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Jumble



 
 
Jumble, is a word puzzle
Word game

Word games and puzzles are generally engaged as a source of Entertainment, but they have been found to serve a very useful and progressive Education purpose as well....
 in which a player is given a set of letters which, when arranged in the correct order, give the un-jumbled word. A simple example would be the set of letters "lbujme," which can then be rearranged to spell "jumble". Thus the solution to a Jumble is an anagram
Anagram

An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, Eleven plus two = Twelve plus one, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place....
 of the puzzle word. Jumble is also similar to the Round Robin game from Supermarket Sweep
Supermarket Sweep

Supermarket Sweep is an American television game show. Part of the format was similar to other team-based quiz shows; the other part was a live-action race through a supermarket, a novel concept at the time....
.

Jumble was created in 1954 by Martin Nadle (aka.






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Jumble, is a word puzzle
Word game

Word games and puzzles are generally engaged as a source of Entertainment, but they have been found to serve a very useful and progressive Education purpose as well....
 in which a player is given a set of letters which, when arranged in the correct order, give the un-jumbled word. A simple example would be the set of letters "lbujme," which can then be rearranged to spell "jumble". Thus the solution to a Jumble is an anagram
Anagram

An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, Eleven plus two = Twelve plus one, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place....
 of the puzzle word. Jumble is also similar to the Round Robin game from Supermarket Sweep
Supermarket Sweep

Supermarket Sweep is an American television game show. Part of the format was similar to other team-based quiz shows; the other part was a live-action race through a supermarket, a novel concept at the time....
.

Jumble was created in 1954 by Martin Nadle (aka. Naydell or Dell & Nadel), and is one of most important properties of Tribune Media Services
Tribune Media Services

Tribune Media Services is a syndication company owned by the Tribune Company.The company is divided into two divisions, "News and Features" and "Entertainment Products"....
, which holds the rights to the JUMBLE trademark. Daily and Sunday Jumble puzzles are featured in hundreds of newspapers.

Jumble puzzles found in newspaper
Newspaper

A newspaper is a publication containing news, information and advertising, usually printed on low-cost paper called newsprint. General-interest newspapers often feature articles on Politics, crime, business, art/entertainment, society and sports....
s often have four-base Jumbles, the first two are five letter Jumbles and the second pair six letter Jumbles. Once these base Jumbles are solved, a player uses the circled letters of each base Jumble word to obtain a new set of letters. This set of letters will then complete a phrase or sentence. The correct answer usually involves some sort of visual or verbal pun, relating to an illustration and its caption published with the puzzle.

Computerized solution

Algorithms to solve jumbles exist, which make use of a dictionary. Commonly found algorithms work as follows; given an input of jumbled letters it outputs the set of possible words. Then the person can pick up the right word from the list (if it exists).

One algorithm is as follows:

  1. Begin
  2. Input: J , all the jumbled letters that form an unknown W word(s), we want.
  3. Sort the letters of J in alphabetical order, preserving duplicates.
  4. Look up sorted letters in a hash table, initialised with a dictionary, that maps a sorted set of letters to unscrambled words.
  5. Print the set of words, which is W.
  6. End


Another algorithm:

  1. Begin
  2. Input: J, all the jumbled letters that form an unknown W word(s)
  3. Frame a word list Y with all different combination of J
  4. For each word in Y check if the word is existing in the dictionary
  5. If a match is found then collect it in word list W
  6. Prints the words in W


Algorithm to write J in all different combination

1.Begin
2.Initialize a string with first character of J denoted by J(1)
3.Add the second character of J denoted by J(2) in either side of J(1)to get two strings
J(1)J(2) J(2)J(1) 4.Add the third character of J denoted by J(3) in either side and in between of the above 2 strings in above step to get 6 strings
J(1)J(2)J(3) J(1)J(3)J(2) J(3)J(1)J(2)

J(2)J(1)J(3) J(2)J(3)J(1) J(3)J(2)J(1) 5.Same way add J(4) to each of the above string in either sides and between two characters to get 24 strings
6.Continue this until all the characters are completed


Though the algorithm looks complex it can be easily implemented in a program.

Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Hofstadter

Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an United States academic whose research focuses on consciousness, thinking and creativity. He is best known for G?del, Escher, Bach, first published in 1979, for which he was awarded the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction....
 developed a program called Jumbo
Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies

Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought is a 1995 book by Douglas Hofstadter and other members of the Fluid Analogies Research Group exploring the mechanisms of intelligence through computer modeling....
 that tackles jumble problems in a way similar to the hypothesised manner in which the human mind does. The program doesn't rely on a dictionary and doesn't try to find real English words, but rather words that could be English, exploiting a database of plausibilities for various combinations of letters. Letters are combined non-deterministically, following a strategy inspired by chemical reactions and free associations.

In other media


Various electronic versions of Jumble have been released, including a version by Hasbro Interactive
Hasbro Interactive

Hasbro Interactive was an United States video game developer and video game publisher subsidiary of Hasbro, the large game and toy company.Hasbro Interactive was formed late in 1995 in order to compete in the computer game and video game arena....
 for Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces ....
. The game features 5 modes of play ranging from classic Jumble to crossword puzzles to an easier Jumble mode for kids.

TextTwist, a Java
Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java ....
 game by GameHouse, is similar to Jumble. Players form words from a set of six scrambled letters, and must find at least one 6-letter word using all the letters to get to the next round. Additional points are granted for words using at least three letters.

A TV game show based on Jumble aired in 1994. It was hosted by game show veteran Wink Martindale
Wink Martindale

Winston Conrad "Wink" Martindale is a disc jockey and television game show host....
, and aired on The Family Channel (now called ABC Family
ABC Family

ABC Family is an United States cable television television network currently owned by Disney-ABC Television Group, a division of The Walt Disney Company ....
).

In the Seinfeld
Seinfeld

Seinfeld is an Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award-winning Television in the United States Situation comedy that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, lasting nine seasons, and is now in Broadcast syndication....
 episode "The Pez Dispenser", Kramer
Kramer

Kramer may refer to:...
, upon hearing that George Costanza
George Costanza

George Louis Costanza is a fictional character in the United States?based Television program Situation comedy Seinfeld , played by Jason Alexander....
 was doing crossword puzzles with his girlfriend, stated he "likes to do the Jumble".

In the Strong Bad email
Homestar Runner

Homestar Runner is a Flash animation Internet Animation. It mixes surreal humor with references to 1970s, '80s, and '90s pop culture, notably video games, classic television, and popular music....
 from Homestar Runner
Homestar Runner

Homestar Runner is a Flash animation Internet Animation. It mixes surreal humor with references to 1970s, '80s, and '90s pop culture, notably video games, classic television, and popular music....
 entitled "Caper," Strong Bad
Homestar Runner

Homestar Runner is a Flash animation Internet Animation. It mixes surreal humor with references to 1970s, '80s, and '90s pop culture, notably video games, classic television, and popular music....
 and The Cheat
Homestar Runner

Homestar Runner is a Flash animation Internet Animation. It mixes surreal humor with references to 1970s, '80s, and '90s pop culture, notably video games, classic television, and popular music....
 break into Homestar's
Homestar Runner

Homestar Runner is a Flash animation Internet Animation. It mixes surreal humor with references to 1970s, '80s, and '90s pop culture, notably video games, classic television, and popular music....
 house to steal the Jumbles from his newspapers. Strong Bad refers to this in song as "The Jumble Caper."

See also

Jumble (game show)
Jumble (game show)

Jumble is a game show that was broadcast on ABC Family, running from June 13 to September 2 and from November 21 to December 30, 1994. It was based on the newspaper game Jumble....


External links