Comments on: Cryptarithms

Cryptarithms

Upton O'Good — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:44:39 -0800

   MEFI
   META
+ ASKME
-------
 FILTER

Each letter corresponds to a number 0-9. The solution is unique.

A cryptarithm (or alphametic) is a puzzle in which each digit of an equation is replaced by a different letter. One of the first, and best known, appeared in 1924:

  SEND
+ MORE
------
 MONEY

A collection of classic cryptarithms can be found here; some interesting extensions to the concept can be found here. And, if you'd like to make your own, the alphametic generator here and solver here may be of use.

By: painquale

painquale — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:55:56 -0800

That 'interesting extensions' link is fantastic. Great post! And great presentation, too.

By: carsonb

carsonb — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:56:44 -0800

Cool. Here's a cached version of the geocities link.

By: tellurian

tellurian — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:41:21 -0800

The Alphametic Applet solved it instantly. Impressive.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:42:52 -0800

A = 8 E = 4 F = 1 I = 0 K = 6 L = 3 M = 7 R = 2 S = 9 T = 5 darn

By: Dumsnill

Dumsnill — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:43:08 -0800

"Alphametic" Write it down, Darling. I like it. I want to use it more often in conversation.

By: painquale

painquale — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:51:03 -0800

Wow, the entire site of Mike Keith's is wonderful. I recognize his constrained pastiches of Poe, so I must have visited at least part of the site before, but a lot of the material seems new to me.

By: Punkey

Punkey — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:14:23 -0800

Man, I loved those Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School books when I was in elementary school. They were nothing but these kind of puzzles. They were fun but pretty tough when they started rolling in multiplication and division towards the back.

By: twoleftfeet

twoleftfeet — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:45:23 -0800

The symbol system is irrelevant to the solution of these kinds of problems. I'd love to see an alphametic that used symbols combining into emoticons. That would be something.

By: twoleftfeet

twoleftfeet — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:08:23 -0800

Oh, I've got one:

  :)
+ ;)
____
 :-)

Not great though. (Not a unique solution at all.) Ideally it should hang together like SEND + MORE = MONEY. But it is a new kind of puzzle!

By: wendell

wendell — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:47:14 -0800

    THIS
+WILLNOT
--------
 WENDELL

By: twoleftfeet

twoleftfeet — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:59:22 -0800

Another one:

   -->
+  <>

(Unique solution!) Not enough people awake making up alphametics.  (What? You got something better to do?)

By: twoleftfeet

twoleftfeet — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 04:14:23 -0800

Apparently Metafilter's parsers get nervous if you type hyphen-hyphen-> (since that's the end escape for HTML). The problem (unique solution!) was <-hyphen-hyphen + hyphen-hyphen->= ??! It's actually not a bad problem. Sorry for the formatting issue. (And it's not necessary to escape inside PRE, by the way.)

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 05:28:12 -0800

  WHAT
   THE
+ FUCK 
------
  MATT

(Solvable, not uniquely, in base 10.)

By: twoleftfeet

twoleftfeet — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 05:51:05 -0800

If you do these puzzles in base 2, most of them are unsolvable. (One letter per digit, right?)

By: leibniz

leibniz — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 06:42:21 -0800

Since no one else has posted it so far, I may as well go first and claim my special prize/compensation for being cruelly distracted at work. ***SPOILER SOLUTION*** MEFI 6310 META 6359 ASKME 94863 FILTER 107532

By: twoleftfeet

twoleftfeet — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:08:59 -0800

The world's smallest alphametic! (Where are the people from Guinness when you need them?):

  I
+ I
 ----
 ME

Rastafari!

By: Perplexity

Perplexity — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:22:05 -0800

Hmm, I'm not sure if I should deserve credit for this or not: SOLUTION M = 2 E = 1 F = 0 I = 7 T = 8 A = 6 S = 9 K = 5 L = 3 R = 4 MEFI = 2107 META = 2186 ASKME = 69521 FILTER = 73814

By: crapmatic

crapmatic — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:46:36 -0800

Moral of the story: When using Geocities, always upgrade to their 1 MB per month bandwidth plan.

By: Timeless

Timeless — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:46:40 -0800

I first tried to mix some colors, but that didn't turn out to well. So I started asking some questions instead and finally got an answer: WHY + WHEN + WHERE + WHO + HOW = ANSWER

By: roger ackroyd

roger ackroyd — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 08:47:03 -0800

Cryptarithm is the perfect goth-nerdcore band name.

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 08:57:18 -0800

Unique solution in base 10:

   LOL
  FAIL
   LOL
  FAIL
   LOL
+ FAIL
------
 PALIN

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 08:58:28 -0800

Leading zeroes are generally excluded in this type of puzzle, Perplexity.

By: Ambrosia Voyeur

Ambrosia Voyeur — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:19:14 -0800

I remember my jubilant introduction to these from Sideways Arithmetic at Wayside School! Thanks!

By: jamuraa

jamuraa — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:08:49 -0800

I always found these from Sideways Arithmetic at Wayside School. They are lots of fun. They have a kind of quality which I also find in sudoku, but with some extra rules from mathematics which means you can put some logic into it.

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:40:18 -0800

Unique solution in base 10:

  YUMMY
   SEXY
  MUSKY
-------
 VIXENS

By: qvantamon

qvantamon — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:37:20 -0800

It's funnier to solve them when you swap the letters for (non-solution digits). E.g., solve this mentally:

    8427
 +  8453
   31684
 ---------
  279540

By: niles

niles — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:30:47 -0800

Punkey: Not that you'll probably see this, but I happened to run across Sideways Arithmetic From Wayside School at the local thrift store today, and picked it up based on you mentioning it. I thought it would be appropriate for my middle school aged siblings, but, looking through it, I'll have to try my hand at the latter portion of the book.