14 Apr
2013
14 Apr
'13
8:32 a.m.
Fred lunnon:
I learnt of this sublime cryptarithm as a schoolboy, circa 1954. Can anybody identify the original source?
ONE+ONE+ONE+THREE+THREE+ELEVEN = TWENTY
The term 'cryptarith' itself is due to M. Vatriquant in 1931. J.A.H. Hunter called it an 'alphametic' in 1955. Hunter was posing alphametics in Toronto's Globe and Mail (and one other) newspaper. The coincidence of that 1955 with your 1954 leads me to suspect it is his but one would prefer a more direct attribution. I rarely see such attributions to cryptarithms, which may be a good thing. I once mailed one of mine (ONE + ONE + ONE + ONE = FOUR + ONE = FIVE) to J.A.H. Hunter only to find it some time later in the Journal of Recreational Mathematics as one of his!