Exercise of the Week #10

Maths! Pirates! Avast!

Last Week’s Answers

To solve coded word problems such as this, you need to look for shared letters and letter groups within the words.

Two of our words start with an ‘H’, and two of our numbers start with a ‘1’, which tells us that H = 1.

One of our H words ends with S, and one of our other words begins with an S. We need to find a number that does the same thing – starts with a digit that one of the other numbers ends with.

So, take a look at the numbers which start with 1: one of them ends with a 5, but none of the other letter codes start with a 5. One of them ends with a 6, and another letter code starts with a 6.

This tells us that S = 6.

We can now see that SCOUR = 67342, as it is the only word starting with an S.

Let’s review what we now know.

1 = H

2 = R

3 = O

4 = U

5 = ?

6 = S

7 = C

8 = ?

9 = ?

We have a few letters in 13485: HOU??

The only word which matches this opening is HOUND. Which tells us that 8 = N and 5 = D.

We can work out our final letter by looking at 14896: HUNTS. This tells us that 9 = T.

We now know all the letters and the questions are easy to solve.

1 = H

2 = R

3 = O

4 = U

5 = D

6 = S

7 = C

8 = N

9 = T

1. SCOUR = 67342

2. CRUSH = 72461

3. STUNTS = 694896

4. 13961396 = HOTSHOTS

5. CONSTRUCTORS = 738692479326

Kudos if you found the last one without mistake.