Friday puzzles -- letter substitution

Re: Friday puzzles -- letter substitution

Jim Rutten

Hi Alex,

I took the challenge on number 2. First, I took 111 squared and ended up with 12321. With the 3 digits in the first number and 5 in the second I new the start was greater than 111. The end obviously was 999 since 999 squared is 998001 which combined is still the right number of digits. If you went over 999, though, you would have too many digits. So 999 for the upper and, after some narrowing down 317 for a lower. I will admit I used excel at this point, first to seed the numbers between 317 and 999, and then to square them. After, that was complete I started manually looking down through them. This might seem like an arduous task but was made much easier by the fact that you could quickly eliminate numbers with zeroes in them. That sped up my search. What I came up with is that 567 squared is 321489. There may be other answers but I stopped when I found this one.

Re: Friday puzzles -- letter substitution

Jim Rutten

Hi Alex,

I almost went crazy on part one. I put all possible permeations in my spreadsheet and had tons of stuff to sift through. In fact, I stopped and ate my lunch it took so long (I had six jello puddings for lunch but could only eat 3. My german friend came and asked me if I was having any luck. "Nein" I said. Then, my favorite indoor croquet team, the Baskerville Hounds lost their match against the Thames Shrews 7 to 54.

Please look very closely above for the answer!

Re: Friday puzzles -- letter substitution

Alex Y

Very good. I hadn't started any brute force solving of this one, but that is how I would have gone about it.

very well-hidden!

Alex Y

I had concluded that A had to be 1 or 2, and most likely 1, and I had ten sets of right-most digits, but still lots to grind without silicon.

Nice job.

Re: Friday puzzles -- letter substitution

Alex Y

854 also works, but those are the only two