Re: [FWP] Weekend Edition Sunday Puzzle (from c.l.p.mod)

[Ronald J Kimball <rjk@linguist.dartmouth.edu>]

On Fri, Jul 16, 1999 at 12:24:05PM -0700, Vicki Brown wrote:
> >From comp.lang.perl.mod:
> 
> This week's Weekend Edition Sunday Puzzle With Will Shortz on
> National Public Radio presents a problem of a class that can be
> defined as "match a substring of exactly n characters from the
> unordered set of discrete characters { c1, c2, ..., cn }".
> 
> Here's the puzzle:
> 
>    Take the 9-letter-word SUBDEACON (the name of a church official).
>    The word contains the first 5 letters of the alphabet, ABCD and E
>    consecutively inside it, although not in alphabetical order. This
>    is a two-part challenge: first, can you think of a common 8-letter
>    word that has ABCDE consecutively inside it, not necessarily in
>    alphabetical order; second, can you think of a common 7-letter word
>    with the same property? Both answers are uncapitalized words that
>    are familiar to everyone.
> 
>    (C) 1999 Will Shortz
> 

Before anyone jumps in with a solution, I think it would be helpful to
clarify the puzzle.  SUBDEACON is an appropriate word because it contains
the substring 'BDEAC', which consists of the letters A - E.  ABDICATE would
_not_ be an appropriate word, because, while it contains the letters A - E,
it does not contain them all in one continuous substring.

This is what the puzzle means by "consecutively ... although not in
alphabetical order".  For consecutively, think 'contiguously'.

Ronald

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