One Response to “Puzzlebomb – February 2015”

1. Marshall Hampton February 3rd, 2015

   Is there an easy way to do this by hand? I can cast this as a linear algebra problem and compute it in Sage, but I’m curious if there is an easier way:

   words = ['great', 'genius', 'at', 'gets', 'gaunt', 'gripes', 'priest', 'repast', 'unripe', 'eating']
   lets = 'supergiant'
   mat = []
   for j,q in enumerate(lets):
       temp = []
       for i,g in enumerate(words):
           if q in g:
               temp.append(1)
           else:
               temp.append(0)
       mat.append(temp)
   M = matrix(GF(2),mat)
   answer = M.inverse()*vector(GF(2),[1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1])
   for i,q in enumerate(words):
       if answer[i]==1:
           print q
   

   (Edited to remove the solution, but curious readers can execute the code to rediscover it – CP)

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