c4countdown

Spot the common rule/pattern.

EBB
CAGE
DICED
LACKED
CARNAGE
COMEDIAN
COWARDICE
DISCIPLINE
ANTIBIOTICS

No clues.

I assume you want answers via PM?

I will PM you mine, of which I am very confident is correct

Mr. Bolas has got the answer but if anyone else wants to have a crack at it they're more than welcome.

Ben Wilson wrote:Mr. Bolas has got the answer but if anyone else wants to have a crack at it they're more than welcome.

Thank you for the puzzle Ben

It is quite a fun puzzle to solve

Ben Wilson wrote:Mr. Bolas has got the answer but if anyone else wants to have a crack at it they're more than welcome.

To what, pester him until he gives us the answer? OK, I'll give it a go.

Kai Laddiman wrote:

Ben Wilson wrote:Mr. Bolas has got the answer but if anyone else wants to have a crack at it they're more than welcome.

To what, pester him until he gives us the answer? OK, I'll give it a go.

I'm sure a champ, like yourself Kai, can solve this without hints

I noticed that each word has 1 more letter than the one above it.

Kai Laddiman wrote:I noticed that each word has 1 more letter than the one above it.

That's not an entirely useless piece of information...

Hmm... I thought I saw a common rule... And then I realized COMEDIAN would be an exception to that rule...

Back to the drawing board.

Ben Wilson wrote:

Kai Laddiman wrote:I noticed that each word has 1 more letter than the one above it.

That's not an entirely useless piece of information...

I certainly guessed that number of letters was significant. I'm now going to take those words with me for a couple of nights in the Lake District, and ponder over them.

Sussed it

Howard Somerset wrote:I certainly guessed that number of letters was significant. I'm now going to take those words with me for a couple of nights in the Lake District, and ponder over them.

Got it during a short break on the drive up to the Lakes on Monday. So not having that to do during the following couple of nights, instead I tried in vain to find a word which might follow ANTIBIOTICS.

PMming my solution to Ben.

I think I can reveal the answer now, which Joseph, Dinos and Howard all got- converting the letters into numbers e.g. A=1, B=2... Z=26, the sum of the letters in each word is the square of the letters in the word. e.g. E+B+B=5+2+2=9=3^2.

I don't know if there are any 12-letter examples of this but there are certainly 3 more with 11 letters in. Open-ended puzzle time, anyone?

Ben Wilson wrote:I think I can reveal the answer now, which Joseph, Dinos and Howard all got- converting the letters into numbers e.g. A=1, B=2... Z=26, the sum of the letters in each word is the square of the letters in the word. e.g. E+B+B=5+2+2=9=3^2.

I don't know if there are any 12-letter examples of this but there are certainly 3 more with 11 letters in. Open-ended puzzle time, anyone?

Awesome. Love it.

Very good puzzle. The thing that helped me solve it was noticing that there was a preponderance of letters from the early part of the alphabet, and then trying to work whether or not that was significant.

What a shame that, with A being valid as a one letter word, there is no 2 letter word that fits.

Loved it, Ben.

Rats, I came so close to working out the letter values like that, and then got distracted by something shiny and never went back to it. Arse. Nice puzzle, Ben.

Ben Wilson wrote:I don't know if there are any 12-letter examples of this but there are certainly 3 more with 11 letters in. Open-ended puzzle time, anyone?

It's taken me a while, but if you were to use the English CSW list, that is included in Zyzzyva, there are a total of 376 words that are 12 letters in length and total 144

The first alphabetically is ACCULTURATES and the last is WORKABLENESS

Joseph Bolas wrote:

Ben Wilson wrote:I don't know if there are any 12-letter examples of this but there are certainly 3 more with 11 letters in. Open-ended puzzle time, anyone?

It's taken me a while, but if you were to use the English CSW list, that is included in Zyzzyva, there are a total of 376 words that are 12 letters in length and total 144

The first alphabetically is ACCULTURATES and the last is WORKABLENESS

In some ways I don't want to know how you worked that out, and yet in others, I do... care to work on the 13s now?

Ben Wilson wrote:

Joseph Bolas wrote:It's taken me a while, but if you were to use the English CSW list alone, that is included in Zyzzyva, there are a total of 376 words that are 12 letters in length and total 144

The first alphabetically is ACCULTURATES and the last is WORKABLENESS

In some ways I don't want to know how you worked that out, and yet in others, I do... care to work on the 13s now?

Going by the same English CSW word list in Zyzzyva alone, there are a total of 249 words that are 13 letters in length and total 169 . The first alphabetically is ACOTYLEDONOUS and the last is YELLOWHAMMERS

Just to also add to this, using the same list alone, there are a total of 77 words that are 14 letters in length and total 196 , starting with ADVENTITIOUSLY and ending with WORDLESSNESSES.

There are also a total of 10 words that are 15 letters in length and total 225 and they are as follows:

FRUCTUOUSNESSES
NONPRODUCTIVITY
NORTHWESTWARDLY
PHOTOTYPOGRAPHY
PHOTOXYLOGRAPHY
PROPYLITIZATION
SUPERSYMMETRIES
TREMULOUSNESSES
ULTRASTRUCTURAL
UNPROGRESSIVELY

Joseph Bolas wrote:

Ben Wilson wrote:

Joseph Bolas wrote:It's taken me a while, but if you were to use the English CSW list alone, that is included in Zyzzyva, there are a total of 376 words that are 12 letters in length and total 144

The first alphabetically is ACCULTURATES and the last is WORKABLENESS

In some ways I don't want to know how you worked that out, and yet in others, I do... care to work on the 13s now?

Going by the same English CSW word list in Zyzzyva alone, there are a total of 249 words that are 13 letters in length and total 169 . The first alphabetically is ACOTYLEDONOUS and the last is YELLOWHAMMERS

Just to also add to this, using the same list alone, there are a total of 77 words that are 14 letters in length and total 196 , starting with ADVENTITIOUSLY and ending with WORDLESSNESSES.

There are also a total of 10 words that are 15 letters in length and total 225 and they are as follows:

FRUCTUOUSNESSES
NONPRODUCTIVITY
NORTHWESTWARDLY
PHOTOTYPOGRAPHY
PHOTOXYLOGRAPHY
PROPYLITIZATION
SUPERSYMMETRIES
TREMULOUSNESSES
ULTRASTRUCTURAL
UNPROGRESSIVELY

Next time you're on msn I'll send you my list of 'extended' csw words (16s and over) :p