martian spellchecker

Here is a fairly easy problem: make these letter-pairs KS, EA, BR, BL, CH into two words sharing a commom middle pair

ans: BReaKS & BLeaCH

However you are now given 5 martian letter pairs, a martian spellchecker and told only that the solution is unique. Is there a certain solution it in less than 59 (=5x4x3 - 1) tries ?

Yes, you can do it in 58. Say the letter pairs are AA, BB, CC, DD, EE. Normally, for each letter pair x (to be the middle pair) and each way of pairing the pairs not containing x, you must check four possible words. e.g. if x = AA and you pair BB with CC, DD with EE you must check BBAACC and CCAABB, DDAAEE and EEAADD: you have a solution if exactly one of BBAACC and CCAABB is a word and exactly one of DDAAEE and EEAADD is a word. And if exactly one of each of these is a word, and it's not the one you check first, you must check the other.

But with the last x some saving is possible: if you check BBAACC and it isn't a word, then CCAABB must be a word or there is no solution. If you check DDAAEE and it isn't a word, then EEAADD must be a word. So in this case you only need to check two possible words instead of four.

Department of Mathematics http://www.math.ubc.ca/~israel University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2

What constitutes a try?

If a try is 'looking up a word in a dictionary' (the most obvious definition) then it can't be done.

Damn.

Please ignore my other post

Yes.

If you try KS,ea,BR & BL,ea,CH but your spellchecker tells you that KS,ea,BR isnt a valid word then you dont need to try KS,ea,BR & CH,ea,BL

Tendou Nabiki sold me a photo of the gorgeous, Jusenkyou cursed Peter Morris standing under a digital clock reading 'Fri, 10 Aug 2001 19:10:13 +0100', writing this in cursive I could only dream to imitate:

Why the poiuyt?

why not?