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If a phrase conforms to a certain rule, I call it a Surpassing Phrase™.

Use the examples below to find the rule.

enter image description here

Some details to save you time:
1. Font doesn't matter.
2. The number of words in the phrase can vary, but I chose short 2-word phrases to keep the list concise.
3. Case doesn't matter.
4. Latest EDIT: tag added

What is a Surpassing Phrase™?

JLee
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    Anything to do with valuing the letters by A=1, B=2, and so on? – Rand al'Thor Jul 15 '15 at 15:54
  • @randal'thor Good question. Valuing the letters is not necessary. – JLee Jul 15 '15 at 15:57
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    Eventually you're going to run out of adjectives™ for your phrases! :P – GentlePurpleRain Jul 15 '15 at 16:44
  • What is an adverb™? – Going hamateur Jul 15 '15 at 17:48
  • Hmm. [calculation-puzzle] means the answer should involve numbers somehow, but not using A=1, B=2, and so on. How do the numbers come in then? – Rand al'Thor Jul 16 '15 at 18:54
  • @randal'thor hmmmm... :·X – JLee Jul 16 '15 at 18:57
  • And now I've found a rule that works, but can't see what it's got to do with calculation puzzles! – Rand al'Thor Jul 16 '15 at 19:06
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    Unnecessary use of images where lists would have sufficed can reduce your potential audience by ruling out anyone who is behind a firewall that blocks image sites or uses a screen reader. – glibdud Jul 16 '15 at 19:58
  • @glibdud I never thought of that. I wonder to what degree this would reduce the audience, percentage-wise? negligible? or more? – JLee Jul 16 '15 at 20:00
  • @JLee Hard to say, but what exactly is the advantage of using an image? – glibdud Jul 16 '15 at 20:01
  • @glibdud It's much prettier, and I hate formatting things on here. – JLee Jul 16 '15 at 20:02
  • I don't even know how to do a table in SE-LaTeX. Maybe it's on one of the help pages? – Rand al'Thor Jul 16 '15 at 21:49
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    @randal'thor It's pretty complicated: http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/4240/how-do-i-insert-a-table-when-asking-a-question/ . It's so complicated, the help pages didn't even bother to mention it. – mmking Jul 16 '15 at 21:55
  • Anything to do with valuing the letters by A=1, B=2, and so on? – rand al'thor||

    @randal'thor Good question. Valuing the letters is not necessary. – JLee || And yet the calculation-puzzle tag applies?

     – CodeNewbie Jul 18 '15 at 15:05
  • Is the meaning of any of the words or phrases relevant? And when you say font doesn't matter, do you mean that how the letters are printed or written doesn't matter, in the sense that it doesn't matter that say t extends into the upper zone, etc.? I am trying to interpret surpass :-) – h34 Jul 18 '15 at 22:31
  • @CodeNewbie Yes that tag does apply. And valuing the letters in a strict sense is not necessary. – JLee Jul 18 '15 at 22:41
  • @h34 the meaning is not really helpful in finding the property which makes a phrase a Surpassing Phrase™. I said font doesn't matter because in an earlier, similar puzzle, called "What is a Scalable Phrase™?" the font mattered, and the property was slightly different depending on the font and the case. – JLee Jul 18 '15 at 22:46
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    @JLee Just nominated your puzzle for 2015Q2. – BmyGuest Jul 21 '15 at 06:47
  • Does "surpassing" imply that whatever calculation it is, when applied to a single row, the second column has a larger value than the first? Or is there a single threshold that all the second column surpass? – Ken Y-N Jul 21 '15 at 06:57
  • @BmyGuest Cool, thanks! I will try to remember to nominate some puzzles. There are so many good ones! – JLee Jul 21 '15 at 11:19
  • @KenY-N No that's not what Surpassing means. The property is not subjective, so, when you find it, yo will know for sure. The calculations that need to be performed is not anything complex. – JLee Jul 21 '15 at 11:34

5 Answers5

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A Surpassing Phrase™ is one where consecutive pairs of letters in each word get farther apart in the alphabet. For example:

su up pe er rb / su ub bw wa ay
 2  5 11 13 16 /  2 19 21 22 24

but not:

ex xc ce el ll le en nt / tr ra ai in
19 21  2  7  0  7  9  6 /  2 17  8  5

The name comes from each successive distance between letters "surpassing" the previous one.

