A little puzzle

[Vincent]

I've copied it to a sheet of paper to do when I'm awake enough ;-)

I used to be really good at these sorts of things (aptitude tests), but then that was about 8 years ago :-o :-D

[Vincent]

Right, I thought of this when I was surfing a Spectrum forum...

1) MLK

2) Pentagon -> Diamond  (I'm assuming there's meant to be 2 stages in the question, it doesn't make sense if there's not)

3) RSUT

4) Circle

5) Diamond -> Plus


I'm not giving out my workings until I know it's right and so no-one can cheat :-P

[Vincent]

[edit 2]My second answer is different to Vincents, but I tried it his way and (assuming we have both come up with the right theory about how this works) that works too.[/edit 2]

Looks like we have the right theory (edit - maybe not the right theory, but the same one :-P).  After reading your post (before your edit 2) I tried it your way and it works fine :-D

[Vincent]

FluffyMcDeath wrote:
3 : RUST

but why RSUT? I disagree. I think I see what you were thinking based on the horizontal path, but check the vertical.

Because the Plus switches the last two symbols.

-----

Circle - takes off the last letter
Pentagon - takes off the first letter
Diamond - reverses all the letters
Plus - reverses the las two letters.

-----

From the puzzle itself:

QRST -> diamond (reverses - TSRQ) -> Plus (reverses last two - TSQR) -> TSQR

FGHI -> pentagon (takes off 1st - GHI) -> Plus (reverses last two - GIH) -> GIH

So RSTU -> plus (reverses last 2) -> RSUT

The Plus can't swap the last three letters around as I think you're suggesting as the FGHI -> GIH doesn't follow that.  If the Plus did swap the last three then it would be IHG.

[Vincent]

FluffyMcDeath wrote:
Yes. RSUT.
I guess I had a dyslexic moment with the diamond operator and it pooched my results. (That and an insane preference for real words over nonsense sequences seemed to have biased me).

:lol:

Here's a solution - steer clear of diamonds :-P