In a certain language PRACTICE is coded as PICCTRAE, how is FLAMES coded in…

In a letter-coding question like this, a word is converted into its code by moving certain letters to new positions according to a rule that must be inferred from the given example. Because the word to be coded can have a different number of letters than the example, the rule is best expressed in terms of relative positions -- counted from the start and from the end of the word -- so the same rule can be applied consistently to a word of any length.

1. In PRACTICE (P-R-A-C-T-I-C-E), the 1st letter (P) and the last letter (E) occupy the same position in the code PICCTRAE.

2. The 2nd letter (R) and the third-last letter (I) exchange places, and the 3rd letter (A) and the second-last letter (C) exchange places; the 4th and 5th letters (C and T), lying between these exchanged pairs, stay fixed.

3. Applying this same relative-position rule to FLAMES (F-L-A-M-E-S): the 1st letter (F) and the last letter (S) stay fixed.

4. The 2nd letter (L) and the third-last letter (M) exchange places, and the 3rd letter (A) and the second-last letter (E) exchange places.

5. This gives the coded sequence F, M, E, L, A, S -- that is, FMELAS.

As a check, the code uses exactly the same six letters as FLAMES with none repeated or dropped, and applying the identical exchange a second time to FMELAS (2nd with third-last, 3rd with second-last) restores F-L-A-M-E-S, confirming the rule was applied correctly.

Hence, FLAMES is coded as FMELAS.