Nuptial Date Announced
by Nathan Fung
ANSWER: HEN PARTY
Each clue clues the name of an unmarried woman. In order by clue, these names are as follows:
- JANE AUSTEN
- HARPER LEE
- ELIZABETH I
- CONDOLEEZZA RICE
- COCO CHANEL
- LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
- JANET RENO
- MAUREEN DOWD
Each diagram is a non-deterministic finite automata (NDA), which can use these names as inputs. Using the numbers of accepts per machine and which names are accepted on which machine, it is possible to identify that Person A, Person B, etc. correspond to the clued name strings in alphabetical order taking into account that the accept table contains one incorrect entry per machine; each NDA is listed as accepting one string that it should reject.
For each of these incorrectly labelled rejections, rejection occurs at the letter indicated in the table below (i.e. when the string is input into the NDA, there reaches a point where there is not a transition for the next letter to be read in the string). These letters, in order of machine number, spell the answer, HEN PARTY.
| COCO CHANEL | CONDOLEE- ZZA RICE | ELIZABETH I | HARPER LEE | JANE AUSTEN | JANET RENO | LOUISA MAY ALCOTT | MAUREEN DOWD | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | reject (H) | reject | accept | reject | accept | reject | accept | accept |
| 2 | accept | reject (E) | reject | reject | accept | accept | reject | reject |
| 3 | reject | reject | accept | reject | reject (N) | reject | reject | reject |
| 4 | accept | reject | accept | reject (P) | accept | accept | accept | accept |
| 5 | reject | reject | reject (A) | reject | reject | reject | reject | reject |
| 6 | reject | reject | reject | reject | reject | accept | reject | reject (R) |
| 7 | accept | reject | reject | reject | reject | reject (T) | reject | reject |
| 8 | reject | reject | reject | accept | accept | accept | reject (Y) | accept |