BRITISH engineer claims to have solved a puzzle that has counfounded some of the world’s best brains since the time of the Ancient Greeks.
Ted Clarke, 79, believes that he has devised the largest acrostic square — ten letters by ten, spelling out the same words horizontally and vertically — in the English language.
However, his claim to have come up with the “best yet” solution to the conundrum of the ten-square puzzle does not satisfy some experts. They say that because one of his words does not appear in any dictionary it should be disallowed.
Like the immensely popular numbers puzzle, Su Doku, which The Times introduced to Britain, the acrostic word square is based on a grid. The words must read the same horizontally and vertically and there must be no misspellings or leftover letters.
One of the most famous acrostics was found scratched on a wall in the ruins of Pompeii. It reads:
ROTAS
OPERA
TENET
AREPO
SATOR
It is unique in that it not only reads the same up and down and left to right, it also spells out a passable Latin sentence translated as “The sower Arepo holds the wheels at work”.
Mr Clarke, a retired aircraft engineer from Mawgan Porth, Cornwall, has been fascinated by word puzzles since he was a boy. He made the claim to have completed the ten-word acrostic in Word’sWorth, the puzzle magazine that he publishes.
He said: “Over the years people have been trying to construct bigger and bigger squares. People have made them from fantastic words that no one could find. Some have done it using names of cities and people names. These have been eschewed.”
Mr Clarke is still seeking the “perfect” solution using non-compound words, but says that may be impossible. “Most experts agree that it can’t be done, but this is the closest we’ve got to it so far.”
The challenge proved too much for a crossword-solving computer program, so he completed his square “by hand”. He said: “I’d leave it running all night looking for ten-letter words that would fit, but I’d come down in the morning and it wouldn’t have one.”
His claim to have constructed the world’s first ten-letter square is supported by Tony Augarde, author of the Oxford Guide to Word Games. Mr Augarde said: “It’s not perfect but it’s the best I’ve seen. Previous attempts used words that no one had heard of or tautonyms, words that repeat the same sound like orangutan, which made it easier.
“Some of the words in Ted Clarke’s square are not well known and he has pushed the boundaries of language, but who is to say what is a word and what isn’t?”
Other experts believe that Mr Clarke has “pushed the boundaries” too far with the word nonesevent. According to Mr Clarke the word, perhaps more correctly nones-event, is an event that takes place during a period of the month known as the nones by the Ancient Romans, rather like the Ides of March.
Ross Eckler, an expert from New Jersey, and Jeff Grant, an Australian who has spent the past 30 years trying to crack the problem, say that the puzzle is still waiting to be solved.
Roger Millington, author of The Strange World of Crosswords, who has traced the origins of the acrostic to Ancient Greece, wrote that the creator of the first accepted ten-letter square would achieve “a lifetime of immortality”. Mr Clarke said: “I am not claiming immortality yet, but this is the closest we’ve got to solving this puzzle.”
