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Five bits for the bipolar (Posted on 2007-05-12) Difficulty: 3 of 5

What uncommon characteristic do the following five five-letter words have in common?

ALOFT   CHART   HUMAN   PAEAN   WARTY

Bonus: If you truly have a bit for the uncommon, can you identify any other five-letter English words that share this property?

  Submitted by Dej Mar    
Rating: 5.0000 (1 votes)
Solution: (Hide)

The characteristic that the five words share is that, for each word, each letter's binary value (A = 1 = 00001, B = 2 = 00010, ..., Z = 26 = 11010) can be placed in a square, as such:

  0   0   0   0   1 =  1 = A
  0   1   1   0   0 = 12 = L
  0   1   1   1   1 = 15 = O
  0   0   1   1   0 =  6 = F
  1   0   1   0   0 = 20 = T
= 1  12  15   6  20
= A   L   O   F   T

The other words I found that share this property are much less common than those in the given list. They are

  • BLOTE - [obsolete] to cure, as herrings, by salting and smoking them,
  • CHERT - variety of silica containing microcrystalline quartz,
  • PHEBE - (variant of phoebe) the pewee, or pewit, and
  • WHURT - (variant of whort) the whortleberry, or bilberry.

Comments: ( You must be logged in to post comments.)
  Subject Author Date
Puzzle Thoughts K Sengupta2023-09-08 02:45:59
hint and bonus spoilerMindrod2007-05-13 18:42:24
re: Not CommonDej Mar2007-05-13 16:23:32
Not Commonbrianjn2007-05-13 09:16:18
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