5
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Here is a 10x10 grid of letters where the letters on each row have been scrambled randomly:

enter image description here

In the unscrambled grid, each cell is part of a word at least 5 letters long. Words are written from left to right or from top to bottom, and all the words are connected together. What is the original grid, and what are all the words it contains?

Here's a copyable version of the scrambled grid:

A   E   S   K   L   N   A   O   P   O

E   N   F   D   E   K   L   I   E   L

A   N   A   C   U   K   T   T   T   G

I   O   N   D   O   H   A   I   M   L

T   N   O   S   S   T   L   I   L   O

E   B   U   E   D   D   I   C   O   O

S   G   I   O   A   D   I   A   M   N

L   S   D   V   M   Y   K   E   E   E

R   E   A   B   O   L   M   A   L   N

Y   S   C   S   A   S   R   Y   E   O

I didn't realize how hard this puzzle was when I posted it, so I'm adding a hint. Here's the grid where some letters have been filled in. All you have to do is find the missing letters:

enter image description here

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25
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Does "connected" mean "each word overlaps with at least one letter with another one"? $\endgroup$
    – dmg
    Aug 21, 2015 at 9:56
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ @Runemoro Can some or all letters in any cell be used for multiple words or are they used only once? $\endgroup$
    – kanchirk
    Aug 21, 2015 at 13:00
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    $\begingroup$ @Runemoro The puzzle as it's stated seems like too hard, maybe you can give hints (like a crossword puzzle) for some of the words. $\endgroup$
    – Rohcana
    Aug 24, 2015 at 1:55
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ 20 minutes later and I'm with @Anachor, this is tough. There are lots of options for the words in the horizontals. Line 3 from the top has the least options at 14 based on this site wordplays.com/word-jumble-solver. $\endgroup$
    – LeppyR64
    Aug 24, 2015 at 14:22
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    $\begingroup$ Even with @LeppyR64 's insight for focusing on line 3, there are very little other educated guesses to make to narrow down the possibilities. It would help greatly if we know the number of horizontal and/or vertical words present in the puzzle, or the number of connections in each row and/or column, or even a restriction on the scrambling (e.g. none of the letters are currently in their correct positions). $\endgroup$
    – Hackiisan
    Aug 26, 2015 at 8:32

1 Answer 1

6
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One bugfix later, I think I have a solution:

Grid (I omitted some words from the list below):

 Horizontal:        Vertical:
 
 0, 0: NEPAL        0, 1: EIGHT
 0, 4: LOOKS        0, 2: PENNIES
 1, 0: FIELD        0, 3: ALTITUDE
 1, 5: KNEEL        0, 6: ONTOLOGY
 2, 4: ATTACK       0, 8: SECOND
 3, 3: IDIOM        0, 9: ALKALI
 4, 3: TOOLS        0, 9: ALKALIN
 5, 1: DEUCE        1, 0: FULSOME
 6, 0: MISDO        1, 0: FULSOMELY
 6, 5: AGAIN        3, 6: OLOGY
 7, 2: SEEDY        5, 1: DIMES
 8, 2: ABNORMAL     5, 2: ESSAY
 8, 4: NORMA        5, 7: BALMS
 8, 4: NORMAL       5, 8: DIVAS
 9, 3: ACROSS       5, 9: INKLE
 9, 4: CROSS
 9, 4: CROSSE
 
The words are from this wordlist: http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/wordlists/english/

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  • 1
    $\begingroup$ I worked on this for 3 days only to realize I don't have proper nouns like "Nepal" in my dictionary..... gosh darn it. Great job though. $\endgroup$
    – Dsel
    Aug 31, 2015 at 19:28
  • $\begingroup$ No wonder I couldn't do it, I didn't know proper nouns were allowed either! Good job! $\endgroup$
    – Hackiisan
    Sep 1, 2015 at 4:21
  • $\begingroup$ @Dsel May I ask which dictionary you used? And thanks to all. $\endgroup$
    – Sleafar
    Sep 1, 2015 at 19:04
  • $\begingroup$ @Sleafar I used the dictionary from LetterPress, it happened to be one of the first links I came across when I went googling for a word list. Here's the link github.com/atebits/Words $\endgroup$
    – Dsel
    Sep 2, 2015 at 16:56

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