The letters STARTLING are hanging from a line to advertise a sale at a used car lot, when out of nowhere a gust of wind causes the second T to fall. The letters now read STARLING (which is a type of bird (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starling)) Your job is to select an order for the remainder of the letters to fall (one at a time) such that the sign continues to proclaim a single common English word after each letter falls.
I used the /usr/share/dict/words file, on my Linux system, to find some more words that have this same feature. Three of the longer ones are CLEANSERS, ROADSTERS and RESTARTED. Feel free to have a go at these as well.
Use http://lamonica.info/CAOSPuzzle/F.html to send me your answers.
Solvers:
1. The Killer Llama (solved: 1-19-2005 11:57am)
2. tom von kercey (solved: 1-19-2005 12:47pm)
3. Jonathan (solved: 1-19-2005 1:19pm)
4. the greathoj (solved: 1-19-2005 3:15pm)
5. Erin Harris (solved: 1-19-2005 4:03pm)
6. Steve Klein (solved: 1-20-2005 10:00am)
Answer:
http://lamonica.info/CAOSPuzzle/F.html
I had gotten it as well.
After STING, instead of removing the T, I removed the S to form TING, which is a word in both my 'web2' and 'words' files.
Slight difference, but it works.
Yep, "ting" is an onomatopoeia.