Patterns always start with 1 and are created from left to right. The pattern digit for a letter that is not duplicated to its left is always 1 more than the largest digit in the pattern so far. If a letter has a duplicate to its left, then the pattern digit for the duplicate is used. So, for example, abracadabra would have pattern 12314151231.
This puzzle really has two parts. The first part is to come up with all possible pairs of patterns. The second part is trying to find pairs of words which fit those pairs of patterns. I consider the second part a bit of a drag and I don't suppose anyone would actually be able to do this without writing a program and using a large word list. Penney has a pair of words as an answer to this puzzle, but after programming and using a large word list, I discovered that they are by no means unique. So, if you can just short list the possible pairs of patterns, please post those as an answer. But some of you, like me, might actually go the full monty and write a program for the second part. I hope you have as much fun as I did in working this puzzle.
Question
superprismatic
The pattern of a word can be represented
by a sequence of numbers indicating
single and repeated letters. For
example, the pattern of BOYCOTT is
1234255 since the second letter is the
same as the fifth; the last two letters
are the same and the other letters are
all different. The patterns of two ten-
letter words each containing only seven
different letters, are added, treating
the pattern representations as ten-digit
numbers. The result is 2464870348.
What are the words?
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