a weblog of wordplay by Eric Harshbarger
A Puzzling State of Mind
I just got back from yet another cross country drive. I have made many throughout my life. This latest time I made it from Los Angeles to Auburn, AL in 41.5 hours... not my shortest time, but not bad.There's not a lot to do when you're driving for 16+ hours non-stop; so once I get bored with the music I have taken along, and when I'm out in the middle of the Southwest desert, my mind often drifts towards brainteasers.
Here's one I thought of just outside of Flagstaff, Arizona:
I find it an unfortunate fact that none of the names of the 50 U.S. States can be constructed by simply concatenating combinations of the 2-letter state abbreviations. However, three states may be constructed by relaxing the rules slightly; if a substring of a concatenation is taken...
For example, "OHIO" may be found within this string of characters:
MOHIOK, M-OHIO-Kwhich is a concatenation of the abbreviations for Missouri, Hawaii, and Oklahoma.
That's the first solution to the puzzle, how quickly can you figure out the other two?
-- Eric
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Comments about this article:
It took me some time, but I think I got one of the answers:NEWYORKS, NEWYORK-S, for NEbraska, WYoming, ORegon and KansaS.
is there one more??
Posted by: Claudia
NEWYORK is the harder one... yes, there is a more obvious one as well.
Posted by: Eric
FLORIDAR, FLORIDA-R, FOR FLorida, ORegon, IDaho and ARkansas.
regards, Eric...
Posted by: Claudia
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