f''
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  • congratulations f double prime! you've just got yourself 200 rep points! out of curiosity, how long did you spend on this puzzle, and what was your process? (feel free to go into as much or as little detail as you desire) – JLee Jul 21 '15 at 11:22
  • @JLee I had no idea until I saw beginner 101's answer. The ascending/descending pattern made me realize that the letters were getting farther apart from each other, so that each distance was "surpassing" the previous one. – f'' Jul 21 '15 at 11:32
  • @JLee "Valuing the letters is not necessary." .. ", but it helps.", the little part of the sentence that had been omitted to misdirect most people! – No. 7892142 Jul 21 '15 at 13:44
  • Man, I didn't know this was answered, and I just figured this out...well, maybe next time. :P – Bailey M Jul 21 '15 at 13:49
  • @No.7892142 It wasn't intended to misdirect. I never valued any of the letters in creating the puzzle. Only counted. – JLee Jul 21 '15 at 16:11
  • @BaileyM Ouch. Well congrats anyway. Of the 700+ views only you and f'' figured it out, as far as I know. – JLee Jul 21 '15 at 16:13
  • @JLee Misled me enough to not even consider this. :) Nice puzzle, still. – No. 7892142 Jul 21 '15 at 16:37
  • @JLee - FWIW, I realised that calculation without a need to assign numbers to letters probably had to do with letters' relative positions, but I only got as far as considering up and down, rather than how far up or down. I should have just put aside your advice that assigning numbers to letters wasn't necessary and just gone ahead and written down the numbers! But I was too influenced by your saying that the meaning of the words was "not really helpful", thinking that maybe you had a tendency to soften what would otherwise be sharp and unqualified statements. Brilliant puzzle BTW! – h34 Jul 22 '15 at 00:05
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    So you could say that knowing that quantitative comparison doesn't require measurement of the items being compared, I got 'misdirected' away from measuring the differences in letters' distances from the start of the alphabet. Saying "Valuing the letters is not necessary" makes it a better rather than a worse puzzle IMO :-) – h34 Jul 22 '15 at 00:10
  • @JLee I was also pushed away from this track by the comment that letter values aren't needed. I can see how you can count directly between the letters, but the same way you count count up from A to get a letter's value. – xnor Jul 22 '15 at 09:35
  • @xnor My thought process in stating it like that went like this: "If I tell them that assigning numeric values to each letter is useful or necessary, then it will make the puzzle like finding a needle in a haystack (too broad), since there are near infinite ways that you can assign numbers to letters and manipulate them into whatever you want." So, in my attempt to avoid that confusion and to steer people in the right general direction, I stated it like I did, hoping that someone would see that the distance is all that was needed, independent of any specific value that a letter might have. – JLee Jul 22 '15 at 15:19
  • @xnor I am sure there was probably a better way to tackle this, but I did give it a lot of thought, and the route I went looked the best to me. The calculation tag was a good hint, and definitely needed to be there. – JLee Jul 22 '15 at 15:20
  • Thank you @h34 and xnor and No.7892142 for your feedback. It really helps me for future puzzles! – JLee Jul 22 '15 at 15:29
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A Surpassing PhraseTM is one where:

For each word in the phrase, the alternate letter groups are ascending and descending. Only one letter (either first or second letter only) in the word can violate this rule.

Here are some examples:

SUPERB = S (discard) + UEB (desc.) + PR (asc.)
SUBWAY = SBA (desc.) + UWY (asc.)
ONLINE = O (discard) + LN (asc.) + NIE (desc.)
FIENDS = FED (desc.) + INS (asc.)
WRITE = WIE (desc.) + RT (asc.)
RUNES = R (discard) + NS (asc.) + UE (desc.)
PORKY = PRY (asc.) + OK (desc.)
HOGS = HG (desc.) + OS (asc.)

I checked all phrases in Surpassing list and they meet the condition above. I checked a few phrases from Non-surpassing list and they do not meet the condition.

I have zero pts, hopefully I can get the bonus!

beginner 101
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    The discarding is non-uniform. You don't always discard a letter. The real pattern would undoubtedly be more uniform. – CodeNewbie Jul 21 '15 at 05:35
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    Very nice observation. I got my answer by considering what might cause this pattern. – f'' Jul 21 '15 at 09:31
  • +1 Nice try! I love for new people to get bonuses, but that's not quite it, as CodeNewbie's comment suggests. – JLee Jul 21 '15 at 11:26
  • Even if the discarding isn't uniform, this is still an amazing cook if every phrase on the left conforms to @beginner101's rule and none of the phrases on the right do. So far I haven't found one on the right that does. – h34 Jul 21 '15 at 15:40
5

I think a Surpassing Phrase™ is one where

you can take away a few letters from both words to create a new word and still be left with a proper word pair. The newly created word may need to be anagrammed but the original words will surpass our expectations by remaining valid words even after losing some letters.

Here's how my pattern fits the phrases. The letters in brackets are the ones removed from the original word and the word in italics is the newly created word

superb subway

super(b) sway(ub) bub

online fiends

line(on) finds(e) one

write runes

writ(e) run(es) see

fair survey

far(i) sure(vy) ivy

bird beak

bid(r) be(ak) ark

turnip fields

urn(tip) field(s) spit

fear cobras

far(e) cobs(ra) era

pithy lingoes

pith(y) lingo(es) yes

kidnap kings

kid(nap) king(s) snap

sound echoes

son(ud) echo(es) dues

icky molerat

ick(y) mole(rat) tray

I haven't been able to fit it to each of the phrases you've listed, but the pattern is appearing all too frequently to ignore altogether.

CodeNewbie
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  • This is not it. It seems too subjective. Also, can't you do the same thing to some/most of the Not Surpassing Phrases? Also, this answer is kinda similar to Versatile Words, and the intended answer is not. – JLee Jul 15 '15 at 18:17
  • Nice try though.Keep at it. If you figure it out, you'll be the first person to snag more than one of these Phrase™ puzzles – JLee Jul 15 '15 at 18:22
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    I liked it, counter example from not surpassing: Wired villains wire villi nads (or sand.. I guess) – Going hamateur Jul 15 '15 at 18:40
  • Congrats on your newly achieved Trusted User status! – JLee Jul 15 '15 at 20:04
2

I think a Surpassing Phrase is one that

contains a string of 3 letters which is only one letter-change away from a string of 3 consecutive letters.

Here's how all the phrases on the left satisfy this rule:

superb subway
online fiends
write runes
porky hogs
fair survey
bird beak
turnip fields
fear cobras
pithy lingoes
icy tundra
kidnap kings
Choctaw turncoat
sound echoes
Pomfret fishway
finer lines
smug nerds
icky molerat

Rand al'Thor
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-1

My guess is that a Surpassing Phrase is

A phrase with relative adjectives that describe nouns using the least letters possible as well as being the most specific as possible

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