I want to inscribe letters on to nine cubical wooden blocks to be able to spell all the months of the year. For good appearance, I do not want to use the end grain of any block. That leaves four sides of the blocks to use, which is plenty. I also want one blank face (not end grain) on each block.
Is it possible to assign three letters to each block to spell out all twelve months, without resorting to tricks like inverting an 'n' to make a 'u'?

You may want to check out this puzzle for inspiration.

I did this mainly by trial and error, beginning with September, the only month with nine letters:

1: S   D   N
2: E   O   J
3: P   C   U
4: T   V   Y
5: E   A   F
6: M   O   R
7: B   H   G
8: E   A   L
9: R   I   U

The months can spelled out as follows:

JANUARY: 2-5-1-3-8-9-4
FEBRUARY: 5-2-7-6-3-8-9-4
MARCH: 6-5-9-3-7
APRIL: 5-3-6-9-8
MAY: 6-5-4
JUNE: 2-3-1-5
JULY: 2-3-8-4
AUGUST: 5-3-7-9-1-4
SEPTEMBER: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9
OCTOBER: 2-3-4-6-7-8-9
NOVEMBER: 1-2-4-5-6-7-8-9
DECEMBER: 1-2-3-5-6-7-8-9

Some of the shorter months can be spelled multiple ways.

Posted by Jyqm on 2007-04-30 15:08:14