(In reply to
re: A happy ending (spoiler)...why L and not 7 by Ady TZIDON)
Ady:
Well, since you ask, my process was to solve the whole silly phrase without looking at the title.
I started, as you said, with 4 = A.
I had been thinking that Y628 was either YEAR or YOUR, and with the A eliminated I tried YOUR right off.
This lead me to a search for 6 letter words that fit OU5301, but here you threw me off. The last word in the meaningless phrase was 3I5, which in a proper alphametic implied that none of the numbers translated to an I. So I was looking for 5301 to not include an A, I, O, U or Y. The last two digits had to be make a word with 9A01 and the last three digits had to make a word with 9O8301.
So it behooved me to consider various values for 9, where 9AY had to be a word. May was not the obvious choice, even though that is where your mind went. I considered Say and Day and even Way to be more likely than May, and because this was a nonsense sentence I was also going to try B, H, G, L, P and N if S or D or W or M didn't work out. There were even more extreme choices to be tried if B, H, G, L, P and N didn't work either.
Things weren't working, and fortunately I allowed OU5301 to include an I before I gave up on 9 being S, D, W or M. This led to MO8BID MAID MAY OUTBID, and the rest is history.
As an aside, I prefer the phrase A MORBID MAID MAY OUTBID YOUR BID, as being arguably less nonsensical. I am a bridge player, and my regular partner actually is a MORBID MAID. Had I not been a bridge player I may have overlooked the word OUTBID.
All in all, I think D4 is still a better rating than D2. Your inclusion of I in 3I5, which was probably intended to be helpful, actually made this a lot more difficult for me. But thanks for constructing this puzzle, and thanks for debugging it, and please keep it up.
Edited on December 15, 2013, 9:51 am
re(2): A happy ending (spoiler)...why L and not 7
