If you enjoyed last week’s brainteaser, David Hunt, PGCE Computer Science Subject Leader in the School of Education, has set another computer coding style puzzle for staff to tackle over the weekend, this time based around alphametics.
The answers are at the bottom of the page.
Alphametics
An alphametic is a puzzle where individual letters are given a number and the words are added up. To solve the problem you need to find out which letters represent which numbers.
The rules of the puzzle state that each letter should represent a different digit and the leading digit must not be zero.
Clue: In this classic example of an alphametic, SEND + MORE = MONEY, we can use some basic maths to calculate the values. The length of the total is one letter longer than the longest word being summed, so a carry must have taken place when S and M were added. It must be true that M=1 as this is the only carry value possible from the sum of two single digit numbers. It is now easy to work out the value of S – what do you need to add to 1 to create a carry?
Can you work out these examples ?
ANSWERS:
Puzzle 1:
For PROF + GREEN = WORCS there are 44 possible ways to solve this:-
Puzzle 2:
SARAH + GREER = PROVC there are 8 possible solutions:-
Puzzle 3:
ROSS + WORCS + PROVC = RENTON has two solutions:-
Puzzle 4:
HIVE + BOOK = KNOW there were 224 possible solutions.
Here is one of them:-
University of Worcester Staff News 