« Part XII: Scramble 5 -- A Quick Attachment | Main | Part X: Scramble 4 -- Quick Scramble Using Word List »
Part XI: Word List Preparation in 8 Procedures
Now some modifications must be made to the Word list from Part IX. They will continue to be referred to as Words, even though some may become non-word short strings of letters, no longer in alphabetical order. You may assume the leading zero for any single digit index ([0_]) referenced by variables. These steps MUST be done in order, else results will be altered.
Procedure 1
Make an ordered SUBLIST of the largest number of Words that have the same βth letter. Two of these Words have three other matches, of same letters in the same positions. Two of the matching positions are adjacent. Switch those two letters in both Words. In the longer of the two Words, move the letter immediately following the switched pair to the front of the Word.
Returning to the entire SUBLIST, remove the last letter of each of the first two Words. Also, remove the αth letter of the last Word. Return the Words as altered (only one was not) to the main list of 25.
Procedure 2
Back to the full list of 25, with alterations from Procedure 1 made, locate the Word whose index number ([??]) is the integer portion of the square root of the number portion of the TKZIANM code for the first name of the man referred to in [δ-c]. Also locate two related Words: the last Word preceding it with fewer letters, and the last Word preceding it with the same number of letters. REVERSE all three Words, so that they read backwards.
Procedure 3
Using A=1, B=2, etc., each Word in the list has a letter value total. Find the Word with the smallest total amount. Move the first letter to the end. You will not need these totals again. This entire procedure should take less than a minute.
Procedure 4
Alphabetize the 25-Word list, as modified, and then renumber them [01] to [25] in this new order. All subsequent referrals to these numbers are to the new reassignments.
Procedure 5
Remove the (δ/α)th and ath letters from the last Word long enough to do so. Insert them, adjacent, and in the order they were in the Word, just in front of the letter O that is farthest away from the first letter of another Word in the list. Then switch the two letters just in front of the insertion point.
Procedure 6
Switch the last two letters of [γ-c], and of [b-β]. Remove the last two letters of [c+β], and of the first half of [c-a].
Procedure 7
Move the αth letter of [α+b] 2 places to the right. Move the αth letter of [δ-d] 3 places to the right.
Procedure 8
Remove the letter P from the first Word that has one, and change the (a-β)th letter of that Word to the same letter you changed the first letter of a String segment to, at the end of Part X. One letter appears twice in [ε-a]. Change the first one to the letter that appears twice in the Word just altered.
Now the Words are ready to combine with the Strings! As a total of 8 letters were removed, the modified list has 120 letters.
Comments
In Procedure 2, when asked to find the "last Word preceding it," do we begin at [??] and go towards [01] (with the last word preceding it being the one, in effect, closest to [01]) or begin at [01] and go towards the [??] (with the last word preceding it being the one, in effect, closest to [??])?
Did that make sense, I wonder...
Posted by: Stephen | Jan 20, 2007 12:55:38 AM
The latter of your examples, closest to [??] but still before it in the list.
Posted by: Bob Lodge | Jan 20, 2007 1:34:50 AM
In Proceedure 1, "Two of the matching positions are adjacent." Two of my Words indeed have a match with another Word (3 letters in any position), but the only pair with adjacent letters have all three letters adjacent. I really like my Words but will go back 3 spaces if you confirm I am off-track.
Posted by: JC | Jan 26, 2007 2:18:37 PM
Actually, Bob, please do not comment, I think I see my correct track. I guess there's no way to remove a posting in error (or in haste?)
Posted by: JC | Jan 26, 2007 2:50:07 PM
Oh heck. I've read that posting begets inspiration, so I'll ask a few questions.....In procedure 5, could you elaborate on what you mean by "farthest away from the first letter of another Word in the list". Are we counting individual letters or whole words to determine farthest? Also, are the universe of "another" Words:
a) ALL the Words in the list, or
b) just the Words before and after the Word that contains the O?
In the example below, which O would be "farthest away from the first letter of another Word in the list", the O in BOB or the O in LODGE, and why?
PLEASE
ASSIST
BOB
LODGE
MANYTHANKS
Finally, I just want to be sure that it's not possible to "switch the two letters just in front of the insertion point" in my example; correct? Or, could one switch the T in ASSIST and the first B in BOB, if the O in BOB were the O that is farthest away from the first letter of another work in the list?
Thanks,
Need sleep....
