Assign a value to each letter of the alphabet using the trivial forward assignment: A=1, B=2, ..., Z=26. Let the value of a word be the sum of its letters. For example the value of 'example' would be 5+24+1+13+16+12+5 = 76.

In contrast, assign the values backwards: A=26, B=25, ..., Z=1. Then 'example' would have a value of 22+3+26+14+11+15+22 = 113.

Most words will have different forward and backward values. One exception is the word 'by': it has a value of 27 both forward and backward. Can you find longer words whose forward and backward values are the same?

From the Mammoth uncensored word list, an English word list of
295163 words:

28 PHARYNGOLARYNGOESOPHAGECTOMY 378

Only words of of length greater than 21 characters from this list were checked as the discovered list was not found as a downloadable text file. A word whose forward value equals the product of its length multiplied by 13.5 will have the same backward value. As noted by Charlie in his initial comment for this problem, this means only words of a even numbered length can fit the criteria for the forward and backward word values being the same.

Edited on February 8, 2017, 6:14 pm

Posted by Dej Mar on 2017-02-08 17:48:22