIB, HER, MOU, EAU, OAR, PVY
March - MOU, EAU, OAR, CNS, HER
April - OAR, PVY, HER, JIB, LEG
May - MOU, EAU, PVY
June - JIB, MOU, CNS, EAU
July - JIB, EAU, LEG, PVY
August - OAR, EAU, LEG, MOU, CNS, DFT
September - CNS, LEG, PVY, DFT, EAU, MOU, JIB, HER, OAR
Ocotober - MOU, CNS, DFT, OAR, JIB, EAU, HER
November - CNS, OAR, PVY, EAU, MOU, JIB, LEG, HER
December - DFT, EAU, CNS, HER, MOU, JIB, LEG, OAR

Posted by Dej Mar on 2007-05-01 03:02:28