Slashdot Mirror
A Solution for the Ten Letter Acrostic Puzzle?
rmo101 asks: "A story in the Times reports a solution to the ten letter acrostic square puzzle that has defied solution since the ancient Greeks. An acrostic puzzle comprises a square of letters where the arrangement of letters from words written in rows result in the same words appearing vertically in the same order. The ten letter solution, however, is not accepted by all as one of the words does not appear in a dictionary. Sounds like a puzzle in search of a fiendish algorithm for interrogating a dictionary. The ancient Greeks believed that the solver of the ten letter puzzle would become immortal. Anyone fancy their chances?" Of course, the Times article doesn't report the proposed ten-letter solution (they show a five-letter one), but they do mention the controversial word: "nonesevent". Are any of you interested in trying your hand at a better solution?
The creator of the ten-letter acrostic would acheive "a lifetime of immortality"...
that's useful, hm?
Change the dictionary.
The solution is not valid if the word does not exist in a dictionary. Does an encyclopedia count as a dictionary? If so I would say:
Long live Wikipedia.
Just add the word, and the puzzle is solved.
Probably the ancient greeks solved it too once, since out of frustration comes the simple answer:
AAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAA
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
It's a perfectly cromulent word.
0000000000000000 - (lameness filter
0000000000000010 - sure is great
0000000000000000 - there are carrots
0000000000000000 - on my plate
0000000000000000 - I have a buick
0000000000000000 - which I hate
0000000000000000 - I cut my kittens
0000000000000000 - into bait
0000000000000000 - la la la la
0000000000000000 - lameness filter
0000000000000000 - is this enough yet?
0000000000000000 - I realize the kitten line
0000000000000000 - may be a bit offensive
0000000000000000 - I'm a supporter of felinism, I swear
0100000000000010 - I just think that a kitten's place
0000000000000001 - is in the kitchen)
I don't see the big deal. How is this one of the big puzzles in computer science again?
Next year's English Oxford Dictionary will have an entry for that last word.
"Noun;The only word in the 2005 ten-letter acrostic solution which did not appear in a dictionary at the time."
We at the United States National Security Agency hereby order you to stop posting on this thread immediately. The solution to this puzzle is clearly of great value to our national defense and therefore is to be used only with proper authorization from us. Big Brother is watching, and any further discussion will be appropriately terminated. And yes we will know. Now get back to work finding some more prime numbers, we need those too.
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
Check it out: http://www3.merriam-webster.com/opendictionary/new word_display_recent.php
Can I have my lifetime of immortality now please?
Does that mean you'll be immortal until you die?
The shareholder is always right.
The only Google hits on nonesevent have to do with this puzzle. The remarkable thing here is not the solving of the puzzle, its the solving of the puzzle with a word so completely fake that even Google hasn't seen its likes before.
If you're German, you just put 4 5x5 solutions together and you are done :)
I solved this puzzle when I was a kid back in 352 A.D.
-I like my women like I like my coffee - tied up in a sack and brought to me by Juan Valdez.
Tossing something in front of an audience with a larger than normal percentage of people with some sort of OCD. What were you thinking? I for one am getting tired of having to quit my jobs, drop out of school and deal with relationship breakups while i try to be the first to solve yet another stupid puzzzle... :)
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Maybe will we see emerging something like a Acrostic@Home grid computing program?
Yes, but what happens when you have a million computers connected to each other and granted immortality?
Skynet..
Since slashdot has stopped giving me comment points for some reason.
It's a simple enough solution - if you have a word with no meaning, just find one for it. Problem solved, the neologistical way!
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
NoNESevent? An event seriously lacking Nintendo Entertainment Systems?
The Chair Corp. comic(*00-12)