Case 42 · word logic · Medium · About 8–12 minutes
A cloakroom attendant has placed five word tickets in a row of pockets. She remembers relationships between the spellings better than she remembers the pocket numbers. Her four notes are enough to reconstruct the row.
The names are printed words rather than colors you must distinguish. Even if every ticket were gray, the puzzle would be unchanged.
The pockets are numbered 1–5 from left to right. Put one of these tickets in each pocket, using every ticket exactly once:
AMBER · COBALT · CINDER · SILVER · VELVET
All four notes are true:
- COBALT lies somewhere to the left of the only ticket whose spelling repeats a letter.
- The only five-letter ticket is immediately to the right of that repeated-letter ticket.
- SILVER is immediately to the left of the ticket containing N.
- The ticket containing M lies somewhere to the left of the ticket containing N.
What are the five tickets, in left-to-right order?
“Somewhere to the left” allows a gap. “Immediately to the left” or “immediately to the right” means neighboring pockets. A letter is repeated if it occurs at least twice within the same printed word. There is no requirement that the tickets be sorted alphabetically or by color.
You may move paper slips while solving, but the five written spellings contain all the information needed.
Hint 1 - reveal when you want a nudge
VELVET is the only ticket with repeated letters, and AMBER is the only five-letter ticket. These two must form a neighboring pair in that order.
Hint 2 - reveal when you want a nudge
SILVER and CINDER form the other neighboring pair. AMBER must precede CINDER, so the two pairs cannot be placed in either order freely.
Reveal the solution and explanation
The order is COBALT, VELVET, AMBER, SILVER, CINDER.
VELVET repeats V and E; the other four words have no repeated letter. AMBER alone has five letters. Note 2 therefore joins VELVET–AMBER into one two-pocket block.
CINDER is the only word containing N. Note 3 joins SILVER–CINDER into the other two-pocket block. AMBER is the only word containing M, so note 4 requires AMBER before CINDER. Because the two blocks cannot overlap, VELVET–AMBER must come before SILVER–CINDER.
The remaining ticket is COBALT. Note 1 puts it before VELVET, so it must come before both blocks. The three units have lengths 1,2, and 2 and occupy all five pockets. No gaps or alternative placements remain.
For an exhaustive check, there are 120 ways to order five distinct tickets. Testing the four notes against every order leaves exactly the arrangement shown. The argument does not depend on whether AMBER and COBALT suggest actual colors, and the quantities count letters in the printed labels rather than anything in the accompanying art.
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