perplexus.info :: Word Problems : Mistress of the Ring

Mistress of the Ring (Posted on 2006-10-28)

On the Toymaker's bench is a spindle and 10 transparent rings.
The rings are of two sizes allowing them to be placed as nested pairs upon the spindle.

Each ring can be moved independently of its partner.

Each ring is engraved with 5 letters evenly separated and spaced so that it has 10 possible display faces.

The Toymaker lost the solution and cannot immediately place the rings correctly upon the shaft.

He has grouped the rings by their size:

Order (his)	  A                        B
 
   1       |S  D  O  G  A  |      |  C  E  I  B  L| 
   2       |C  A  M  I  I  |      |  I  G  O  L  W| 
   3       |N  H  L  O  R  |      |  O  P  I  O  S|  
   4       |F  R  O  S  N  |      |  S  L  I  E  T|  
   5       |Z  A  D  U  R  |      |  R  I  U  E  A|

No ring is beside its pair and no ring is in the position it would occupy on the spindle although rotational alignment is possible.

A pair of A and B rings might therefore read:
RELPXESUP?   or PERPLEXUS?
or
some other arrangement of the example rings which read:
|P  R  L  X  S  |  and |  E  P  E  U  ?| . 
These, "|", are arbitrary breaks to allow each ring to be presented as a flat entity.

Considered as a meshed pair they would be:

                          
    \  _   _   _   _   _  \
    /?|P|E|R|P|L|E|X|U|S|?/
    \                     \

What is the text that reveals 'the Mistress'?

Note: Text will form a 10 by 5 array.

Submitted by brianjn

Rating: 4.5000 (2 votes)

Solution: (Hide)

The Toymaker began with: Order (his) A B 1 |S D O G A | | C E I B L| 2 |C A M I I | | I G O L W| 3 |N H L O R | | O P I O S| 4 |F R O S N | | S L I E T| 5 |Z A D U R | | R I U E A| He needed to have, from top to bottom: Group A rings 2,5,1,3 and 4 Group B rings 4,1,5,2 and 3. They then needed to be rotated to the postions shown below: Ring Ring Order A Order B 2 |I I C A M | 4 | T S L I E| 5 |D U R Z A | 1 | L C E I B| 1 |O G A S D | 5 | R I U E A| 3 |H L O R N | 2 | O L W I G| 4 |F R O S N | 3 | O P I O S| Their subsequent meshing shows: ITISCLAIME DLUCREZIAB ORGIAUSEDA HOLLOWRING FORPOISONS The bolding represents letters from the A group of rings.
This spells out:
It is claimed Lucrezia Borgia used a hollow ring for poisons.
Acknowledgement and Notes Gamer has "Slide Rule" on site.
It lent to my inspiration for this, but I don't recall exactly how much.
I began playing with pentagrams with the view to having letters at all intersections. I realised that I could simplify things by viewing the inner intersections as one ring while another ring accommodated those on the outer.
I think that if I had to solve this I'd have used a spreadsheet and copied each ring to it. Then I'd have tried sliding rings as pairs, row against row, two cells at a time looking for something that might remotely make sense.
I had thought that this would be outside computer analysis, however...
Consider Charlie's printout of the pairings. I wonder if he had added each ring to itself, eg: |S D O G A S D O G A | , and ran those through his program (modified for extra data), that more sensible patterns might have been observed.
An email correspondent thought that his own method might have been to actually make 10 ribbons and slide them past each other, probably better than the spreadsheet, less fiddling.

Comments: ( You must be logged in to post comments.)

Subject	Author	Date
Puzzle Thoughts	K Sengupta	2024-01-07 23:07:13
re: The old fashioned way	Josie Faulkner	2006-10-28 14:03:23
The old fashioned way	Jyqm	2006-10-28 13:59:14
re: what I could come up with	Charlie	2006-10-28 12:31:16
what I could come up with	Charlie	2006-10-28 12:26:51

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