My password is an English noun, consisting of five distinct letters.
It has no common letters with either DIZZY or STORM and shares two letters with the word PLACE and two letters with the word PURGE.

a. Find my password.

b. Is it the only word that fits the description?

OPEN "\words\words5.txt" FOR BINARY AS #1
CLS
w$ = SPACE$(5)
DO
 GET #1, , w$
 IF EOF(1) THEN EXIT DO
 good = 1
 FOR i = 1 TO 5
   IF INSTR("dizystorm", MID$(w$, i, 1)) THEN good = 0: EXIT FOR
 NEXT
 FOR i = 1 TO 4
   IF INSTR(MID$(w$, i + 1), MID$(w$, i, 1)) > 0 THEN good = 0: EXIT FOR
 NEXT
 IF good THEN
   ct1 = 0: ct2 = 0
   FOR i = 1 TO 5
     IF INSTR("place", MID$(w$, i, 1)) THEN ct1 = ct1 + 1
     IF INSTR("purge", MID$(w$, i, 1)) THEN ct2 = ct2 + 1
   NEXT
   IF ct1 = 2 AND ct2 = 2 THEN
     PRINT w$
   END IF
 END IF
LOOP UNTIL EOF(1)

finds

beaux
began
clung
fauve
fluke
fugal
ganef
ganev
gulch
jugal
laugh
plunk
pujah
punch
punka
quake
quean
vegan
whaup

of which fluke, gulch, laugh, punch, quake and vegan could be considered common English nouns.

PUNCH and QUAKE have the added property that the two letters shared with each of PLACE and PURGE are in the correct position in each.

Posted by Charlie on 2010-09-01 02:49:18