ASSEMBLING CLUES

When scientists can’t observe a phenomenon directly, they rely on a process of deduction to infer what’s happening. In each puzzle below, your challenge is to deduce a secret five-letter English word from a series of clues. Each clue states how many letters a given word shares with the secret word. For example, if a clue states that guess shares two letters with the secret word, the secret word could be seven (because the two words share the letter s and the letter e) or grout (because the two words share the letters g and u) or sassy (because the two words share two s’s). You will need all of the clues in each puzzle to deduce the secret word, and there is only one correct answer to each puzzle. Hint: It may help you tackle the fourth puzzle if you write out a full alphabet first.

1. [Easy]

3 letters of SUETS

4 letters of SUITE

4 letters of GUESS

occur in the secret word _ _ _ _ _

2. [Challenging]

1 letter of NANNY

2 letters of SASSY

3 letters of GEESE

4 letters of GENES

occur in the secret word _ _ _ _ _

3. [Difficult]

1 letter of CANDY

2 letters of BOUND

2 letters of NOISE

2 letters of SCOUT

2 letters of TUNER

3 letters of SCENT

occur in the secret word _ _ _ _ _

4. [Very difficult]

1 letter of CURLY

2 letters of DRUMS

2 letters of MODEL

2 letters of GROOM

2 letters of DROWN

3 letters of DROOL

FINDING PATTERNS

[Challenging to difficult] To learn how our world works, scientists look for patterns in data. Seventeenth-century astronomer Johannes Kepler spent years puzzling over data assembled by Tycho Brahe before discovering that the planets move in elliptical orbits. This pattern-finding puzzle should take you much less time. In each figure at right, a simple rule distinguishes the letters on the left from the letters on the right. For instance, all the letters on the left in puzzle 1 are made up of only straight lines, while the letters on the right contain curved lines. Can you figure out the rule for each of the other puzzles? Hint: Think shape, except for puzzle 4.

FOCUS ON FRAGMENTS

[Easy to challenging] Paleontologists painstakingly reconstruct dinosaur skeletons from fragments of fossilized bone. Similarly, this puzzle works with fragments of letters. Try to match each letter fragment at right to a different letter from the word DINOSAUR, as shown below. We’ve given you one answer: Fragment 1 is taken from the letter A. While some fragments match more than one letter (fragment 2 could match D, O, or R), there is only one way to match every fragment to a different letter. All fragments are in the same orientation in which they appear in the original letter, and all are magnified the same amount.