Case 36 · wordplay / ordering · Easy · About 5–8 minutes
A candlelit reading room has an eccentric catalogue. Its librarian files words according to their far ends, as though she met every word walking backward. A visitor who uses the ordinary first-letter order will retrieve the wrong instruction.
Six catalogue entries carry a small message. Their spelling, rather than their meaning, supplies the entire key.
The entries are LOVE, NORDIC, CAMERA, ELF, ABSORB, DEED.
- Reverse the letters of each entry to make its filing key.
- Sort the six keys into ordinary alphabetical order.
- Keep each original entry attached to its own key.
- Read the first letter of the original entry at each position in the sorted list.
What six-letter message do you obtain?
Use ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ as the alphabet. Compare keys from left to right and use the first differing letter. If one key were the beginning of another, the shorter key would come first, although that tie rule will not be needed here.
Do not reverse the extracted message or replace any entry with a synonym. The capitalized spelling NORDIC is simply one supplied string; knowledge of geography is unnecessary. The words begin in a deliberately unsorted order, and each is used once.
Hint 1 - reveal when you want a nudge
Write a second column for reversed keys. LOVE belongs beside EVOL, not beside another word beginning with L.
Hint 2 - reveal when you want a nudge
CAMERA has key AREMAC and ABSORB has key BROSBA. Their keys put them before entries whose reversed keys begin with C, D, E, or F.
Reveal the solution and explanation
The message is CANDLE.
| Filing key | Original entry | First letter |
|---|---|---|
| AREMAC | CAMERA | C |
| BROSBA | ABSORB | A |
| CIDRON | NORDIC | N |
| DEED | DEED | D |
| EVOL | LOVE | L |
| FLE | ELF | E |
Here the keys begin with six different letters, so the first comparison already fixes the complete order. DEED happens to be unchanged by reversal. That does not exempt it from the operation or make it a special starting point.
Uniqueness comes from the sorting rule, not from recognizing a useful object in the resulting letters. Every original entry has exactly one reversed key; every key is distinct; and ordinary alphabetical comparison orders those keys unambiguously. Reading the required original initials is then deterministic.
As a check, move each original entry back beside its key and reverse the key again. All six printed entries return. Taking initials from the keys instead would give ABCDEF, which records their filing order but ignores the explicitly named source of the message.
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