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Ten Words (Posted on 2004-05-26) Difficulty: 3 of 5
Ten nine-letter words have been separated into units of three letters. The units have been randomly put in the below list. Can you determine the original 10 words?

  hol rec ant imp fer con
  man dif ice pol acq htn
  ort myt new air sag duc
  dec lig kch ogy ing tan
  uit ent gle tal tor ent

See The Solution Submitted by SilverKnight    
Rating: 3.7500 (4 votes)

Comments: ( Back to comment list | You must be logged in to post comments.)
re: Solution | Comment 5 of 9 |
(In reply to Solution by Iain)

I had first thought of RECANTING (the REC and the ANT are right next to one another), but had to recant that when I needed the ING for LIGHTNING.

After finding a suitable set I wanted to verify there were no other solutions, so:

DATA   hol rec ant imp fer con
DATA   man dif ice pol acq htn
DATA   ort myt new air sag duc
DATA   dec lig kch ogy ing tan
DATA   uit ent gle tal tor ent

DIM piece$(30)
FOR i = 1 TO 5
 READ s$
 s$ = LTRIM$(RTRIM$(s$))
 FOR j = 1 TO 6
  k = k + 1
  piece$(k) = LEFT$(s$, 3)
  IF j < 6 THEN s$ = MID$(s$, 5)
 NEXT
NEXT

OPEN "\words\words9.txt" FOR BINARY AS #1
w$ = SPACE$(9)
DO
  GET #1, , w$
  IF EOF(1) THEN EXIT DO
  FOR i = 0 TO 2
    found = 0
    FOR j = 1 TO 30
      IF MID$(w$, 3 * i + 1, 3) = piece$(j) THEN found = 1: EXIT FOR
    NEXT
    IF found = 0 THEN EXIT FOR
  NEXT
  IF found THEN fCt = fCt + 1: PRINT fCt, w$
LOOP

which finds, though, the only extra words all end in ING:

1            acquittal
2            anthology
3            conducing
4            conductor
5            decanting
6            different
7            differing
8            impairing
9            impinging
10           important
11           importing
12           lightning
13           mythology
14           newsagent
15           policeman
16           recanting
17           rectangle

so no other solution set is possible.

Of course impinging is impossible in itself as it uses two INGs.


  Posted by Charlie on 2004-05-26 14:33:15
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