Flawless grid Challenge - the game that was invented in less than 10 seconds and sucks

i just saw this image

https://i.imgur.com/WwfFH8Z.jpg

WHO
ARE
YOU

4 words. failure. WHO. ARE. YOU. WAY. success would have been 6 words, three going across, three going down.

i challenge everyone to make flawless grids. 3x3, 4x4, and higher than that if you are a legend. also, i will not be participating, having invented the game and now moving on to the CFO/venture stage of my this project. if no one responds or tries, i will take that as a signal that you all are working on your own versions of the game for your personal profit, and i will see you in court, and then in hell

if anyone dares accept this challenge, though, i urge you to consider using the code formatting (click "Show Formatting Help", just beneath "Submit Post", to show formatting help), so that the letters will appear in monospace and line up correctly in a grid:

with code formatting:

TOP
TIM
RUB

without:

TOP
TIM
RUB

also, those of you who know how to program and write functions - please don't do that to immediately come up with all solutions. or i will sue your ass

Do the words also have to form a sentence or can they be unrelated to each other?

they can be unrelated, but a truly Flawless Victory (tm) will be a combo that makes sense in some way

W H O
H O W
O W L

*blows whistle extremely loudly*

`
HAH
AHA
HAH
`

*blows whistle even more loudly, breaking the whistle*

BAT
EYE
DEN

oh shit! *AIR HORN*

the first qualifying 3x3 grid has been completed on July 1 by wins
however, it is not _flawless_

i'm thinking the bolded achievements should be for the first qualifying grid of each dimension (3x3, 4x4, and up, ...and also other non-square dimensions? 3x4, 3x5, etc? beats me, i just collect the money)

and then another bolded achievement for the first FLAWLESS VICTORY(tm) of each dimension.

the ultimate winner of Mortal Kombat will be the person who has a FLAWLESS VICTORY of the largest dimension. this achievement will be indicated by boldly underlining things downthread

CAR
APE
TED

Close as I can get, I give up

A S H
S E A
K E Y

Don't ash in my hay, or I'll hand you the key and ask you to see your way out. To the sea!

P U S
A S K
T E A

O H M
D U O
E M O

PALE
OPEN
DEAD

I've been trying to make something that makes sense but can't quite get there.

Alright I got quad for ya

C L A P
R A G E
A M E N
W E S T

Oooohhhhh

i like jmm's

FROM
RAPE
ERAS
EELS

Jmm's makes good thematic sense but not a sentence. I think johnny crunch has hit something? "From rape eras, eels free rare opal mess" might not be that meaningful, but it's a sentence!

emil.y - how about

SCAM
HARE
OPEN
DEAD

just re-read this & nearly choked on a pretzel rod lol'ing, thank u karl

if no one responds or tries, i will take that as a signal that you all are working on your own versions of the game for your personal profit, and i will see you in court, and then in hell

Why'd you have to start threads like this at the most inconvenient time.

FACE
ACHE
DIAL
ODDS

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/Sator_Square_at_Opp%C3%A8de.jpg/220px-Sator_Square_at_Opp%C3%A8de.jpg

PALE
OPEN
DEAD

-- emil.y

first qualifying 4x3 grid

C L A P
R A G E
A M E N
W E S T

first qualifying 4x3 grid

^^^ shit! i meant first qualifying 4x4 grid!!! ^^^

this is hard work for me, making this money

FROM
RAPE
ERAS
EELS

― johnny crunch

i think this is the finest example we have so far. but i cannot call it a flawless victory (and neither can you - I'm trademarking that)

B A L M
A R E A
L I N T
E A T S

that grid looks like it was strategically created! :)

Augh, this is hard. You become attached to certain words and create your own problems.

the first person to solve each successively larger stage of the problem will be rewarded with a thin mint

i tried to do one with things Pantera's Dimebag Darrell (R.I.P.) wanted from his passive humbucker pickups in order to get a flawless... no luck so far

we've got a 4x4, can i get a 4x5? do we have a 4x5?? *gets mint out of bag*

i tried to do one with things Pantera's Dimebag Darrell (R.I.P.) wanted from his passive humbucker pickups in order to get a flawless... no luck so far

― Lavator Shemmelpennick

first attempt at concept grid, Lavator Shemmelpennick

if it wasn't hard to do, i wouldn't give you these thin mints

participation trophies? when i was a kid you didn't get bold print let alone thin mints unless you actually won something

first person to get sued for defamation on this thread, Lavator Shemmelpennick

i won't back down until you break a new record for real

oh shit. working on it

to those who are angry about the legal system - what you got a better idea? until then, let's expand the grid

*idly eats thin mints*

IDLY
EATS
THIN
MINT

*broken whistle sound*

i guess 4x5 is impossible. it's like the 4 minute mile, just completely impossible

3x3 grid: https://i.imgur.com/45NNvCk.png

4x4 grid: just about anybody of average intelligence could pull this off in under an hour

