A self-referential puzzle

April 20, 2005 | General, My Projects | By: Mark VandeWettering

I’m bored, so I decided to amuse myself with a self-referential puzzle. This post on brainwagon.org (including the title “a self-referential puzzle” but not any footers) contains thirteen As, four Bs, four Cs, seven Ds, fifty five Es, nineteen Fs, five Gs, ten Hs, twenty nine Is, fourteen Ls, four Ms, thirty three Ns, seventeen Os, five Ps, twenty Rs, thirty eight Ss, thirty five Ts, eleven Us, nine Vs, six Ws, two Xs, nine Ys, and seven Zs.

Comments

Comment from Mark
Time 4/20/2005 at 5:05 pm

Or does it?

Comment from Tom Duff
Time 4/20/2005 at 7:22 pm

Ron Hardin has a big list of these. Here’s part of it: http://home.att.net/~rhhardin/decimal.html
and here’s an index of the whole thing: http://home.att.net/~rhhardin/selfref.html

Comment from Mark
Time 4/21/2005 at 9:38 am

I left another one of these running in my simulated annealing program, and generated a new .signature file:

This brainwagon.org dot signature contains nine As, three Bs, three Cs, 
three Ds, thirty five Es, five Fs, seven Gs, nine Hs, seventeen Is, three 
Ls, three Ms, twenty five Ns, nine Os, eleven Rs, twenty seven Ss, twenty
two Ts, two Us, nine Vs, eight Ws, and five Ys. <brainwagon@gmail.com>

What’s cool is that it actually fits in four lines and ran for over 10 hours before stumbling onto the right solution.

Comment from Mark
Time 4/21/2005 at 5:07 pm

This brainwagon dot signature has nine As, three Bs, two Cs, three Ds, 
thirty nine Es, seven Fs, seven Gs, eleven Hs, fifteen Is, one J, four Ls, 
three Ms, twenty five Ns, thirteen Os, one P, one Q, twelve Rs, twenty 
seven Ss, twenty three Ts, four Us, eight Vs, eight Ws, one X, five Ys, 
and one Z.  <brainwagon@gmail.com>