Skip to content

Sunday Times Teaser 2766 – Two by Two

by Graham Smithers

Published: 27 September 2015 (link)

Animals board the ark in pairs.

          EWE and RAM

          HEN and COCK

In fact these are numbers with letters consistently replacing digits; one pair of the numbers being odd, the other pair being even, and both pairs have the same sum. The three digits of the number ARK are consecutive digits in a muddled order. All this information uniquely determines the number NOAH.

What is the number NOAH?

5 Comments Leave one →
  1. Brian Gladman permalink

  2. Tony Smith permalink

    Hi Brian
    Your wording omits the useful fact given in the Sunday Times that NOAH is uniquely determined.This makes a manual solution easier because it shows at once that O is zero (O and H can only be differentiated by not allowing H to be a leading zero).
    Put another way the fact is a subtle way of forbidding leadihg zeros.
    Although I think that a solution with a leading zero would be unsatisfactory it seems that your program specifically excludes leading zeros.
    I think that JRC Crabtree’s solution on your other site would be shorter if he had been given this fact.
    Best wishes
    Tony

    • Brian Gladman permalink

      Hi Tony,

      I take the view that in these sort of puzzles the expectations of ‘no leading zeros’ and unique answers are both implied and don’t hence need to be explicitly stated.

      • Tony Smith permalink

        Brian
        I agree entirely with your view.
        Tony

  3. Trevor Kirsten permalink

    By using Brian’s Alphametics program I entered the following:
    (i) ewe+ram==hen+cock & e%2==0 & m%2==0 & n%2==1 & k%2==1 & -3<a-r<3 & -3<r-k<3 & -3<k-a<3 & ark & noah
    (ii) ewe+ram==hen+cock & e%2==1 & m%2==1 & n%2==0 & k%2==0 & -3<a-r<3 & -3<r-k<3 & -3<k-a<3 & ark & noah
    These check the even & odd conditions as well as ark being consecutive digits in muddled order.
    (i) Gave no solution &
    (ii) Gave the unique solution noah = 2074 (ewe+ram=595+873, hen+cock=452+1016, ark=786).

Leave a comment to Trevor Kirsten Cancel reply

Note: HTML is allowed. Your email address will not be published.

Subscribe to this comment feed via RSS