Falling Letters
Brain Warm-up	Based on a Martin Gardner Puzzle

Problem:

The letters STARTLING are hanging from a line to advertise a sale at a used car lot, when out of nowhere a gust of wind causes the second T to fall. The letters now read STARLING (which is a type of bird) Your job is to select an order for the remainder of the letters to fall (one at a time) such that the sign continues to proclaim a single common English word after each letter falls. I used the /usr/share/dict/words file, on my Linux system, to find some more words that have this same feature. Three of the longer ones are CLEANSERS, ROADSTERS and RESTARTED. Feel free to have a go at these as well.

Solvers:

The Killer Llama (solved: 1-19-2005 11:57am) tom von kercey (solved: 1-19-2005 12:47pm) Jonathan (solved: 1-19-2005 1:19pm) the greathoj (solved: 1-19-2005 3:15pm) Erin Harris (solved: 1-19-2005 4:03pm) Steve Klein (solved: 1-20-2005 10:00am)

Solution:

There are several solutions to each puzzle. Some of the solutions submitted by the people mentioned above contained words that I would not define as the “common” ones that the problem asked for. However, some of my solutions use terms not normally used in speech and the book that the first problem came from was published in the late 60's when (I am guessing) the language was slightly different. Here are my favorite solutions that were generated by my program. STARTLING STARLING STARING STRING STING SING SIN IN I CLEANSERS CLEANSER CLEANSE CLEANS CLEAN CLAN CAN AN A ROADSTERS ROADSTER ROASTER RASTER RATER RATE RAT AT A RESTARTED RESTATED RESTATE ESTATE STATE SATE ATE AT A The program I wrote to make the last three puzzles is here (fallingWords.cpp).

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