full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Dan Finkel: Can you solve the world's most evil wizard riddle?

Unscramble the Blue Letters

It works, but with a ccath. MoldeVort starts in one cneror of the 5x5 braod. You have a few minutes to choose four distinct positive whole numbers. MoldeVort gets to say one of them, and if you can pick a square on the board whose center is exactly that distance away, the curse will focre him to move to that spot. Then he’ll have to choose any of the four numbers, and the process repeats until you can’t keep him inside the board with legal moves. Then he’ll break free of the splel and almost certainly kill you.

Open Cloze

It works, but with a _____. MoldeVort starts in one ______ of the 5x5 _____. You have a few minutes to choose four distinct positive whole numbers. MoldeVort gets to say one of them, and if you can pick a square on the board whose center is exactly that distance away, the curse will _____ him to move to that spot. Then he’ll have to choose any of the four numbers, and the process repeats until you can’t keep him inside the board with legal moves. Then he’ll break free of the _____ and almost certainly kill you.

Solution

  1. force
  2. spell
  3. catch
  4. board
  5. corner

Original Text

It works, but with a catch. MoldeVort starts in one corner of the 5x5 board. You have a few minutes to choose four distinct positive whole numbers. MoldeVort gets to say one of them, and if you can pick a square on the board whose center is exactly that distance away, the curse will force him to move to that spot. Then he’ll have to choose any of the four numbers, and the process repeats until you can’t keep him inside the board with legal moves. Then he’ll break free of the spell and almost certainly kill you.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
evil wizard 2
number larger 2

Important Words

  1. board
  2. break
  3. catch
  4. center
  5. choose
  6. corner
  7. curse
  8. distance
  9. distinct
  10. force
  11. free
  12. kill
  13. legal
  14. minutes
  15. moldevort
  16. move
  17. moves
  18. numbers
  19. pick
  20. positive
  21. process
  22. repeats
  23. spell
  24. spot
  25. square
  26. starts
  27. works