Hidden in the grid below are eight, 7-letter words. Each word begins with the central S and you can move one letter in any direction to the next letter. All of the letters are used exactly once each. What are the words?
G
N
L
K
R
T
E
E
I
E
O
X
A
E
K
R
N
I
H
M
N
E
A
Y
S
E
A
P
R
E
P
P
A
W
O
N
E
A
G
U
E
O
R
N
E
S
A
D
E
Note: this puzzle is not interactive, and the letters cannot be clicked.
Take a set of three letters from the left column, and a set of three letters from the right column and merge them together, without changing the order of the letters in each half (matching sets might not be currently on the same row).
Example 1: wmb + oat and oat + wmb both equal wombat.
Example 2: rbt + abi and abi + rbt both equal rabbit.
Can you find the six animals that have been split in half?
cyo aru
wls dne
ear fee
oky ote
rrt jar
agu bve
Hint
The fourth player is the key to this tricky question.
Answer
9 points.
Respectively the scores were 7, 14, 20, 30, 23, 9.
Reasoning
If we label the six players A, B, C, D, E, and F, we know that:
[1] A + B + C + D + E + F = 103
and from the clues:
A = B ÷ 2 B = C − 6 C = D x 2 ÷ 3 E = D − A F = E − 14
Note that it could be E = A − D or E = D − A, but using A − D we'd end up with a negative value for E later, which isn't allowed (so we'd have to try again with D − A anyway).
As we have no information for D, it's best to find all of the other letters in terms of D. These steps are left as an exercise (e.g. use C in the equation for B), but the result is:
A = ( D − 9) ÷ 3 B = (2D − 18) ÷ 3 C = (2D ) ÷ 3 D = (3D ) ÷ 3 E = (2D + 9) ÷ 3 F = (2D − 33) ÷ 3
Writing it as D = 3D ÷ 3 makes things slightly clearer in the next step.
