Problem 56185. Extract the Acrostic Message

An acrostic cipher is a way of embedding one message within another by taking the first (or last) word of each line. Given a string s, and a positive integer n, return a string containing the message you would get by taking the first word on each line, having written the message in s with n words on each line.
You do not need to worry about punctuation. A "word" is anything separated by a space. The input message will use only single spaces (and no line breaks or other whitespace). Similarly, the output message should use only single spaces between words.
Note that the number of words in s is not necessarily a multiple of n.
Also note that this problem can be solved more directly than using the method described above.
t = "This week's Cody challenge is designed to test an essential skill that's easy to have a problem with.";
acrostic(t,4)
ans =
"This is an easy problem"
Solve

Solution Stats

46.99% Correct | 53.01% Incorrect
Last Solution submitted on Jun 19, 2025

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