Coding challenge

Mapping numbers onto letters to solve an alphametic puzzle

DAVID HUNT

Alphametics An alphametic is a puzzle in which individual letters are given number values, and then sums are constructed out of words. To solve the puzzle, you need to work out which letter represents which digit. The rules of the puzzle require that each letter should represent a different digit, and that the numbers in the sum can’t start with leading zeroes. In theory, there might be more than one possible answer. Let’s start with a classic puzzle: “SEND + MORE = MONEY”, which uses the unique letters S, E, N, D, M, O, R and Y. The brute-force approach would be to step through all of the 1,814,400 possible ways of mapping digits onto these letters in turn, until we find a permutation that works. We can apply a small optimisation…

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PC Pro (Digital) - 1 Issue, July 2015

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