[superprismatic]

A certain 10-letter word having the

second and fifth letters the same is

treated as follows: the first two

letters are multiplied together

(using the values A=1, B=2, ...,

Y=25, Z=0); then the next two letters

are similarly multiplied together and

the two products added (mod 26).

The sum is reconverted into a letter

using the same correspondence. The

same operations are performed on

letters 2 to 5 producing another

letter. This is continued until the

seventh letter is produced from the

last four letters of the word. The

letters so generated are, in order,

FPSLMMZ. What is the word?

[Guest]

perfection

[Guest]

perfection

Really confused how did you get this answer?

[Guest]

Really confused how did you get this answer?

Run this python script in a folder with a text file in it called wordlist.txt which is a list of English words (that contains the correct word).

I think that formatting gets messed up, so I will use a ~ sign for indentation rather than just a space.

#!/usr/bin/python

def translate(s):

~st = '';

~for k in range(len(s)-3):

~~p = ord(s[k]);

~~if p < 97:

~~~a = (p-64) % 26;

~~else:

~~~a = (p-96) % 26;

~~p = ord(s[k+1]);

~~if p < 97:

~~~b = (p-64) % 26;

~~else:

~~~b = (p-96) % 26;

~~p = ord(s[k+2]);

~~if p < 97:

~~~c = (p-64) % 26;

~~else:

~~~c = (p-96) % 26;

~~p = ord(s[k+3]);

~~if p < 97:

~~~d = (p-64) % 26;

~~else:

~~~d = (p-96) % 26;

~~ch = (a*b+c*d) % 26;

~~if ch == 0:

~~~ch += 26;

~~ch = chr(ch+64);

~~st += ch;

~if st == 'FPSLMMZ':

~~print s, st;

x = open('wordlist.txt').read()

import re;

z = re.findall('[^a-zA-Z]([A-Za-z]([A-Za-z])[A-Za-z]{2}\\2[A-Za-z]{5})[^a-zA-Z]',x);

for k in z:

~translate(k[0]);

[Guest]

Run this python script in a folder with a text file in it called wordlist.txt which is a list of English words (that contains the correct word).

I think that formatting gets messed up, so I will use a ~ sign for indentation rather than just a space.

#!/usr/bin/python

def translate(s):

~st = '';

~for k in range(len(s)-3):

~~p = ord(s[k]);

~~if p < 97:

~~~a = (p-64) % 26;

~~else:

~~~a = (p-96) % 26;

~~p = ord(s[k+1]);

~~if p < 97:

~~~b = (p-64) % 26;

~~else:

~~~b = (p-96) % 26;

~~p = ord(s[k+2]);

~~if p < 97:

~~~c = (p-64) % 26;

~~else:

~~~c = (p-96) % 26;

~~p = ord(s[k+3]);

~~if p < 97:

~~~d = (p-64) % 26;

~~else:

~~~d = (p-96) % 26;

~~ch = (a*b+c*d) % 26;

~~if ch == 0:

~~~ch += 26;

~~ch = chr(ch+64);

~~st += ch;

~if st == 'FPSLMMZ':

~~print s, st;

x = open('wordlist.txt').read()

import re;

z = re.findall('[^a-zA-Z]([A-Za-z]([A-Za-z])[A-Za-z]{2}\\2[A-Za-z]{5})[^a-zA-Z]',x);

for k in z:

~translate(k[0]);

ok still confused but it looks impressive

[Guest]

ok still confused but it looks impressive

Look up "regular expressions". It is a way of searching through text for a particular pattern.

The string:

'[^a-zA-Z]([A-Za-z]([A-Za-z])[A-Za-z]{2}\\2[A-Za-z]{5})[^a-zA-Z]'

basically tells the program to look for a 10 letter word with the second and fifth characters being the same.

[^a-zA-Z] means a non-letter (the ^ symbol means none of the following)

[A-Za-z] means a capital or non-capital letter

adding parentheses around it makes it so you can reference it later

which is what the \\2 does. It means look for whatever letter was matched in the second pair of parentheses encountered.

the {2} and the {5} mean look for the previous thing 2 times or 5 times.

Once the computer has found all the potential matches, you just need to perform the translation described in the post on each word and see if any match up with

the encoded answer.