Posted by: df | Jan 31, 2007 11:10:53 PM
Farthest from the first letter simply means find the letter O that is the highest position (3rd, 4th, 5th, etc) letter, in the whole list. Your example has a tie, but the list at this point does not.
The two letters switched are adjacent, in the same word, right in front of where you just inserted two other letters.
Example, suppose one of the words was ALAMAGORDO, with a 10th letter O the farthest from the beginning of the word (and more than any other word in the list), and the letters to be inserted are AB. You would insert them in front of the O, giving ALAMAGORDABO, then switch the two letters RD just in front of that insertion, for a final result ALAMAGODRABO.
Posted by: Bob Lodge | Feb 1, 2007 12:31:56 AM
OK, I should have said, ''...farthest away from the first letter IN another word in the list...'' The ''O'' and the first letter are in the same word. As you are later going to switch two letters in front, the O has to be at least the 3rd letter.
Posted by: Bob Lodge | Feb 1, 2007 12:46:17 AM
That was an option I hadn't even considered (which was probably evident from my example). Many thanks for setting me straight! Next stop - Shuffleville!
Posted by: df | Feb 1, 2007 7:28:30 AM
I think I have a great word list, but I get stuck at procedure 6. If someone could verify a couple of things it might help.
After Procedure 1, when I "return the words", I returned them to their original index numbers.I only re-aplhabatized during procedure 4.
Procedure 3 is completed by adding the values of the letters in each word.
Anything wrong with these assumptions?
Posted by: Paula | Feb 8, 2007 9:52:36 AM
You are correct about both procedures.
Posted by: Alan Lemm | Feb 8, 2007 10:55:02 AM
So I'm probably the only one that doesn't have this solved yet, but I have so much of it done, I don't want to give up.
After these procedures I completed part XII - but failed at the checkpoint, as I ended up with two strings of equal length.
I have determined that aparently I have the wrong word in space [c-a], because deleting half of it in procedure 6 results in deleting too many letters.
After sifting and sifting and sifting through what may have interpreted incorrectly I can only find one procedure that I may have misinterpreted. It is #2.
In locating the two related words, if I worded it like this would it be right?:
Related word #1 is the word before but closest to [??] that has fewer letters than [??]
Related word #2 is the word before it but closest to [??] that has the same number of letters as [??]
My only other possible error would be in my seperating into pieces of eight. But everything seems to double check there.
Posted by: Paula | Feb 12, 2007 4:43:39 PM
Paula, you don't delete half the word [c-a], only the last two letters of the first half of the word, which implies that the word at that point has an even number of letters, at least 4 but probably 6 or more. For example, if it had 10 letters, you would delete the 4th and 5th.
Your wording of the related word definitions is a correct equivalent.
Posted by: Bob Lodge | Feb 12, 2007 5:16:29 PM
...and from my 8th grade English teacher:
There is A RAT in SEPARATE! :-)
Posted by: Bob Lodge | Feb 12, 2007 5:19:45 PM
DOY! Again...
How did I miss those two little letters "of"...
If you only knew how many hours I've spent backtracking....
And I should know so much better...tomorrow should be a day of progress FINALLY!
Posted by: Paula | Feb 12, 2007 8:20:52 PM
I think there's an interesting comparison between what happens in this type of ''follow the directions'' puzzle and what goes on inside a computer. The slightest error in this puzzle is greatly magnified as you progress. For example, inserting one letter too many or few will shift all the letters that follow, and later when factoring to make a rectangle to shuffle will render the final outcome completely unreadable.
Likewise, as we have all probably experienced, a tiny error in a computer processor will render the output total gibberish, or even crash the system. It's amazing, when you think of millions of steps being executed every second, including things like checking the parity of a bit just a few billionths of a second after it was changed to what is supposed to be found. All those electrons doing a mad dance at the speed of light--it's amazing these machines work!!
Posted by: Bob Lodge | Feb 13, 2007 1:35:19 AM
Part XI: 8 Procedures (1-4)
Again the Greek letter values come into play in some of these procedures. Although it may have been possible to reverse engineer around having them, that would seem to be the hard way, and for these explanations I will assume they are at hand.
