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A mad lexophile sits alone in his apartment obsessively rearranging his Scrabble tiles and writing words on every available surface, even filling each floorboard with a word. The Scrabble tiles have had enough. They are plotting their escape.

The tiles have discovered that they can scuttle across the floorboards unnoticed, as long as they obscure one letter at a time and maintain a valid word on each floorboard. But, if they create a non-word, the mad lexophile will notice.

The tiles can move forward, backward, left, or right. No diagonals.

Which tile is able to cross the patch of floor shown below and make its escape? What route does it need to follow?



illustration_jpg

SlowMagic
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    This is just brilliant! rot13(Gurer ner irel srj ercynprnoyr yrggref va gur obggbz ebj, juvpu xvaqn tvirf njnl gur fbyhgvba ng fgrc bar. Vg'f fgvyy irel rawblnoyr gb genpr gur cngu nsgre gung gubhtu :-)) – Bass Oct 20 '21 at 07:08
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    This question would benefit from specifying what "escape" exactly means. Even after seeing the answer, I can only make assumptions. Does it have to start from the bottom row and exit at the top? Can it exit to the right or left? Is it an existing tile shown in the image, or a new tile entering from somewhere?? – vsz Oct 20 '21 at 07:26
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    @vsz the escaping tile enters from the top (where the blue tile with a question mark is drawn), has to cross the "patch of floor", and escapes if it arrives at the bottom (where the word "Escape!" is written. – wimi Oct 20 '21 at 07:39
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    Also had the same issue, at first with the way it's worded, I though you had to take an existing tile and move it around till the edge – Tofandel Oct 20 '21 at 10:11
  • @wimi : oh, thanks, I didn't even notice that the "escape" was part of the drawing in a directional way, I thought it's just text and the end. Maybe some arrows would have helped. – vsz Oct 20 '21 at 12:01
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    @Bass — Thanks! Addressing your question: I originally designed the maze to incorporate many misleading dead-end paths, for both the correct letter itself and for other letters as well. Like the Winchester Mystery House! But that requires a lot of smaller words with common letters, and those words carry a danger. The solvers on this site are very clever and are able to find obscure words to create solutions that I didn't intend. So, I turned the first row and the last row into carefully restrictive sentries. That prevents any unintended solutions from going in or coming out. – SlowMagic Oct 20 '21 at 14:47
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    @vsz — Yeah, I wondered whether I should put in arrows to indicate direction, but every time I added them, I grew concerned that they could be too easily misconstrued as indicators of the starting position. In the end, I decided to go with a stylized graphic: tile here, escape there, and patch of flooring in between. – SlowMagic Oct 20 '21 at 14:56
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    I liked the dead ends! 'R' was an interesting one. Alas, I followed a few and by the time I found the answer I'd been beaten by a few minutes. Nice puzzle! – Amoz Oct 20 '21 at 15:54
  • @SlowMagic: Great puzzle, but just wanted to give some feedback. I actually got the correct letter almost immediately, and the reason for that was because my brain automatically assumed I had to move from left to right, and the answer jumps out quite quickly when you do that. Once I realised what I was actually supposed to do, I stuck with my first instinct and found only one entry point... and just followed the path. Perhaps a consideration if you choose to do a sequel and try to make it tougher! – musefan Oct 21 '21 at 13:27
  • An interesting variant would be to try for an escape path for the blank tile, where it can change which letter it is on each move - might be too many unintended paths that way though. Maybe instead have it delete the covered letter, e.g. "OVERHEATING" becomes "OVEREATING" – Darrel Hoffman Oct 21 '21 at 21:06

2 Answers2

56

The letter

L

can escape by taking the following path:

image from original question, with replaced letters marked with blue dots

This creates the words:

CLAMBER, VALIANT, HELD, HEAL, SAIL, BULGING, BUGLING, STEEL, BLAST, LEAST, PEARL, PEALS, SLEEP, LUGGING, SLID, LAID, LEAD, GOAL, GOLD, GLAD, LOAD, PANEL, PAL, PLY, LAY, PALES, BOLT, BLOT, LOOT, LANES, COOLS, COLTS, CLOTS, LOOTS, HEAL, HELP, POOL, MEAL, MELD, LEVERAGE, FOOL, FOLD, LEAD, LOOP, PLOP, LEAP, REALTOR, LAUGHTER, OUTLAST!

Deusovi
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    Well that was no easy task, props to you – Tofandel Oct 20 '21 at 10:10
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    ...... How? How do you ever every come up with that. Genius. Both setter and solver. – DRF Oct 20 '21 at 12:00
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    What a brilliancy! – Avi Oct 21 '21 at 01:33
  • How did you find that? Is this the only solution possible? – Dmitry Kamenetsky Oct 21 '21 at 23:12
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    @DmitryKamenetsky Yes, it's the only one possible (for any reasonable definition of "English word"). There aren't really any other letters that have a chain even close to getting across. The bottom few words only have a few options for replacements - OUTLAST, FLATTERING, and SQUIRT - and the two Rs die immediately. Then all that's left is to explore the maze with L: keep trying to move up/down/left/right, and see which options make words. There aren't any dead ends, so it's just a matter of perseverance. – Deusovi Oct 21 '21 at 23:26
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    (I actually started out thinking the letter would be R; there are lots of nice red herrings with R, including OVERHEARING, NEARNESS, BARGES, GENERICALLY, and FLATTERING. But when I noticed OUTCAST, L popped out to me as an option instead, and once I got REALTOR I was sure it was correct.) – Deusovi Oct 21 '21 at 23:28
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    @DmitryKamenetsky — Yes, as Deusovi said, there are a few red herrings. But I had to be very, very careful about putting in too many red herrings because I could inadvertently introduce an unintended solution. There are too many obscure English words! It's not like a regular maze where you can put in as many red herrings and dead-ends as you want without creating an unintended shortcut. – SlowMagic Oct 22 '21 at 00:02
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Late answer but the other scrabble tile which would work is

a blank tile

because

a blank tile can be any letter, including the same one it's covering

and can use the path

straight down from the top to the bottom

Patrick Dixon
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