This weekend I wrote a gadget to solve a wooden puzzle that my daughter gave me.


The puzzle is four rotating concentric rings, each with a letter of the 
alphabet from A to Z going all the way around it. If you rotate the various 
wheels, you can create a four-letter word reading, say, from the outside going 
in, as letters align. Kind of like a circular slide rule but with four rotating 
scales instead of one.


It is trivial to make any arbitrary word, you just choose letters one at a time 
from outside to inside, and line them up. The puzzle to to find words that also 
create other valid words somewhere else around the rings. 


So "deed" would also set "noon" (the two central letters are one more than the 
two end letters).


My program found all possible combinations where a word set at least one more 
word. No word made three additional words, though many made two more, and lots 
made one more.


I was far too lazy to actually work the puzzle.


Craig Newman
 
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