Procedure 1
The largest group with a common 5th letter is this ordered sublist of five words:
[06] FANATIC
[09] MOISTURE
[15] SPECTACLES
[19] TOASTER
[21] TOMATO
The two with three additional matches are:
[09] MOISTURE
[19] TOASTER
Following the directions gives:
[09] UMOITSRE
[19] TOATSER
and the result of further instructions for the sublist is:
[06] FANATI
[09] UMOITSR
[15] SPECTACLES
[19] TOATSER
[21] TOATO
Procedure 2
You can Google the SOUNDEX system and apply the rules, or perhaps you found the nifty converter here:
http://resources.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/soundexconverter
The man in Clue [14] is TENZING Norgay. The Soundex code for TENZING is T-525. The square root of 525 is 22.9+, integer portion is 22. Word [22] is TONE.
Last previous same length is [20] TOES, and shorter is [17] THE. Reversing all three words gives:
[17] EHT
[20] SEOT
[22] ENOT
Procedure 3
The first word in the list, ACE, has a score of 1+3+5 = 9. Any letter past I has a larger score by itself. Most of the alphabetized list is instantly eliminated, and it only takes a few seconds to confirm that all others contain at least one such letter. So, [01] ACE becomes [01] CEA.
Procedure 4
At this point the list looks like this:
[01]-CEA [02]-CT [03]-DAN [04]-DRAW [05]-ELEPHANT [06]-FANATI [07]-FANDANGO [08]-TWELFTH [09]-UMOITSR [10]-NEIN [11]-NESCAFE [12]-PUP [13]-RATE [14]-SHERPA [15]-SPECTACLES [16]-TEN [17]-EHT [18]-THIS [19]-TOATSER [20]-SEOT [21]-TOATO [22]-ENOT [23]-WHAT [24]-WITHOUT [25]-WT
Alphabetizing and renumbering gives:
[01]-CEA [02]-CT [03]-DAN [04]-DRAW [05]-EHT [06]-ELEPHANT [07]-ENOT [08]-FANATI [09]-FANDANGO [10]-NEIN [11]-NESCAFE [12]-PUP [13]-RATE [14]-SEOT [15]-SHERPA [16]-SPECTACLES [17]-TEN [18]-THIS [19]-TOATO [20]-TOATSER [21]-TWELFTH [22]-UMOITSR [23]-WHAT [24]-WITHOUT [25]-WT
to be used in all future steps.
Posted by: Bob Lodge | Mar 12, 2007 2:50:17 PM
Part XI: 8 Procedures (5-8)
Procedure 5
The only word with a 10th (30/3) letter is [16] SPECTACLES, from which the 7th and 10th letters, CS, are removed, leaving [16] SPECTALE. The letter O farthest right is in [09] FANDANGO. Insert CS per instructions to get [09] FANDANGCSO. Then switch the NG, giving [09] FANDAGNCSO.
Procedure 6
Switch the last two letters of [20-16], and of [13-5]. Remove the last two letters of [16+5], and of the first half of [16-7].
[04] DRAW = [04] DRWA
[08] FANATI = [08] FANAIT
[21] TWELFTH = [21] TWELF
[09] FANDAGNCSO = [09] FANGNCSO
Note that the first half of FANDAGNCSO is FANDA, so DA was removed.
Procedure 7
[16] SPECTALE = [16] SPCTEALE
[11] NESCAFE = [11] NECAFSE
Procedure 8
P is removed from [06] ELEPHANT, leaving [06] ELEHANT. The first letter of the string segment was changed to I, so here the 2nd (7-5) letter L is also changed to an I, making [06] EIEHANT.
[24] (31-7) WITHOUT has two T's, and [06] EIEHANT has two E's. Per instructions, [24] WITHOUT = [24] WIEHOUT.
Now the words are ready to combine with the strings! As a total of 8 letters were removed, the modified list has 120 letters. It now looks like this:
[01]-CEA [02]-CT [03]-DAN [04]-DRWA [05]-EHT [06]-EIEHANT [07]-ENOT [08]-FANAIT [09]-FANGNCSO [10]-NEIN [11]-NECAFSE [12]-PUP [13]-RATE [14]-SEOT [15]-SHERPA [16]-SPCTEALE [17]-TEN [18]-THIS [19]-TOATO [20]-TOATSER [21]-TWELF [22]-UMOITSR [23]-WHAT [24]-WIEHOUT [25]-WT
Posted by: Bob Lodge | Mar 12, 2007 3:27:48 PM
Post a comment
Commenters please note: do NOT discuss ANY contest information for a currently active contest outside of what is printed in GAMES magazine.