Puzzle November 23, 2008
From First to Last
Each clue is one word. The answer is a word that can follow the clue to complete a
familiar two-word phrase. The first two letters of the answer must be the first and
last letter of the clue. For example, given "pool," the answer would be "player."
Your answer?
How to Solve Will's Puzzle With Code
From listener Joshua Saks of Morristown, N.J.: Name a famous singer from the past who
has five letters in his or her first name and six letters in the last. Rearrange the
letters of the last name, plus the last letter of the first name (seven letters in all)
to name a place where this singer famously performed. Who is the singer and what is the place?
Argh! That was a tough one, because:
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I couldn't find a good singer's list
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Though I found several lists of venues, I don't think I found the one Will was thinking
of. I also have a hunch that I might need to strip some words off the venue name, such as
removing 'hall' from 'Carnegie Hall' or 'stadium' from 'Wembley' Stadium'.
Algorithm Summary
Even though I couldn't solve it, the algorithm is clear.
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Build a dictionary of venues, using their sorted name as the key
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The key to making it work is to sort the venue name and use it as a key. That way, every variation
on the name will look-up to the same value.
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Look at every singer and construct candidate variatons according to Will's instructions.
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Check whether any candidate is in our venues dictionary, if so, we have a solution!
Reader Comments