Enigmatic Code
Programming Enigma Puzzles
Sphinx Cryptarithm #15
Posted by on 28 January 2026
From Sphinx Magazine #135, May 1933
Reconstruct the extraction of square root.
[sphinx15]
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Enigmatic Code 
Here is a solution using the [[
SubstitutedExpression]] solver from the enigma.py library.It runs in 78ms. (Internal runtime of the generate code is 801µs).
#! python3 -m enigma -rr SubstitutedExpression # square root extraction: # # x B y # ----------- # \/ a b c d A # e # - # f b c # g h # ----- # i d A # i d A # ===== --distinct="AB" --invalid="0,aefgix" "sq({xBy}) = {abcdA}" "sqrx(0, {x}) = {e}" "{a} - {e} = {f}" "sqrx({x}, {B}) = {gh}" "{fbc} - {gh} = {i}" "sqrx({xB}, {y}) = {idA}" --answer="{abcdA}" --output="lambda p, s, ans: output_sqrx(ans, pre=' ', start='', end='')"Solution: The extraction is: √20449 = 143.