+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| EA |ONGE | IC | RA |
+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| PE | NT | SPA | YD |
+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| REH | OT | PH | CR |
+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| RTA | ST | OG | SP |
+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| IT | TA | FI |RAPH |
+-----+-----+-----+-----+
Clue Answer
Middle or Sunrise **** (4 letters)
Aquatic or Porous ****** (6 letters)
Red or Street *********** (11 letters)
Scotch or Duct **** (4 letters)
Cheese or Picture ********** (10 letters)
Nitpicker or Quibbler ****** (6 letters)
Troy or City-State ****** (6 letters)
In this puzzle the answers are broken into groups of two, three, and four letters and shuffled in the 5x4 array given above.
Each answer has two clues and "N letters" shows how many letters each answer has.
The task is to find these seven words from the abovementioned clues.
The only one immediately obvious without the aid of a computer was Scotch or Duct TAPE.
Otherwise, a program came up with some potential words of 4, 6, 10 or 11 letters:
parts={'ea' 'onge' 'ic' 'ra' 'pe' 'nt' 'spa' 'yd' ...
'reh' 'ot' 'ph' 'cr' 'rta' 'st' 'og' 'sp' ...
'it' 'ta' 'fi' 'raph'};
fid = fopen('c:\words\words.txt','r');
while ~feof(fid)
w=fgetl(fid);
w=lower(w);
if sum(length(w)==[4 6 10 11])
tst=repmat(' ',1,length(w));
for i=1:length(parts)
ix=strfind(w,parts{i});
if ~isempty(ix)
tst(ix(1):ix(1)+length(parts{i})-1)=parts{i};
end
end
if tst==w
disp(w)
end
end
end
critic
east
fist
fistic
otic
otitic
pent
pest
phot
photic
photog
photograph
rant
rape
rasp
spic
spit
sponge
spot
strait
strata
tantra
tape
sparta
tantra
Replacing each set of asterisks with one of the words:
Middle or Sunrise east (4 letters)
Aquatic or Porous sponge (6 letters)
Red or Street *********** (11 letters)
Scotch or Duct tape (4 letters)
Cheese or Picture photograph (10 letters)
Nitpicker or Quibbler critic (6 letters)
Troy or City-State Sparta (6 letters)
leaves one pair of clues unaccounted for.
But there are also unaccounted-for pieces:
ra nt yd reh fi
A red furnishing on the street is a fire hydrant (11 letters), even though this is two words, making the total word count 8 rather than 7.
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Posted by Charlie
on 2022-09-19 11:58:31 |
computer-aided solution (spoilers)
