Can you find the English word that meets all of the following criteria?
- six letters long (non-hyphenated)
- four unique vowels
- two unique consonants
- starts and ends in a vowel
- when you remove the vowels, you see through them
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
4
-
1$\begingroup$ What do you mean by see through them? $\endgroup$– Beastly GerbilNov 26, 2017 at 19:49
-
$\begingroup$ If the remaining consonants were "mt" (=empty) you could see through it. I don't think this is right, because OP says "them", but maybe something like that? $\endgroup$– Dr XorileNov 26, 2017 at 22:49
-
3$\begingroup$ I wonder why this riddle is highly downvoted. $\endgroup$– Jamal SenjayaNov 27, 2017 at 8:53
-
$\begingroup$ @JamalSenjaya That's because it sucked at first :) $\endgroup$– rybo111Nov 27, 2017 at 18:00
Add a comment
|
4 Answers
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
1
Based on the word list in Laurel's answer, my answer is:
opaque.
Because, when you remove the vowels, you have:
pq, which resembles a pair of glasses, thus meeting the see through criteria.
-
$\begingroup$ Yep. There's also a link with the word and what you're left with, if you wanted to mention that. $\endgroup$– rybo111Nov 27, 2017 at 7:07
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
2
Not sure about seeing through them, but removing vowels from
OUTVIE
... leaves you something you can look at ...
-
-
$\begingroup$ Is that... Even a word? Nevermind, this IS English we're talking about. I'd love it if you included a definition, though. $\endgroup$ Nov 28, 2017 at 2:28
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
1
Well, now that there is no no-computers, I hacked together some code. I used /usr/share/dict/words as my dictionary. We know that it starts and ends with a vowel, is six letters long, and all the letters are different, so the word must match this regex:
^([aeiou])(?!\1)(.)(?!\1)(?!\2)(.)(?!\1)(?!\2)(?!\3)(.)(?!\1)(?!\2)(?!\3)(?!\4)(.)(?!\1)(?!\2)(?!\3)(?!\4)(?!\5)[aeiou]$
We know it must have 4 vowels, which means it will also match this regex:
([aeiou].*?[aeiou].*?[aeiou].*?[aeiou])
This got me this list:
acoine
aerugo
agouti
ailuro
alpieu
apiole
apiose
apoise
aquose
areito
arigue
ariose
arouse
asideu
audile
augite
aumrie
auntie
auride
aurite
embuia
epizoa
iodate
ipomea
obelia
ogaire
opaque
opiate
oturia
outage
outawe
outlie
outsea
outvie
uniate
ureido
uremia
utopia
The last clue ("when you remove the vowels, you see through them") isn't as easily cracked. I have some guesses:
outsea -> "sea" is through when you remove the vowels
uremia -> remove vowels to get rm
utopia -> remove vowels to get "tp" or toilet paper. The promise of utopia is replaced by something you flush away
-
$\begingroup$ Nice regex. You don't have the correct answer though $\endgroup$– rybo111Nov 26, 2017 at 21:18
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
1
Surely there are many such words? But one example is
GUINEA.
answered Nov 26, 2017 at 19:17