ZiZZiT

If you play Scrabble, Boggle, Bubble Words or even Perquackey, if you enjoy Double Crostics or the daily Jumble, then you are going to love ZiZZiT.        Each ZiZZiT game has a letter supply and a set of blanks. You write the given letters onto the blanks to form common words. Write one letter onto each blank. Each given letter must be used exactly once. If you are given three E's, then you must write three E's onto three different blanks.        Some letters are already placed. Use these letters as clues to help you place the remaining letters. Use only unabbreviated words without hyphens, apostrophes, periods, or capital letters. For example MVP, SET-TO, ISN'T, E.COLI, and YORK are not acceptable. The words are in alphabetic order. This gives you even more help.        Each puzzle has a unique solution. Let's look at a sample ZiZZiT game. A B C H I K R R W ___ ___ ___  D  ___ ___  S  ___ ___  O  ___ ___        The 9 letters ABCHIKRRW are the letter supply. You would place these 9 letters onto the 9 blanks to form 3 words.        But, how do you get started? A direct approach would be to list all the possible words that fit on the first line, then to see what words can fit on the second line using the remaining letters, and for each of those to see if the letters left over can form a word on line 3. That's a lot of trial and error.        It is less work to use logic to solve the puzzle. For this puzzle, a good place to start is the second word, or Word 2. This word can end only with SH or SK.        Suppose Word 2 ends with SK. Then Word 3 cannot contain a K, and the only possibilites are BOAR, COIR and HOAR. All of these contain 2 vowels. There are only 3 vowels for the 3 words, so each word must contain only 1 vowel. Thus Word 2 cannot end in SK; it must end in SH.        Can the K be in Word 1? There is no N, so Word 1 cannot be KIND, and there is no S, so Word 1 cannot be SKID. Thus the K can't be in Word 1 or Word 2, and therefore it must be in Word 3.        The only possibilities for Word 3 are BOCK, CORK, ROCK and WORK. BOCK and CORK can be eliminated, since it would be impossible for both Word 1 and Word 2 to come earlier in alphabetic order. Suppose Word 3 is ROCK. Then the puzzle would be A B I R W ___ ___ ___  D  ___ ___   S   H   R    O    C    K         The only possible completions of the puzzle are BARD, WISH, ROCK and BIRD, WASH, ROCK. But these are not in alphabetic order, as the rules require. Thus Word 3 must be WORK, and the puzzle is easily completed. The answer is  B   I   R   D   C   A   S   H   W   O   R   K