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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 actual square is:
SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS
Which is the vertical flip of the stories' version. This one spells out the sentence in the same direction as Latin would be written (top to bottom). Also, this one generates more hits on google, with 19900 versus 1320 hits (with "SATOR AREPO" versus "AREPO SATOR").
The creator of the ten-letter acrostic would acheive "a lifetime of immortality"...
that's useful, hm?
Change the dictionary.
There are two others mentioned, one of which contains the word "Orangutang", which is also mentioned in the Times article. Interestingly, this directory listing implies that the BENCHMARK file, which contains the above solution, was created no later than November 1999. Sorry - but I can't stop the ecode tage from inserting spaces into the text.
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?
One which stuck in mind goes as follows:
ALLUP
LEIRU
LIGIL
URIEL
PULLA
When ritually consecrated they are said to be capable of producing magic effects; at least according to the mystics.
Before enlightenment - Code C, read Usenet, play NetHack. After enlightenment - Code C, read Usenet, play NetHack.
Reminds me of a bit of Hofstader's Metamagical Themas:
Only the fool would take trouble to verify that his sentence was composed of ten a's, three b's, four c's, four d's, forty-six e's, sixteen f's, four g's, thirteen h's, fifteen i's, two k's, nine l's, four m's, twenty-five n's, twenty-four o's, five p's, sixteen r's, forty-one s's, thirty-seven t's, ten u's, eight v's, eight w's, four x's, eleven y's, twenty-seven commas, twenty-three apostrophes, seven hyphens and, last but not least, a single !
There's got to be a piece of math that finds the positions where all constraints are satisfied as in the above quote.
Shh.
Benjamin Zimmer over at Language Log notes some problems with the story. Most notably:
There's no evidence that the composition of word squares, let alone 10-squares, was a pastime in ancient Greece.
And, there's the timeliness of the article:
[I]t's unclear why the Times thought that this was at all newsworthy, considering that Clarke announced his discovery of the square back in April 1999, in an issue of his e-zine WordsWorth.
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.
It's a sparseness problem. The space of two letter words is pretty full, but as the length of the words increases, the number of words does not increase as fast as the number of possible combinations.
I've actually written a program to generate the Dutch solutions to the 5x5 puzzle somewhere around 1990, and it found several good solutions with a 210,000 word dictionary. However, it didn't find solutions for the 6x6 square. So I would expect that the 10x10 square is near impossible, unless wacky compounds would be allowed, since they are the only thing that can keep the letter combination filled...
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?
To be a valid solution to the ancient Greeks (and win the immortality prize), shouldn't the solution be using Greek words?