This month’s puzzle drew several different solution methods, some employing code and others using a hand search of the word list. The longest solutions so far discovered are length 16, the first submission of this length was

GAZER,INNER,QUEER,ODDER,BOXER,FOYER,HOVER,JOKER, WOOER,LOWER,MOWER,POWER,ROWER,SOWER,TOWER,COWER

submitted by solver Andrew Sultana, who noted that every letter of the alphabet is used!

Solver Karl Mahlburg came up with a similar sequence, and also an explanation for why there wasn’t a length 17 Eldrow solution (while admitting it wasn’t a completely rigorous proof). Essentially, each word adds letters to the list of eliminated letters by having grayed out letters, and so we can focus our search on the parts of the sequence where eliminated letters could be reduced. Running code to search these areas failed to find a longer sequence.

Nice work solvers! We are certainly happy with our 16-length Eldrow sequences, and curious if some magical 17-length sequence is lurking out there…

Congrats to this month’s solvers, ordered by descending length, with ties broken by who submitted earliest.