Trigram Hell
Anaquotes, often referred to facetiously as Trigram Hell, are a type of word puzzle that involves arranging trigrams (sequences of three letters) into a cohesive sentence.
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Background[edit | edit source]
TO DO
Puzzle Application[edit | edit source]
The presence of Trigram Hell is generally visible from the outset of the puzzle. It is most often present as a set of alphabetized trigrams, such as the following:
EDM EEN EMP ERB ETH GDI IRE LON MUS ONG SEV TDI TED TEL THA THE UNI UNI USI UST VID VID
Sometimes, there will be a bigram or single letter thrown into the mix; these are often the last letters of a quote that doesn't have a length divisible by three. Other times, this situation is explicitly avoided with careful writing.
Some puzzles will also provide the enumeration of the completed quote to aid in the task.
Strategy[edit | edit source]
The following section will use this example to demonstrate:
EDM EEN EMP ERB ETH GDI IRE LON MUS ONG SEV TDI TED TEL THA THE UNI UNI USI UST VID VID
The best strategy is often to simply put trigrams together and see what clicks; however, there are heuristics that can aid in determining which trigrams are likely to yield a breakthrough. These are mostly rooted in what sequences of letters are likely or unlikely to appear together in an English word.
For instance, in the example above, EDM, GDI, and TDI stand out as being uncommon letter sequences; each one should have a space between its two adjacent consonants. From there, further moves could explore potential words ending in G or starting in M; LONG and MUST are the most likely candidates of those presented.
VID, on the other hand, is more likely to stay one unit. Looking up words that contain this set of letters and cross-referencing with the trigram list shows DIVIDE as a likely option; there are exactly two trigrams ending in DI, which happen to be the two mentioned earlier. The solver can then check all trigrams beginning with E to see which one can start a new word with its remaining letters.
With enumerations, this becomes measurably easier, since finding the proper location for a trigram also limits the lengths of the corresponding words.
Anaquotes also generally snowball after placing a cluster of initial trigrams; words can often be predicted from their first few letters and surrounding context.
Carrying through solving this anaquote should eventually yield the following quote, Click to reveala translation of the opening line from Romance of the Three Kingdoms:
Click to revealTHE EMPIRE, LONG DIVIDED, MUST UNITE; LONG UNITED, MUST DIVIDE. THUS IT HAS EVER BEEN.
Notable Examples[edit | edit source]
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