Circular Logic - "glow"

2011-04-04

The NYTimes has a regular column on math puzzles. I don't usually look at them, but when I do I prefer Dos Equis... what? Oh yes, Numberplay. Most of the time I can't be bothered to figure out the answer, but one of the questions this week happens to be computationally easy. The question is:

Consider the word "glow." If you replace each letter with its counterpart in a mirror alphabet you will get the legitimate word "told." What other words exhibit this same property?

So I started wrote a little script in Python:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import re

words = set()
with open('/usr/share/dict/cracklib-small') as fd:
    for word in fd.readlines():
        word = word.strip()
        if len(word) == 1 or re.match('[^a-z]', word):
            continue
        words.add(word)

for word in words:
    mirror = ''.join(chr(219 - ord(c)) for c in word)
    if mirror in words:
        print(word, mirror)

This script uses the computer's dictionary file (which I've used before), mutates the letters, then checks if the result is in the dictionary. The script outputs:

all   zoo
ark   zip
art   zig
blip  york
de    wv
dr    wi
drib  wiry
elm   von
era   viz
err   vii
fir   uri
fm    un
ge    tv
girl  trio
girt  trig
glib  tory
glow  told
gm    tn
gs    th
hob   sly
hold  slow
holt  slog
holy  slob
horn  slim
ir    ri
irk   rip
iv    re
ivy   reb
levi  over
low   old
lug   oft
md    nw
me    nv
mix   nrc
mn    nm
mrs   nih
ms    nh

As a sanity check, notice that "glow" does indeed turn into "told" (and vice versa).

Problem solved in 10 minutes.

PS. I would have commented on the post, but I have no clue what my NYTimes password is.