# A simple relationship test

I've spent way too much time on the computer today; but, at least you get a puzzle out of it!

Boast all you want, I'll even give you the answers...

I won't remain in the dark without you.

Nothing compares to the light in I do.

Relationships vested.

You'll find what you need, in the truth.

The answer is drained and planned. Why?

Note: I made a mistake, so drop the e in drained and planned.

#### Hints

Drained is to planned, as four is to hour.
0010101

• If you leave a downvote, please indicate why so that I can improve my post to meet your needs. As it stands currently, this puzzle has enough information to solve it with a basic understanding of comparison in computer science. As the puzzle states, the answer is literally given. Sep 21 '21 at 14:27

and, as you said in your hint. The acrostic reads "Binary", suggesting, along with the computer-science tag that we have to perform binary operations. The "and" operator between two words of equal length is the common substring consisting of letters that are equal at equal positions, so draind and plannd is and.

## The Making Of...

This is not a solution to the puzzle, but provides notes from its poser. This type of answer has been approved by the community.

Caution: This post will contain spoilers.

#### Inspiration

I recently watched a video from Computerphile on YouTube that covered the Bit Blit algorithm:

https://youtu.be/-6g1tD66QBA?t=618

This initially inspired me to think about creating a visual puzzle involving two images that would contain commonalities to be revealed with an AND operator. However, I believed that was a bit niche and wouldn't be well received. A few hours later, I was performing a review task and came across this puzzle which focused on binary. It was like magic and all of a sudden my initial idea was reborn in the form of a word based puzzle focused on the AND operator.

#### The Acrostic

This was actually the first thing I started working on. I'm notorious for acrostics, because I absolutely love them. Initially, this was going to be an anagram of binary, "brainy". However, that felt off to me in the scope of the puzzle. I also tried running with rainy, but it still felt off. Eventually, I settled on binary as the acrostic, with the exclusion of the B to create a limerick.

#### The Limerick

Limericks are something I strive to get better at, so the moment this puzzle became a word puzzle, I knew I wanted it to be a limerick. This proved to be problematic though, for two reasons:

1. I'm not very good at writing limericks.
2. I didn't have a fully thought out riddle yet.

#### Individual Lines

Each line of the limerick has something to reference the puzzle and how to solve it. This actually made it rather difficult to write the limerick since I wanted each line to relate to the puzzle clearly.

I won't remain in the dark without you. Nothing compares to the light in I do.

This is a pair, meant to direct you to the contrasting words dark and light. I thought of this as an indirect clue that would make sense as the puzzle was answered. It's a dark is to off as light is to on kind of thing.

Since the I gave two words as the "answer", you have to test them together to see how they relate.

Relationships vested.

This is an indirect clue, building on the prior line, indicating that you should compare the two words.

You'll find what you need, in the truth.

This is a clue indicating that only letters that match should be included. The idea was that someone would translate the words to 1s and 0s where the 1s would be the common letters 0010101. However, my mistake provides a value of 0010111 thanks to my lack of sleep when choosing the words.

Boast all you want, I'll even give you the answers...

This is a literal and intentional statement. It provides the B for the binary acrostic, but it also explicitly states that the answer is given.

#### Subtle Hints

There are also two subtle hints in the puzzle:

The title's relationship test provides further hints that you should perform comparisons while the emboldened and in the final line is not only a subtle hint to use the AND operator, but the literal, given answer.