5x5 grid: either you're legitimately gifted or you were patient/crazy enough to dedicate a week's worth of your free time to a linguistic button-mashing exercise

6x6 grid: Karl could comfortably offer a $1,000 cash prize for this (if he could somehow weed out bots/cheaters), because there's only about a 1-in-100,000 chance that one of ilx's 8,471 registered users has the branepower to pull this off

7x7 grid: you are the greatest linguistic genius in human history

8x8 grid: there are more neurons in your brain than there are atoms in the observable universe

T O
O N

you must be able to say the words in a sentence

if you're not too fussy about it, literally any set of words, however many or diverse, could be placed into the confines of one grammatical English sentence. It would require a strategy that would amount to cheating in most people's minds, but would not disqualify it as grammatical English. It would even have a meaning after a fashion, albeit an extremely dull and annoying meaning. For example:

The words frog, capstan, oligarchic, tenth, and longitudinal can all be found in an unabridged English dictionary.

on the other hand, if you're not too fussy with it, that totally doesn't count come on!!

the game is just fucking it's over. it's fucking OVER

Karl want you to know I wrote a whole computer program tonight and it was not a solution to the flawless grid challenge

:D

I can't believe you found something more profitable to work on

$25 cheap, death to open source https://silby.itch.io/abort-retry-fail

$25
5x5
Interesting
And yet you deny all influence

Luckily this thread was started just as I finished work and just before I had to do the kids bedtime and get things ready for a birthday party, or I might have pissed away more minutes of my life on fruitless activities. Nevertheless I tried in the few spare minutes I had to come up with something with my daughters names in using just pencil and paper, and failed. Hit the word lists this morning and succeeded but maybe I'll try another one without EDEMA (scarcely better than enema) or LARDS.

HAZEL
EDEMA
AMBER
TIRED
STARS

emeer - okay, okay

v impressive in any case

SLAM
TORE
EPEE
PEAT

emeer - okay, okay

I suppose you think Zebra is a bad name for a child too?

going for readability but not getting it with the columns:

MEN
ARE
MAD
MAY
ONE
BAT

and an unreadable 4x4:

FACT
AXLE
ROAN
ENDS

CARAFE
ROAMED
ARTING
STANCE
HANDED

I got a sorta 6x5 if you don't mind the slangy ARTING and the annoyingly Neil Gaimanny AMIND

What is RATAN? Does it not have two ts?

you can spell it both ways sez the scrabble dictionary

oh it's the scrabble dictionary now is it

ZYZZYVA

PEE
BEE
SEE

i humbly submit the following challenge: a grid of any size that includes

ZEE

ZEE
IVY
TEE

LOS
AGO
ZED
YEA

what are 'los'? they are many lo

Service Oriented Enterprise Architecture?

I've been toying with ogee for a while.

nice, ledge!!! I'll wait for km to provide the official bold text, should he so choose

I wrote something to generate a five by five list. After thinking for a few minutes it spat out this:

AAHED
ABACI
HAOLE
ECLAT
DIETS

After modifying it to exclude repeated words it's been silent, it might finish sometime in the century after this one. With a shorter word list it might be quicker.

You’re gonna get sued

yeah, lawyer up

i can't even keep these cases straight. so many flaws in these grids

The machine got one! Took 45 minutes, still with the first word in the list in the first row, and the tenth word in the list in the second. It's all scrabble words...

AAHED
ABASE
RAITA
GYRON
HASPS

those are all scrabble words?! i can play AARGH?!

that is very good to know :)

ILX
XOR
LOL

LOO
ROLL

you lol now.

but wait until the settlement, which i will redistribute to "the good ilxors" as part of phase 1 of the long promised #PaymentForPosts platform

then posts will really start to count, as will my new IP-protected floating currency system

I have spent an unreasonable, indeed a ridiculous amount of time, and paper, trying to make a 6x6 grid but the best I can manage is ten words out of twelve. I have a sort of system to get that far but beyond that it's pot luck and I have no idea, if I keep trying, whether I'll hit on a solution imminently or if it will take a hundred years.

the flawless grid challenge has defeated all of you

the flawless grid challenge is undefeated

I made this 4x4 one just now, my first go at it:

AREA
CHAI
TERM
SANS

https://www.famousbirthdays.com/headshots/rhea-perlman-7.jpg

Also a genus of South American flightless birds!

Tracer’s image is the Official image of the Flawless Grid Challenge

nailed it

the metadata description of the image is "betchu cain't do a 5x5!"

I'll do a 6x6 one day...

only the image has completed a flawless 6x6

it destroyed her

wait that IS Carla! lol

only Carla from Cheers has done this

Ended up using a couple of dubious Middle English words, but finished my first 5x5:

ZILCH
ESURE
BLAIN
REUSE
ASSES

the test is whether you would be willing to say each of the 25 words, out loud, to carla from cheers, with cliff and all the other regulars there to egg her on.

i would start with Asses, but i'm not sure if i could say Blain to her. and Henes. however, even a Carla-violation 5x5 is a 5x5 nonetheless, congrats!