This challenge is a sequel to Letter Boxed Validator.
The New York Times has a daily online game called Letter Boxed (the link is behind a paywall; the game is also described here), presented on a square as follows:
You are given 4 groups of 3 letters (each group corresponds to one side on the picture); no letter appears twice. The aim of the game is to find words made of those 12 letters (and those letters only) such that:
- Each word is at least 3 letters long;
- Consecutive letters cannot be from the same side;
- The last letter of a word becomes the first letter of the next word;
- All letters are used at least once (letters can be reused).
In this challenge, you are given the letters, and a dictionary. The goal is to output a valid solution, which minimizes the number of words used. If there is no solution, any consistent output is acceptable.
For the input {{I,C,O}, {M,R,E}, {G,N,S}, {A,P,L}}, a valid solution is PILGRIMAGE, ENCLOSE. Another valid solution is SOMNOLENCE, EPIGRAM. The following are not valid:
- PILGRIMAGE, ECONOMIES (can't have CO since they are on the same side)
- GRIMACES, SOPRANO (L has not been used)
- PILGRIMAGE, ENCLOSURE (U is not one of the 12 letters)
- ENCLOSE, PILGRIMAGE (last letter of 1st word is not first letter of 2nd word)
- CROPS, SAIL, LEAN, NOPE, ENIGMA (number of words is not minimal)
Input
Input consists of a dictionary, and of 4 groups of 3 letters. It can be in any suitable format.
Output
A list of words giving a solution to the challenge. There may be several acceptable solutions: you should output at least one, but may output several if you want.
Test cases
The test cases use this dictionary. If using a large dictionary is too difficult on TIO, you may use instead the dictionary {PILGRIMAGE, ENCLOSE, SOMNOLENCE, EPIGRAM, ECONOMIES, GRIMACES, SOPRANO, ENCLOSURE, CROPS, SAIL, LEAN, NOPE, ENIGMA, OVERFLOWS, STACK, QUESTIONABLY, QUARTZ, ZIGZAG, GHERKIN, CODE, GOLF, NO, I, DO, NOT, IN}, but your code should in principle work on a larger dictionary.
Note that the solution is not necessarily unique; these are possible solutions.
Input={{I,C,O}, {M,R,E}, {G,N,S}, {A,P,L}}.
Solution: PILGRIMAGE, ENCLOSE
Input:{{OSA}, {FVK}, {WEL}, {CTR}}.
Solution: OVERFLOWS, STACK.
Input: {{BCD}, {FGH}, {JKL}, {MNP}}.
No solution.
Input: {{AQT}, {LUI}, {BOE}, {NSY}}.
Solution: QUESTIONABLY
Input: {{QGN}, {ZUR}, {AHK}, {ITE}}.
Solution: QUARTZ, ZIGZAG, GHERKIN.
Scoring:
This code-golf, lowest score in bytes wins!
