Start by looking for a pattern between the words. (They are independent so part of one word isn't stuck on another word.) They don't have much in common except that each has an even number of letters.
No other hints are given except the title, XOR. Looking at what XOR is, it's a logical binary gate that takes in to bits and returns 1 if the two bits are different.
It's strange that this would be the title when there are no bits to be found, but remember the previous interesting conclusion: All the lengths are divisible by two. Since the XOR gate requires two inputs, a good idea would be to XOR the letters by pairs. To do so, the letters have to be converted into binary.
S 10011 A 00001 K 01011
K 01011 N 01110 Y 11001
X 11000 O 01111 R 10010
The first 3 letters are XOR, which is a good indication this is the right start. Applying this to the rest of the words gives:
F 00110 R 10010
O 01111 A 00001
I 01001 S 10011
M 01101 R 10010 C 00011 R 10010
E 00101 S 10011 O 01111 T 10100
H 01000 A 00001 L 01100 F 00110
F 00110 A 00001 L 01100 A 00001
R 10010 I 01001 E 00101 R 10010
T 10100 H 01000 I 01001 S 10011
Z 11010 G 00111 O 01111 D 00100 U 10101
I 01001 I 01001 N 01110 O 01111 P 10000
S 10011 N 01110 A 00001 K 01011 E 00101
The statement then reads "XOR is half this snake." Instead of looking for a snake that has half of its name as XOR, look into what XOR is some more. If a carry bit is added on for when both bits are 1, the result is a half adder. Thus, half an adder (a snake) would be an XOR, so adder is the solution. To convert it to 10 letters, just find a pair of letters that XOR to each letter in "adder"; I like to do this such that it looks like it makes a word (even though they don't have to be real words) because it looks cooler that way. |
